Third Sunday in Lent

Third Sunday in Lent – Year B (RCL) 2009
Exodus: 20: 1- 17 Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 25; John 2: 13 - 22
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, March 15, 2009

IN THE TEMPLE OF THE GODS

Let us pray: God of our Church we invite others into the midst of your temple – help us to remember that it is you we enshrine in this place. When we make a temple of our religion help us to tear down those walls and erect the true temple to the Gospel which you have called us to be witnesses of. We often gather our lives around our ritual – help us to guide our hearts to your message of hope and promise in the Word made flesh, Jesus the holy one who will suffer yet not yield; who will be tempted yet not succumb, who will die yet conquer death and live forever. Amen.

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD DWELLING IN ME – GOD’S HOLY SPIRIT,
SETTING US FREE – HELP US TO LOVE, HELP US TO SEE
YOU ARE THE SPIRIT WHO MAKES US ALL FREE – YOU

ARE, GOD’S SPRIIT DWELLING IN ME.

So here we find ourselves in the 3rd week of lent – torn away from the Gospel narrative as we have heard it for the past several weeks – that is according to the Author of Mark’s version; and now thrust into the author of John’s telling of the good news of God in Christ. This is a distinctly different approach and understanding of the ministry and mission of the radical rabbi from Nazareth. The Intended audience is different and so, consequently is the order and telling of the events and situations of the three years of public ministry of the carpenter’s son. Events and places will be turned upside down in this evangelist’s telling of the stories – and for very different and intentional purposes.

All four of the canonical Gospel narratives recount the telling of the events which we encounter this morning – that is the clearing of the temple and the consequences resulting. The authors of the synoptic Gospels all place this event at the end of Jesus’ public ministry and use it as a significant impetus for the leaders; chief priest’s and scribes to push for the trial and eventual crucifixion and death of the Christ. The author of John’s Gospel however, places this event at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry – in fact it is the second principle event in Jesus’ public ministry by the author of John’s telling, occurring right after the marriage feast at Cana and the first of Jesus’ “signs” in the author’s vernacular. In this recounting of the Good News – as has become clearly evident from the prologue on – we are going to hear a different retelling of the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and we will have much more emphasis on the theology of the ministry of the Christ or what scholars call ‘Christology’ – than we had in the synoptic accounts where the emphasis was perhaps placed on the historical telling of those events.

In all four tellings, however, we do have this most jarring of stories about Jesus’ reaction to the desecration of the sacred ground in Judaism’s holy of holies, the temple of Yahweh. Picture this if you will, the chaos and confusion of the bartering and selling of sacrificial animals in the temple courtyard. Most scholars believe that at the Pascha feast the population of Jerusalem would swell from approximately 40,000 to somewhere around 150,000 people all crowding into the walled city to present the proscribed offerings at the temple. It was necessary that one present the sacrificial offering without blemish or imperfection; so bringing that animal with you on a long journey from Galilee at shortest to Egypt or beyond at longest would be difficult if not impossible. Hence the convenience of having those animals offered for sale upon reaching your destination would have been blessed. The opportunity to both sell and purchase in close proximity to the area where the sacrifice would be completed was tempting and convenient. It is believed that it was under the direction of the High Priest, Ciaphais that this practice became firmly established in the holy city. Jesus’ reaction, therefore, was probably not all that horrifying to those who witnessed it – they may, in fact, have been delighted to see it happen. Imagine, if you will, the embarrassment and frustration this would have caused Ciaphias and the Sanhedrin of the ruling religious caste. When we do it becomes obvious how this may have led to the strong desire to have this troublemaker finally eliminated. Into all of this confusion, stench and chaos of sacrificial lambs and money changers and business dealings of the “mechanics” of ritual religion – the object of God’s incarnation – thrusts the hand of reason and says: “wait, look at what you have done to my Father’s house….look at what a mockery you have made of the worship of God by placing all of the emphasis on the offering and not on the one to whom all is offered!’

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD DWELLING IN ME – GOD’S HOLY SPIRIT,
SETTING US FREE – HELP US TO LOVE, HELP US TO SEE
YOU ARE THE SPIRIT WHO MAKES US ALL FREE – YOU ARE,

GOD’S SPRIIT DWELLING IN ME.

How tempting that can be – to become so enraptured by the trappings of religious ritual and its beauty and tradition that we loose focus on the very reason why we gather to offer our worship in the first place. It is in our nature as humans to attempt to limit and proscribe the form and feature of the Divine – so that we can contain it within our limited scope of understanding and comprehension. How could we do otherwise? How can we describe that which is indescribable? How can we conceive of that which is unconceivable? The temptation is great to limit the power of the limitless one – and so we will build our temples to contain the uncontainable power of the Divine.

I do not believe that Jesus’ actions in the retelling of the cleansing of the temple are meant to provide us with an example of polite behavior in the midst of ecclesiastical abuses. Jesus is making very strong statements in view of the abuses of the religious leadership of 1st century Palestine. While we do not sell sacrificial animals and allow for the exchange of currency of the realm in our Church vestibules – I believe that we also have some things to learn from Jesus’ indignant response to those who would seek to transform God’s house into a place of commercialism and commerce. The abuses of religious “professionals” in our own time who use the “temple” of mass media as a personal means for monetary or political gain would do well to remember the lessons of the cleansing of the temple and the extent of Jesus’ indignation and anger against those who show little to no respect for the holy ground on which we tread.

My Michael is known to describe this event in the Gospel narrative as “Jesus gets mad, film at eleven.” I remember from my early religion classes from the good sister’s of St. John the Baptist that it was important to understand that Jesus’ anger was “justified” and not, in fact, sinful as our own human anger can be. Now, however, as I contemplate this level of frustration and indignation that the Holy One of God in Jesus the Christ expresses in this story, I am amazed at the humanity of the Divine carpenter’s son. Jesus is just plain fed up with the religious authorities of the time – and that righteous indignation comes hurling out of the meek and mild Jesus of our polite Episcopal understanding to demonstrate a person of passion and profound emotion around the sacredness of God’s ‘holy ground.”

This Jesus makes a whip, kicks over tables, destroys birdcages, stampeded cows and sheep, dumps out cash drawers of money changers and throws the rest of them out the door. It’s almost as if Jesus is saying, “stop making God’s house into a mega mall’ as that whip is cracked alongside their frightened and scurrying backsides. It is just about that time that Jesus’ disciples will remember where it is written, “passion for God’s house has consumed me.” That scriptural reference is from Israel’s “song book” the psalms and the author of that song knows well how Jesus’ indignation could have been so passionately fueled by viewing the commercialization of the sacred and holy ground of the temple of Herod’s making. In just a few years, that beloved temple would lie in ruin thanks to the Zealots and the Romans. If you couldn’t get right with God by buying a dove or a sheep, how could you get to God? If the sheep and animal sacrifices and the rites and rituals, the prayer books and the ’82 Hymnals, and the bread and the wine are not the way that we get to God and God gets to us, then how are we supposed to that?

Jesus will become the temple…I will destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up! What must have the disciples made of this claim by Jesus? Without the hindsight of what we know to be the end of the story, what sense does that statement make? How do you cling to a leader who will make statements like that which make no sense in light of what we expect from them? How could Jesus possibly destroy the magnificent work of so many that went into the construction of the Herodian temple of Jerusalem? Yet, they remained steadfast though clumsy followers of this madman who frustrated and confused them beyond all limits of their simple fisher folk understanding. Only after the events, which they lived out in Jesus’ earthly presence among them, would they be able to fully understand what the master was teaching them – that the temple Jesus spoke of destroying and raising up in three days was the temple of his Body in which dwelled God’s Holy Spirit. Yet they trusted, yet they had the stumbling faith to follow even when that following seemed dangerous and difficult. How blessed are we who will do the same. How then we will come to know that we are called to be the temple of God in which the Holy Spirit might dwell, and live and blow.

The road toward Calvary is getting more and more dangerous as we progress through these forty days of preparation and penitence. The ground is getting shakier and shakier as the foundations of our temple God move closer toward their fateful conclusion, the full implications of which we will never be fully able to comprehend. We remain as frightened and confused as the disciples did while Jesus walked among them. Our advantage, however, is in knowing how the story will turn out in the end. Our blessing lies in the fact that Resurrection will triumph over crucifixion. We know that as an Easter people; we struggle to accept that and remain faithful in the long frustrating days of lent. Be among us Jesus and shake our very hearts with your passion and righteous indignation at our religious pomposity. Jesus will purify God’s house and transform our little play church into the very Body of Christ. This Jesus will cleanse us until we shine like the sun. This Jesus will take our church and our fumbling and awkward attempts to worship and praise God, and transform them into a purified acclamation of the true God. So we pray:

(SUNG) SPIRIT OF GOD DWELLING IN ME – GOD’S HOLY SPIRIT,
SETTING US FREE – HELP US TO LOVE, HELP US TO SEE
YOU ARE THE SPIRIT WHO MAKES US ALL FREE –

YOU ARE, GOD’S SPRIIT DWELLING IN ME.


Amen.

2nd Sunday in Lent

Second Sunday in Lent – Year B (RCL) 2009
Genesis 17: 1 – 7, 15 – 16; Psalm 22: 23 – 31; Romans 4: 13 – 25; Mark 8: 31 – 38
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, March 8, 2009

LIFTING THE CROSS – CARRYING THE LOAD

Let us pray: God of the Cross we often look to that symbol for our identification with your passion and promise as it offers the memorial of your gift to us of suffering and death. Help us to understand the symbol as a true way of following your call to crucifixion and death as the way of life that you lead us toward. When we want only to live in Resurrection – help us to understand that life is about following you to crucifixion and death is about following you to Resurrection. As we look to understand your call to take up the Cross and follow you may we also see that Cross as our way of identity with all who suffer and our sharing with them and you the way of death into life. Amen

(SUNG) LIFT HIGH THE CROSS, THE LOVE OF CHIRST PROCLAIM
TILL ALL THE WORLD ADORE HIS SACRED NAME.

I am going to begin these remarks by asking your indulgence this morning. Early on Thursday I spent the hours between 1:00 and 4:30 AM in the Emergency Room at Good Samaritan Hospital. One of my challenges as an adult has been a gift left to me by my DA – and that is the tendency to produce kidney stones. I was awoken by that gift and my thought pattern and stamina are challenged in the days until it passes by a certain fog amidst the experience and so my remarks will be somewhat shortened and perhaps a bit “disconnected” as I write and deliver this sermon under the influence of pain meds! Still, I didn’t want to simply beg off – because this message that Jesus leaves to us in this mornings Gospel is such a powerful and conflicting one for so many of us.

As a youngster growing up in my Irish Catholic brood – the house was filled with religious images and pictures to assure us of the power of God in our lives through the workings of holy mother the Church. One memory around the cross holds a prominent place in my childhood. Over the entry to the dining room was a large and graphic statuary depiction of the Crucifix hung just above the archway. The staircase to the upstairs passed over that archway and was railed by a single plain wood banister than ran the length of the ascending stairs. As a curious six year old – my eyes and my mischievous nature were drawn to the porcelain Jesus, arms outstretched and blood dripping from the palms of his nailed hands holding him on the cross. I would often stare up while passing under the archway and ache for my God who suffered by hanging there day after day, week after week, month after month without uttering a single complaint. One day I figured out that if I leaned over the banister at the half way point on the staircase I could reach out and touch the crucified body and this fascinated me. I reached out and lifted the Crucifix off the wall and tenderly kissed the bleeding hands and feet. I think this was probably an idea that I had been given when we would do something similar at the Adoration of the Cross in the service on Good Friday’s when Father would hold out the large crucifix and allow the parishioners to kneel at the rail and reverently kiss the wounded figure of Christ. At any rate what happened next can only be attributed to the simplicity of a childhood understanding of concepts to complex to be explained. One afternoon when mi sainted Irish Mither (may she rest in peace) came home – what greeted her was her 11th child sitting at the foot of the staircase with the fear of God in his eyes when he recognized that “your gonna get it when your Father gets home” tone in her voice as she said “Dennis James what on earth do you think you’ve done”? At my feet was the porcelain figure taken off of the cross with the arms snapped off and lying close to the emaciated twisted corpus. I explained to her that I just felt so sorry for him that he had to hang there because of my sins and never got to even put his arms down for a rest! I have no memory of her exact words – but the family story has me sent to bed without any supper; and the Crucifix hung for many years with the epoxy glue stains clearly visible at the arm joints.

(SUNG) LIFT HIGH THE CROSS, THE LOVE OF CHRIST PROCLAIM
TILL ALL THE WORLD ADORE, HIS SACRED NAME.

One of my favorite things about being an Episcopalian is the beauty and pageantry of our liturgy. True, that most likely comes from my deep roots in the pre Vatican II Roman Catholic Church – and that does nothing to dampen my love of the ritual and solemnity of the liturgical rites of this protestant and catholic institution. How wonderful I thought when first finding the Episcopal Church to have that full procession lead by the stark simplicity of a raised cross in the hands of the crucifer every Sunday! That had been reserved for “special” occasions in the Church of my youth. Yet how appropriate for the teaching of Jesus in the lesson from today’s passage by the author of Mark’s Gospel telling – that, indeed, we like Jesus are called to be cross bearer’s or crucifer’s every day in our life’s journey.

What does that phrase mean for you – to “take up your cross” and follow Jesus? For much of my life it had meant what the good Sisters of St. John the Baptist and the Church had taught me it meant. Whatever suffering you experienced – whenever your punishment seemed well beyond any sense of justice for the sin you had committed – that was your cross to bear and that is what Jesus said you had to do. If we had less money and more mouths to feed than most of the other families in the neighborhood – that was our cross to bear; and that is what Jesus said you had to do. As I have matured in my faith – and been given the freedom in my Anglican understanding of the Body of Christ – to question those old assumptions and rote Baltimore Catechism explanations of good and evil my interpretation of “taking up the cross” and following Jesus continues to evolve. That does not mean that I don’t still grapple with “my crosses” and complain about why I have to have them – why do I have to deal with kidney stones? It simply means that as I age and get a bit more patient with God – as God has always been with me – I get it that we are all called to crucifixion and death; just like Jesus so that we can all be called to resurrection and life; just like Jesus.

(SUNG) LIFT HIGH THE CROSS, THE LOVE OF CHRIST PROCLAIM
TILL ALL THE WORLD ADORE, HIS SACRED NAME.

This symbol has marked us for life – this symbol of death – this cross. At our baptism we were marked with the sign of this cross and sealed as Christ’s own forever. The sign and symbol of this cross is ever present in our corporate worship – even the joy and nurture given to us each week in the bread and wine of this table are dominated by this sign and symbol which hangs over it. This powerful symbol of terror and punishment crafted by the dominant and often brutal Roman conquerors was not understood by many to be a way of Glory – and I don’t think that the early followers of Jesus would have seen it that way as they too became victims of its torture and terror. Yet somehow we have to hear Jesus’ words “take up your cross and follow me” and find what they mean for us as followers. Jesus’ teaching gets serious, deadly serious this morning and there is no escaping the fact that we too are called to become crucifers – to take up the cross and follow the crucified One to Jerusalem, to Calvary, to passion, suffering and death and beyond!

Amen

First Sunday in Lent

First Sunday in Lent – Year B (RCL) 2009
Genesis 9: 8 – 17; Psalm 25: 1 – 9; 1 Peter 3: 18 – 22; Mark 1: 9 – 15
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, March 1, 2009

WASH ME AND I SHALL BE MADE CLEAN

Let us pray: Generous Jesus, we are not the people we ought to be. The results of our sin are all around us. You have given us a good garden, and look at the mess we have made of it. We have degraded and damaged our garden home, we have rebelled against your will for our world, and we have distorted your image in ourselves. Patient Jesus, keep working with us, on us and in us. Keep restoring your image in our faces. Wash us clean and rebirth us. Take our wounded world and re-create it. Take our lives and transform us. During these forty days, help us to do something about our sin. Amen.

(SUNG) AS I WENT DOWN IN THE RIVER TO PRAY, STUDYING
ABOUT THAT GOOD OLD WAY, AND WHO SHALL WEAR THE
STARRY CROWN, GOOD LORD SHOW ME THE WAY.

O, SISTERS LET’S GO DOWN, LET’S GO DOWN, COME ON
DOWN. O, SISTER’S LET’S GO DOWN, DOWN IN THE RIVER
TO PRAY.

Images of water and the powerful forces it exerts flooded through my brain as I read through the scriptures, which the Church has chosen for the first Sunday in Lent for Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary. If you have not seen the powerful cinematic images from O Brother Where Art Thou when the flooding of the countryside is used in baptismal imaging, I would recommend that you do so. My guess is that you will never view Baptism quite the same way again. Water, flooding and baptism are central images in the lectionary this morning.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we hear the end of the story of Noah and the flood, which is actually, quite violent in it’s depiction of the disappointment which the Hebrew God, Yahweh showers upon the people in retribution for their sins. After the flood, the first Covenant is entered into with the people of God which will allow them to eat of the flesh of animals, perhaps recognizing that humanity is blood thirsty in its eating habits, though murder is specifically prohibited. This is not necessarily the world as God intended it to be, but rather the world as God continues to work with the reality of human violence and sin. In solemn language, God makes a covenant and the rainbow is named as a sign, a deal of the covenant God has made with all humanity.

Indeed, the covenant is made with ALL humanity, not just Israel. It is made with all creatures on earth, including the animals, and it is made at God’s initiation – not at humanity’s initiation. A ‘covenant’ is a formal agreement, often between a superior and inferior party, the former ‘making’ or ‘establishing’ the bond with the latter. This agreement is often sealed through ceremonies. In this case, God set God’s weapon, the bow, in the sky facing away from humanity as a sign of God’s commitment not to destroy the earth again by flood. Humanity, as it were, has been washed clean of its sin through the waters of the flood and God agrees after that washing clean to reconnect with the remnant of creation and begin again this on-going struggle between the Creator and the created.

(SUNG) AS I WENT DOWN IN THE RIVER TO PRAY, STUDYING
ABOUT THAT GOOD OLD WAY, AND WHO SHALL WEAR THE
ROBE AND CROWN, GOOD LORD SHOW ME THE WAY.

O, BROTHERS LET’S GO DOWN, LET’S GO DOWN, COME ON
DOWN. O, BROTHER’S LET’S GO DOWN, DOWN IN THE RIVER
TO PRAY.

It is a terrible, terribly frightening story, this story of Noah, when you think about it. There is lots of death and destruction in this story. We may try to turn it into a cute little children’s story; and we can’t…not with all the death dealing water. It’s a sad, horrifying story. It is also an appropriate story to read at the beginning of the season of Lent, our forty-day time of honesty. This is the season when we confront our sin and confess our guilt. We have lived in such ways as to make our Creator regret having wasted the gift of creation on us.
I thought also of the powerful images of water and its almost saving power in the events around the landing of US Airways Flight # 1549 in the Hudson River last month and how that freezing body of water was actually a miraculous and saving buoy for the 155 passengers and crew of that frightening encounter with the untamed forces of nature. Once again water – and its powerful and oftentimes un-relentless progression despite our human attempts at controlling its force recalls in us the desire to remember the covenant of the bow in the sky, which marks God’s promise that “the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” So, also we can be soothed when we read the stories from our sacred scriptures, which depict the waters as being a healing and cleansing reconnection with the promises of God in our baptisms.

The author of Mark’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan – this author tells this story quite differently then the other evangelists. In this Gospel the telling is rapid and pointed – lacking any of the embellishing details, which we find in the other depictions. The author covers a great deal of territory in these few verses that we heard this morning. They pull together Jesus’ baptism, temptation, announcement of the coming near of the kindom and the call to repentance and belief in the Good News. All of this is done at an almost “spitfire” pace. This pace is indicative of the style of this entire Gospel and one of the reasons why we might find it so compelling and dramatic to read. The author of Mark’s retelling of the baptism is spare, and the pace continues to be propelled forward in the next verses as we are told of the tearing apart of the heavens, the voice of the Holy Spirit and the “immediate” driving out into the wilderness of Jesus to face the forty days of temptation and testing in the desert.

Sin and washing clean, baptism and redemption – the promises of God made in response to our continuing sinfulness and failure in the face of all that God would desire of and for us. These are the themes, which will occupy our journey in the next 40 days of our own sojourning into the reflection and renewal of Lent. We will be faced with the reality of our own sin – not something which we like to spend a great deal of time focused on in this society which encourages anything but reflection on our own failings and foibles. Yet this is what we will choose for ourselves, corporately and individually as we spend a season of our lives in introspection and critical self-analysis. We do not do this simply to be self flagellating and unduly critical. Rather we do this to reflect on how we have failed in our attempts to be all that God intends for us to be – and how we might improve in that challenge as a renewed and re-energized resurrection people.


(SUNG) AS I WENT DOWN IN THE RIVER TO PRAY, STUDYING
ABOUT THAT GOOD OLD WAY, AND WHO SHALL WEAR THE
STARRY CROWN, GOOD LORD SHOW ME THE WAY.

O, MOTHERS LET’S GO DOWN, DON’T’ YOU WANNA, COME ON
DOWN. COME ON, MOTHER’S LET’S GO DOWN, DOWN IN THE RIVER

TO PRAY.

In each of the Synoptic Gospel accounts Jesus goes directly from the baptism into the temptation time in the wilderness. Do we think that we would fare any better than that? Our lives become a forward propelling from our own baptisms and cleansing in the waters – into the temptations and testing of our everyday lives as we attempt to live out the covenant with our God. Here is the example though – Jesus who is God – was not spared the temptations and times in the desert. Those temptations and desert times can be for us, not only an occasion for sin and disobedience; but also an opportunity for introspection and growth in our understanding of our covenant relationship with the God who is love.

I came across a powerful quote from one of my spiritual mentors this week. In an interview in Tikkun Magazine, William Sloan Coffin has the following to say regarding this God whom so many of us struggle to know and understand: “Personally, I think that God is not too hard to believe in, simply too good to believe in, we being strangers to such goodness.”

So we could let this lent be an opportunity to renew our baptisms, to once again embrace the mystery of a God who both judges us and love us at the same time. What needs to be washed away from our lives right now? What bad habit, sinful inclinations, or dark secrets need to be drowned in God’s healing waters? What sun needs to shine, what good work needs to be undertaken, and what new practice needs to be ventured into or taken on?

Our sin is serious. Our alienation from God is at times severe. Storm clouds may gather and waters rise. Yet so is the goodness and grace of God – over us all, over humanity in its heights and depths, over the valleys and peaks of our lives, a rainbow – promising hope and covenant and resurrection.

(SUNG) AS I WENT DOWN IN THE RIVER TO PRAY, STUDYING
ABOUT THAT GOOD OLD WAY, AND WHO SHALL WEAR THE
STARRY CROWN, GOOD LORD SHOW ME THE WAY.

O, SINNERS LET’S GO DOWN, LET’S GO DOWN, WON’T YOU
COME ON DOWN. O, SINNER’S LET’S GO DOWN, DOWN IN THE
RIVER TO PRAY.