Sermon: Wiping mud from our eyes (Feb. 11, 2018)

Transfiguration (NL4)

February 11, 2018

John 9:1-41

INTRODUCTION:

            Today is the day in the church year when we celebrate the Transfiguration. Normally, we hear a story that can be found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, in which Jesus goes with three of his disciples up a mountain, and he is transfigured before them, becoming bright white, and Moses and Elijah appear with him. The disciples are terrified by this glory of God being revealed, and Peter says, “It is good for us to be here!” and says he wants to build a dwelling for everyone, so they can stay forever. But then everything returns to normal, and they all troops back down the mountain and, we come to find out, start heading toward the cross. It is the hinge that brings us from Epiphany, the season of light, into Lent, the season in which we prepare for Christ’s passion and resurrection.

            Well today is Transfiguration, but we’re reading through the Gospel of John, and that story doesn’t appear in John. Why not? Perhaps it is because John’s entire Gospel is about God’s glory and light being revealed through Jesus’ signs. That blinding light already appeared, in the manger at Christmas, and has appeared several times since, including, we will see today, when Jesus heals a man who has been blind since birth. So far, the presence of that light on earth has not caused too much trouble – today, all of that changes, as we see the impact that change and healing really can have on us. This reading is 41 verses long, really longer if you count the discourse that follows (which we will hear on Ash Wednesday), but the healing itself only takes seven verses. The remaining verses are dedicated to the aftermath, to people trying to place blame, assign logic, and understand what exactly happened and what it means. Of course, Jesus told them outright: it means that he is the “light of the world,” sent to scatter darkness and bring healing and wholeness in ways that transcend logic, and might even transcend what we are comfortable with. Let’s see what happens… [READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            There was a woman who lived in Charlottesville, VA for many years named “Anna.” She told people that she was in fact Anastasia Romanov, the daughter of the last Czar of Russian. Many people believed this – it was such a compelling story! After she died, researchers acquired remains of her DNA from a Charlottesville hospital. They compared her DNA with that of members of the Romanov family in North America and in Europe. And guess what? She was an imposter, not Anastasia, and not a member of the Romanov family. She was a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. One of her neighbors, however, didn’t want to give up the story. He believed that she was who she said she was, and so when he was told of the DNA results, he immediately responded, “I don’t believe it,” and proceeded to list reasons why the DNA test must be inaccurate.

            It’s called cognitive dissonance: when reality does not confirm expectations, and so people continue believing what they believed previously, even against evidence to the contrary. This is not an unfamiliar concept to us. We see it in politics, in our families, in our neighbors, and if we’re honest, we see it in ourselves. No one likes to admit that something that they ardently believe could be wrong! We don’t like to have our worldview challenged, much less debunked. So we choose to interpret the evidence in such a way that it fits with what we believe in our heart to be true.

            That cognitive dissonance is what makes up the bulk of today’s Gospel reading. The disciples start us off by indicating their worldview: if this man was born blind, he or his parents must have done something to deserve it. They must have sinned, because that’s the only way such a tragedy makes any sense. And so when Jesus not only says, “Nope, that’s not true,” but also heals the man (and on the Sabbath, no less!), their reality is shattered. They scramble to explain: maybe this isn’t the man? Maybe he wasn’t really blind? Maybe Jesus is a sinner. Surely, there is a way to fit this into how we know the world works! They couldn’t accept the possibility that, not only was this man transformed from blind to seeing, but their very understanding of how life works was also transformed.

            What an interesting commentary on human nature this is. The new worldview that Jesus offers is a life-giving one: one in which light wins over darkness, in which sin does not get the final word, in which healing is possible. It is one not bogged down by keeping the letter of the law, but rather, lifted up by the promise of eternal relationship with God. These are good things! But with the exception of the man who was formerly blind, everyone, even his own parents, refuse the transformation.

            And this may very well be the case with us, too. We do not like things to be different from what we already know so well, even if what we know is not really all that good. And so we might look at ourselves in the mirror and see ourselves not for our potential, but for everything that has ever been wrong with us. We are held back by our failures, our setbacks, our disappointments. Or, we look at others this way, only seeing them for who they were, how they failed, mistakes they’ve made or people like them have made, rather than for what they could contribute to the world or even to our lives. Isn’t it interesting that when the man suddenly can see, his own friends don’t even recognize him! They knew him only as the man who was born blind. How could he possible be anything else?

            How does that feel, to be placed in a box like that? How does it feel to be labeled, and for people to assume that this is all there is to you? How does it feel to do that to yourself? I’ll tell you how it doesn’t feel: it doesn’t feel like life. It doesn’t feel like hope. It doesn’t feel like wholeness.

            This week begins the season of Lent. Our theme for Lent this year is Healing and Wholeness. I spent this week writing several reflections on this topic for our Lenten devotional. One was on the story toward the beginning of John, where Jesus comes upon a man sitting by a pool, who has been ill for 38 years. Jesus asks him what he is doing; he says he is hoping to be healed. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be made well?” I was so captivated by this question! It’s so obvious: yes, of course I want to be made well! Why do you think I’m sitting here? Why would I want to continue in this way of dis-ease? And yet, how often do we look at our lives, see the areas in need of healing – in our bodies, yes, but also in our hearts, our minds, our work satisfaction, our relationships, our finances, our perspectives on life – we see where we need healing, and yet do nothing about it? Do you want to be made well? Well yes, but only if I don’t have to change. Only if I don’t have to face the fear of something different from what I’ve known for so long. Only if it doesn’t mess with the worldview to which I’ve grown accustomed. Only then do I really want to be made well.

            Sound familiar? It is to me! Quick example: After holidays and the cold weather preventing me from getting out and moving as much as I’d like, I decided I could stand to lose about 5 pounds. Easy, right? And so every day, I get up, do exactly what I’ve been doing, eat the same food, and dutifully check the scale. And it’s the funniest thing – that number hasn’t changed yet! Go figure, right?

            But if there is one thing we have seen again and again as we’ve read through John’s Gospel, it is that when Jesus shows up… things have to change. Lack turns into abundance when water is turned to wine. Former ways of worshiping are literally turned on their sides when Jesus enters the Temple. Centuries-long divisions between Jews and Samaritans are broken down. The despised become the beloved. Eyes and hearts are opened, indeed, they are transformed. When one encounters Jesus, things change, and life becomes abundant.

            It sounds good… until we realize how very disruptive even a positive change can be. It is much less disruptive just to keep on keeping on in the same patterns we’ve always had, damaging, stifling, or unhealthy as they may be, rather than risk even the new life Jesus offers.  

            After worship today, we will hold our annual meeting. We will discuss several topics that have stemmed from a need for change. For instance, how we structure our ministry here, our council and committees. What we’ve done has worked for many years… but does it continue to bring life to this congregation? What does “life” even look like in terms of a congregation’s ministry structure? To me, it looks like joyful service and listening to the Spirit’s movement, and stepping out in faith. Does our current structure do that? What could? Another topic is the role of the pastor in a shared ministry. Bethlehem has had many fruitful years with a pastor serving solely at Bethlehem. The Spirit led Bethlehem into a covenant relationship with another congregation, which brought new life – but also necessarily changed the role of the pastor. So we will be talking today about how that looks. Part of it looks like the possible need for an earlier worship time, which we have been trying out for several months already. This, too, is a change that maybe some have been resistant to. But is it a change that could bring new life?

            Not all change is good. Sometimes God’s voice is heard in our resistance to it. But whatever it is we face that is challenging our old worldview, or the way we see ourselves or other people, Jesus calls us to examine: where can life be found most abundantly? Where can the light of the world most brightly shine?

            I hope that during our meeting today, and in this upcoming Lenten season, that you will take some time to reflect on these questions, for us as a congregation, and also for yourself. Next week I’ll be inviting you to make some healing goals for yourself to focus on and pray about during Lent. Where is Jesus smearing mud on your eyes and telling you to wash, so that you may see? What aspect of your life needs healing? What worldview are you clinging to, that may be keeping you from being able to enter new, abundant life?

            Let us pray… Life-giving God, open our eyes to see where you might be working to transform our worldview. Give us the courage to step into a new life, into a deeper relationship with you. Help us to say, with the man born blind, “Lord, I believe.” In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Living water that breaks down walls (Feb. 4, 2018)

Epiphany 5 (NL4)

February 4, 2018

John 4:1-42 (Samaritan Woman at the Well)

INTRODUCTION:

            John begins this story by telling us that Jesus “had to go through Samaria.” A look at the map will reveal… he didn’t. Or rather, he did, but it was a vocational need, not a physical one. Why does this matter? Well let’s review about the Samaritans. Jews and Samaritans share the same roots, but after Solomon died, the kingdom of Israel split into North and South. Jerusalem was in the southern kingdom. You may recall from a couple weeks ago, that Jews believed that God could only be found… where? In the Temple in Jerusalem. So that was the only place to properly worship. So without access to Jerusalem, the Northern Kingdom (including Samaria) went rogue – they came to believe God could be properly worshiped on Mount Gerizim. Furthermore, these Samaritans married outside of the Jewish cult, meaning they were not racially pure like the Jews, and that they had developed some foreign religious practices. Over the years, the divisions grew deeper, because they were racially and religiously different, and leaders of both groups forbade contact with the other. There was a proverbial wall between these two groups, the Jews and the Samaritans, which no one was to cross. All of which makes John’s seemingly casual comment, “Jesus had to go to Samaria,” suddenly much more ominous! The reader thinks, “Oh no, this can’t go well…”

            What follows is an encounter that gets more and more surprising. Jesus not only approaches a Samaritan, but a Samaritan woman, and one that appears to have, shall we say, a checkered past. And she actually engages in dialogue with him – the longest dialogue in the New Testament, in fact – and asks him the most pressing theological questions of the day. There’s much to be learned and observed in this encounter, so… let’s get to it! [READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            Last week, St. Martin held the first in a series of Community Conversations. Our first conversation was on the drug epidemic, and featured a wonderful panel of people who work in the recovery movement in various capacities. We had a great turnout – this is truly an area where people are thirsting for information and for hope – and I think everyone there left with some valuable nugget to think about. The nugget that I left with was one that was shared several times and ways by multiple speakers: that the opposite of addiction is connection. The opposite of addiction is connection. In other words, addiction is not so much about the pleasurable effects of substances, but rather about the inability of the user to connect in healthy ways with other human beings. It isn’t a substance disorder; it’s a social disorder. All of the recovery efforts our panel talked about focus on helping people make those meaningful, human connections, on seeing people who struggle with substance use disorders as real people with something valuable to offer, on building trust, and on not shaming or disregarding people for the struggles they face.

            I’ve been thinking about this as I have studied this week’s Gospel story about the Samaritan woman at the well. Here we have a woman who lacks connection. She’s had five husbands, which means five men have either died or divorced her, and probably the latter means she is barren. This all means she is viewed by her culture as worthless, unable to have kids, or at least as damaged goods, and no one will have her. The guy she’s living with now is probably her dead husband’s brother, according to levirate law. She is probably more talked about than talked to. No one goes to the well at midday, at the hottest part of the day, unless they are trying to avoid seeing anyone, and so that is when she goes. And then she states herself how inappropriate it is for Jesus to be talking to her – not only a woman, but also a Samaritan. It is clear that this woman has every reason to be suffering. Indeed, she thirsts: thirsts for connection, for belonging, for acceptance… all thirsts we know something about.

            So how does Jesus respond to her thirst? Well, first of all, he goes to her. John tells us that Jesus “had to go to Samaria” – was it to go to this particular woman, at this particular place and time? Maybe. More importantly, I think, the point is Jesus had to go to Samaria to see that the wall erected by centuries of bad blood between Jews and Samaritans had to come down. It had to be chipped away at, penetrated, deconstructed. Later in John, Jesus prays to God “that they [we] would all be one,” and so to break down that wall was indeed necessary for his mission. To Jesus, the fact that Samaritans were a different color, had different religious practices, and had different customs – none of that mattered so much as it mattered to make a meaningful connection with these “others,” in his effort that we would all be one.

            And so Jesus goes to Samaria. He crosses that boundary. He goes to this marginalized woman. And the first thing he does is to make himself vulnerable to her, by asking for a drink of water. Suddenly, they are together in their thirst. He thirsts for water, she for connection. They stand together.

Going back to our community conversation last week, one of the most powerful things about it was how authentic and vulnerable the conversation was. A couple of the panelists got choked up as they shared their stories of walking with loved ones who are struggling. At one point, one of the panelists had everyone in the room stand who had lost a loved one to addiction. A third of the room stood, as people looked around and simply noticed: I’m not alone. Then she had everyone who has a loved one who has struggled with addiction stand up, and nearly everyone in the room stood. It was a powerful moment, in which we all recognized the importance of seeing one another as being on the same plane. Connection is powerful.

How else does Jesus connect with this woman and respond to her thirst? He goes to her, and then he engages her in conversation. How remarkable that this, the longest dialogue in the New Testament, is between Jesus and an unnamed, vulnerable, Samaritan woman. After Jesus approaches her, she is emboldened to ask him some questions, even about the hottest theological issue of the day: where one should worship. And he takes her seriously. He in no way dismisses her, or hurries away. He gives her his time and attention. He listens to her. He sees her. He connects with her. He quenches her thirst.

And she, in turn, becomes the first evangelist – running into town to tell everyone she meets, all these other Samaritans, “Come and see the man who has told me everything I have ever done.” Come and see the man who truly saw me, and truly knows me, who truly connected with me. Come and see the man who quenched my deepest thirst, by giving me living water. She invites others to Jesus simply by sharing her own story, and people are intrigued. They say, “We were interested by your story, but now we believe because we have seen for ourselves.” They, too, connect with Jesus, and have their deepest thirst quenched.

This is a story about how Jesus crosses borders and tears down walls. It is a story about how Jesus goes out of his way to meet the religious and racial other, meaningfully connect with them, come to know them, and quench their deepest thirst with the good news of his presence dwelling among us. It is a story about how the lowliest and most despised among us, when given the chance to be heard and valued, could become the most effective trumpet for declaring the good news of Jesus Christ.

And all because Jesus dared to cross the forbidden borders – across gender, religion, and ethnicity – opening doors instead of building walls, genuinely connecting with those in need, and quenching the deepest thirst of those whom he met. We are left to consider: if we are to be followers of this loving, connecting, thirst-quenching Jesus, then which walls do we need to break down? Which “others” do we need to seek out, to hear their stories, and share ours, and genuinely connect? Is it those of a different gender or ethnicity, like the Samaritan woman? For example, immigrants or refugees among us, or some of the millions of women with a story to share about sexual harassment or assault who have until now not been believed? Or to go back where we started, could it be those who suffer from a substance abuse disorder? Who else could it be? What walls and borders need to come down?

I’m excited about the community conversation series at St. Martin, because I think it will help us to learn about some of the “others” in our own community who are in need of connection, who are in need of some living water to quench their deepest thirst. I hope you’ll consider coming to future conversations. And I also call us all into prayer, prayer that we would be aware of what walls and borders we have around us as individuals or the church, and how Christ would have us cross them, so that we might be emboldened to genuinely connect, in the name of Christ, with those in need of living waters.

Let us pray… Thirst-quenching God, grant us courage and trust in you, as we encounter walls between us, and those who differ from us. Help us to follow you across the borders made by humans, so that we could live into your hope that we would all be one. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Sermon: Faith in the midst of not knowing (Jan 28, 2018)

Epiphany 4 (NL4)

January 28, 2018

John 3:1-21

INTRODUCTION

            A word about interpreting John’s Gospel: We should understand that each of the Gospel accounts shows Jesus fulfilling his mission in different ways. For example, in Matthew, we have the sense that we are “marching toward Zion,” but we’re not yet there – that’s in the future. In John, however, we get the sense that Jesus’ very presence among us has brought the kingdom of God to earth. Jesus sort of pulls a kingdom of God canopy over the earth. The result is that, down here is flesh and darkness, and up here is light and spirit. There’s no way to get from down here to up here except through Jesus (remember, I am the Way, the truth and the life?). We can catch glimpses of it through Jesus’ signs, but we cannot fully grasp it until Jesus is lifted up and brings all of humanity with him.

            Because of this, John’s Gospel is wrought with misunderstanding. Frequently when Jesus talks to people, it looks like this: someone asks a question of earthly significance, Jesus answers from up here in the kingdom, and the person responds with something stupid. Question, answer, stupid response – which then prompts Jesus to explain further. We see it with Nicodemus: he observes something about Jesus, Jesus says something about being born again, and Nicodemus says, “Uh, can I crawl back in my mother’s womb?” No, Nic. You missed it.

            Still, it’s not so bad for the reader, because it shows us how very different our earthly understanding is from a heavenly understanding, and urges us to think differently than the world would have us do. So, watch for that in our reading, and see what you can pick up about the reality of the kingdom of God that Jesus is describing. Please rise for the Gospel acclamation. [READ]

Study for Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            “St. Augustine is walking along the beach when he sees a little boy digging a hole in the sand and running back and forth from the ocean to fill the hole with water. Curious, Augustine asks the boy, ‘What are you doing?’ The little boy replies, ‘I’m putting the ocean in this hole.’ Augustine says, ‘Little boy, you can’t do that. The ocean is too big to put in that little hole.’ The boy, who is really an angel, responds, ‘And so, Augustine, is your mind too small to contain the vastness of God.’”

            That’s how I feel when I read John’s Gospel, and today’s story is no exception. How desperately we want real, concrete, understandable answers, just like Nicodemus! We want to understand God and God’s ways. We want to be certain about the questions of faith – like, why bad things happen to good people, why good things happen to bad people, who is going to heaven and who isn’t, and what the purpose of being here even is. All good questions – to which only God knows the answers. And the smallness of our minds compared to the vastness of God’s makes it impossible for us to know or understand.

            Today’s story about Jesus and Nicodemus shows us just how much we don’t, and can’t, know. There is so much going on here, and much of it is so cryptic, and a lot of it sounds really judgmental. And yet in the midst of it all is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, a word of immense love, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believed in him would not perish but have eternal life.” The Gospel in a nutshell, as Martin Luther called it, and it’s true: it says succinctly the whole purpose of this faith: God loves us so much God didn’t want us to die, but to live forever in God’s care.

            And yet this verse of love – as well as several other verses in this passage – have been used over the years not to include people in God’s embrace, but to exclude them. The “born again” imagery has been used by evangelicals to say that unless you have had a believer’s baptism – one in which the one being baptized is able to confess his or her own faith, as opposed the infant baptism – then it doesn’t count. The verses that follow John 3:16 are also judgmental ones: “those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” It’s enough to make us all squirm a little – because even if you yourself do believe in Jesus, you probably have someone close to you who doesn’t, and we all want our loved ones to be with us in heaven. The fear that it could be otherwise is sad and unsettling.

            So what do we do with all this? We come back to those tough questions of faith – who is saved, why do things happen as they do – and the fact that we simply cannot know. Our minds are the small hole in the sand, and we are that little boy, trying to fit the ocean in there.

            But that doesn’t stop us from digging into God’s word and trying to understand. So first, let’s look at that word, “world.” The Greek word John uses there is kosmos, and throughout John’s Gospel, this word refers to “that which is hostile to God.” It is the “down here,” not “up here,” the thing that Jesus entered to ultimately bring it to himself when he is lifted up. So we could translate John 3:16-17 this way: “God so loved the God-hating world, that he gave his only Son…” and, “God did not send the Son ‘down here’ to condemn even this world that despises God, but instead so that the world that rejects God might still be saved through him.” It is hard for our small-hole-in-the-sand minds to grasp such audacious and unexpected love as that!

            Well that sounds good, you say, but what about all the stuff that comes afterward about condemnation for those who don’t believe? Ah yes, that is difficult. But take a look at it – nowhere does it say that God is the one doing the condemning. It says simply that their lives are in darkness, that they must endure all the things that darkness brings. In other words, life is better when you are living it with Jesus, and if you aren’t living it with Jesus, you are already suffering the negative impact of that. The consequence of not believing isn’t necessarily an eternal one – Jesus says later in John that he came to draw all people to himself, up into the “up here” – but rather, the consequence is right now.

            (How’s that small hole in the sand doing? Is the ocean fitting? Mine is already overflowing!)

            Maybe you’re thinking about now, “So, then what’s the point? Why believe if just anyone can get into heaven?” To that, I have two answers. One is: my mind is just as much hole in the sand as yours is. Who knows if anything I just said is true. I hope it is, but I don’t know! This is all way beyond me. It was way beyond Nicodemus. It is way beyond anyone who isn’t God, so don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. God and God’s ways cannot be understood. The fact is: we don’t know what happens in the final judgment, but one thing we do know is that it is up to God, not us. And if God welcomes someone into heaven that I wouldn’t have let in if it were up to me, that doesn’t in any way diminish my own experience of heaven. It’s just not worth worrying about – all we can do is the best we can, living into this life in the way Jesus teaches us how, by loving God and neighbor with all that we are and all that we have.

            But my other answer is a testimony. If your question is, “What’s the point?” then let me tell you what is true for me. Here is why I believe in Jesus Christ: I believe in Christ because it makes my life better. I feel full. It gives me hope when I am in despair. It gives me strength when I am weak. As much as I cannot and will not ever understand about God, my faith still helps me to make sense of the joys and the challenges of this life. I believe in Jesus because that relationship makes me want to be better. It moves me every day toward living more and more authentically into life as a baptized child of God, a life of looking to the needs of others, a life of self-sacrificial love, a life of speaking out for the needs of the oppressed and vulnerable. I believe in Jesus because the story of death and life that God tells through Christ is one that I have seen to be true in my own life. It is a story that, because I know it is true, I am compelled to search for it. I am moved always to search for life, even in the darkest of deaths. And this keeps my head above water, and makes my life worth living. It gets me up in the morning and puts me down at night. And I tell other people about this, I share the good news, not because I want them to go to heaven (though I do!), but because I want them to experience the life right now that I experience by having a relationship with Christ. I want other people to feel the fullness and love that I experience by my belief in Jesus. For me, that’s the point.

            We cannot know about things to come. Our minds are small holes in the sand, and we can only fit so much ocean into them. What we can know is this: that God loves us. God loves us so much, that God sent God’s only Son so that we could have a glimpse of that love, a glimpse of what is yet to come. God loves us so much that God doesn’t want us to live alone in the darkness of this world – with all its sin, death, loneliness, hunger, and want – but rather, to live in the light of knowing that God dwells among us. God loves us enough to provide us a Way into a life of fullness and light and love. That’s the point.

            Let us pray… Lord of light, we thank you for your self-giving love. Help us to live with unanswered questions. Help us always to pursue your light. And help us to share your love and your light with all whom we meet. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Flipping over our securities (Jan. 18, 2018)

Epiphany 3 (NL4)

January 21, 2018

John 2:13-25

Introduction to the Story:

            To understand today’s text, we need a bit of background on 1^st century Jewish worship practices. In 1^st century Judaism, it was understood that God dwelt in the Temple in Jerusalem. And so around certain feasts (such as Passover), faithful Jews would travel to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple. An important part of worship was animal sacrifice. And so the scene that we are about to see with people changing money and selling animals was a necessary one. They are selling worship supplies, just like today we buy communion wafers, or oil for candles or hymnals. Travelers from Galilee, for instance, couldn’t haul with them a goat or a dove to sacrifice. They also couldn’t use coins with Caesar’s face on it to pay Temple tax, so they had to change the money when they got there. So while the system may not have been perfect, those tables that were set up were there to enable people to worship God in the way they understood to be correct. All of which makes Jesus’ response to the scene all the more surprising.

            Another interesting point about this account is that, while the cleansing of the Temple is a story that appears in all four Gospels, the other three all place it at the end, right before Jesus’ passion – in fact as the event that precipitates his arrest. John places it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as if setting something up for us as we continue to witness his ministry. What is he setting up?

Some things to think about as we hear this story! Now, please rise for the Gospel acclamation.

[READ STORY]

            I gotta say… I like this Jesus. I like him because I can’t relate very well to a Jesus who is meek and mild and always keeps his cool, who’s never riled up. That just can’t be true about someone who is fully human. I like him because he shows us that righteous anger is okay, that God gets angry about injustice and that this can be holy if it drives you toward working for justice. Most of all, I like this Jesus because as he is whipping around those cords and turning over tables, he is fighting his way out of the box that we so want to keep him in: the box in which Jesus is always gentle and kind, in which Jesus – and with him, God – is domesticated, palatable, understandable, and easy to take. God is not those things, and so neither is God-made-flesh, and this text shows us so in no uncertain terms.

            And I think that is what John is trying to show us by putting this story right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is making an important statement about who he is, and what is different now that he is around. And namely, in this encounter, what has completely changed is the way people meet and interact with God. Until now, it was understood that the Temple was the one and only dwelling place of God. Synagogues were all over as places to pray and to hear scripture read and interpreted, but God wasn’t there – God could be found only in the Temple in Jerusalem. That’s why people took such pains to get there, and why this whole system of selling animals and changing money had developed, to accommodate that practice. But now that Jesus is here, where does God dwell? What did we hear on Christmas about that?… God dwells “among us.” Among us, in the person of Jesus Christ. So that is why Jesus is making such a fuss at the Temple: it is to tell people, “All this mess is unnecessary! Why are you making this a marketplace? You don’t need this Temple. I am the Temple! You don’t need to come here and buy sacrifices and change your money to meet God: God is standing right here in front of you!!”

            How unnerving that must have been! For someone to stand there and tell you (with whip in hand!), “This thing that you’ve always done, this way you have always known to interact with God, this thing that you’ve been telling yourself is right and good – it’s not! It’s way off!” I can imagine Jesus wasn’t the only one who was mad at that moment! Even today, we have a hard time accepting change to things that we have done a certain way for a long time. Even here – we started doing worship a little differently, using a different set of readings and presenting them differently, and I know that a lot of people have had some trouble with that. I get it! I also love to be comfortable and know what to expect. I also wouldn’t appreciate someone coming in the door with a whip, turning over tables and saying, “Nope! You’re doing this wrong!” We like to stay in our comfortable boxes.

            And not just in worship. We don’t like disruption in any of the things that bring us a sense of security, whether that is change in our families, or change in our town, or change in our country. I listened to a piece this week on “This American Life” about the town of Albertville, AL, which has experienced a dramatic increase of Latino immigrants over the past few decades. For 8 months, the show interviewed locals, immigrants, business owners… and the response from the locals was just what you would expect. The underlying current was, “It’s not like it used to be, and I don’t like it,” (with, of course, a healthy dose of blaming!). Despite their perception, however, the influx of immigrants, many of them undocumented, had actually improved the economy in the town, providing more and better jobs for longtime locals, not fewer. In fact, the town is thriving today. So they were right – it wasn’t like it used to be – but in this case, that wasn’t a bad thing. It was different, and that takes getting used to. No one likes to have their applecart, or their tables, overturned.

            But perhaps our desire for keeping things the same, even if “the same” is ultimately an unhelpful system, like that of the Temple, is putting our faith and trust in powers offering false security. As one pastor writes, “I read the cleansing of the temple as a stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumption, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours.” Ouch – I definitely see some of myself in that list! Maybe we need Jesus to take his whip and his words right into our hearts!

            Well. It is easy to focus on the table-turning. This is the dramatic, and the difficult part of the passage. But you see, Jesus doesn’t turn over those tables of false security and then drop the mic and walk out. No, he shares with them a new reality, a deeper sense of security. No longer do they need this system in place, because he was offering them something new: he was offering them the presence of God dwelling among them, full of grace and truth. He was offering them direct access to God, wherever they might be, wherever they might need God’s presence. He was offering himself to them as the Temple, a Temple which could not be destroyed, but would always be there to give them access to the God of love and grace.

            Change is never easy, that’s for sure – perhaps especially when it is presented to us so dramatically. But Jesus’ radical reaction shows us that while seeking and finding our security in God, rather than any number of false sources, can be at first unnerving, shocking, and uncomfortable… it can also bring light and life to our darkness. That Jesus could be the presence of God dwelling among the people required a complete shift in thinking for a people who only knew God to dwell in the Temple, and this new reality was utterly astonishing… just like it might be uncomfortably different and utterly astonishing for us to find God at work among us, in our day-to-day life, not only in our best and most admirable moments, but also in our difficult decisions, our most embarrassing failures, our lowest points. But the good news is that God sees us in all those places, the good and the bad, and loves us still. God sees and knows what we do and say, and still forgives us for our shortcomings. And a God who dwells among us, dispelling our darkness with God’s light, is life-giving news indeed.

            Let us pray… Present God, we often seek our security in false promises and beliefs. Help us to see you dwelling among us, and to place our trust in only you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.