A sermon for the fifth Sunday in Lent given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on March 25, 2012.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-12, 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
If you’ve looked down at the ground much in the past week you might have seen the phenomenon that Jesus is referring to.
I was sitting out in the sun on Friday working on my sunburn and I looked down to observe that some of the helicopter maple seeds that had fallen to the ground last Autumn were breaking open and out them were emerging a bright green of new life.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
The seed must be broken in order for the life that is within to emerge.
And that new life contained within the maple seed may grow to full stature and supply delicious maple syrup to a future Acworthian.
There is no maple tree possibility. No future if the the seed remains intact, self-contained, protected.
We are a people who are called to faith.
I am not God. But I have been called into relationship with God.
The God of the universe, the God of the billions of stars and galaxies, the God of the billions of microscopic worlds -- the God of the invisible huge and the invisible small and the God of the present, visible world, the author, sustainer, and perfector of all existence...
that God has called to us and we hear God’s voice.
God has spoken to us through the natural world, God has spoken to us through people, and God has spoken to us through the prophetic word.
It is faith, a faith that itself is a gift, it is faith that we are called to in relation to God.
Many people talk about faith as if it is something we need to do. Something we have to create in ourselves, a sort of new identity to furnish and wave around. Hey you! Look at my new faith!
Faith is not something we accomplish, it is not some set of statements that we affirm to be true despite what anyone else says.
Faith is fundamentally a gift of God which is the death of self, the death of pretense, the death of pride and of self-seeking.
Faith is not something we can make happen. Faith is something that is given to us, the new life emerging out of the broken seed of the old.
It is by faith you are saved -- it is by God’s gift of the death of our pretense to power and control and self-righteousness that we are liberated to a new life of living in light of the grace of God.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
We are a people who live in two realities. We have two selves, we see two worlds.
Unless we understand that we live two lives, we will miss what Jesus is teaching when he says, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
Many perhaps mishear this as a kind of miserable self-loathing, a kind of self-hatred.
But it is not that at all.
St. Augustine writes:
“Surely a profound and strange declaration as to the measure of a man’s love for his own life that leads to its destruction, and of his hatred to it that secures its preservation!”
I think the idea that loving your life is death and hating it is life is just as strange for us 21st century Americans as it was for Augustine, a fifth century African.
But we need to remember that Jesus is speaking this to a people who know that all is not right in the world.
These are people who know that “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Prov. 14:12)
These are a people who know that the world has wise and the world has foolish, the world has good and the world has evil, the world has true and the world has false.
And life and death are not just literal realities of hearts beating or not beating. Life and death are present realities of of salvation and condemnation, of liberation and enslavement.
They know what it means to love life but they also know what it means to live under conditions in which life is really a kind of death.
St. Augustine puts it this way:
If in a sinful way thou lovest it, then dost thou really hate it; if in a way accordant with what is good thou hast hated it, then hast thou really loved it. Happy they who have so hated their life while keeping it, that their love shall not cause them to lose it.”
But what could it possibly mean to love life in a sinful way? And how could we possibly hate life in a way which is good?
What is the life that we are called to lose?
It is the life of possession. We are a people who are caught up in trying to control our lives, control the people in our lives, and control the outcome of our actions. We seek to possess and we become hard shells of people who amass for ourselves possessions, who seek for ourselves preservation, who worry and work ourselves to be able to justify ourselves before the world.
The life of possession sees nature and other people as means to our own ends, as ways to satisfy ourselves, to maintain our sense of self, to build up an image for ourselves and others and perhaps even God.
The life of possession is not concerned with truth or lies, but uses either so long as they grant in greater quantity the desires of our eyes and amplify the pride of our hearts.
It is the love of the life of possession that is at the root of our contemporary moral and spiritual sickness just as it was in the first century with Jesus and just as it always has been.
We are a people so often oriented toward ourselves and the seeking of our own advantage.
If we love the life of possession, then we love life in a sinful way and Jesus’ words speak to us truthfully: “Whoever loves his life loses it.”
For most whose hearts have not been completely hardened by the life of possession have experienced its disaster, have experienced its destruction, have experienced its anxiety, have experienced its loss.
The life of possession is no life, it is a reality which is death.
“Whoever loves his life loses it” but “whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
If to love is to actively engage, to hate is to abandon. And Jesus is calling us to abandon the life of possession in order to receive life abundantly, eternally, out of the generosity of God’s grace.
For to abandon the life of possession, is to embrace the reality that all that we are, all that we have, all that we experience is the gift of the God who is good and who is love.
To abandon the life of possession is to give up self-preserving as the highest goal. It’s to abandon pretense for the sake of self-justification. It’s to forsake the prideful asserting that all that one is, all that one has, and all that one experiences is from one’s own doing and creating, and for one’s own enjoyment. It is to give up that reality where the self is king.
And as we give up the life of possession, God’s grace floods in and liberates us to a true enjoyment of those around us, of the gift of the natural world, of the beauty of life. If we abandon self we find the other. If we abandon control we find the care of God. If we abandon self-justification we find the forgiving love of God.
The clouds and noise of self and of pride and restless activity and desire is dissolved and the light of God’s grace shines through. Eternal life, life in relationship with the God who is eternal, beyond time, beyond space. That life, the source of all that is, becomes true and real in us as we are liberated from the tyranny of the life of possession.
“whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
And this hating of life in order to keep it for eternal life is a beautiful reality wherein we become renewed in our understadning and in our desires as we recognize the abundance of God’s grace in creation as good, in the redemption of the good creation from the slavery of human pride.
How do we hate the life of possession in order to keep our life as gift?
Only a gift can end the downward spiral of our life of self-preservation.
How could it make sense to possess something in order to stop possessing?
Rather, faith is a gift, the light intruded into our darkness, which provides us with the realization in heart and mind that all along everything was gift, all along God’s grace and love were shining. But our blindness to it was on account of our bent desires and endless striving, our belief that we are in control and we can maintain ourselves.
Folks the beauty of the Christian faith is this: that we are not God but we are called into relationship with God. And God is distant yet nearer to us than our own breath. And this God, the one who created all things good, the one who speaks continually through the creation, this God communicated a message of love and not rejection, of light and not darkness, of forgiveness and not condemnation.
We cannot take hold of salvation, we cannot possess liberation because it is only by letting go that we can be awakened to life as gift, to salvation from sin as gift, to the grace which shines light into our dark hearts and minds and which calls out to our ceaseless toiling with a good news of rest.
O Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
“unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Christ himself is the model of a faith that trusts God and abandons the pretension to control, the desire to possess, the way of domination.
Instead, in Christ we see God coming to us as one who empties himself.
In the words of one of the earliest Christian hymns:
“though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.”
This second Adam was given the opportunity to live the life of possession and instead lived the life of reception, the life of faith, and humble trust of God. And the darkness of this prideful world could not tolerate the light of such humility. And so Christ, the seed of our new life, was broken and in his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the community of disciples has proven true that the broken seed bears fruit and in our present reality we acknowledge and lift up the truth of death and resurrection.
Paul writes “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
We now know the existence of those who’ve emerged out of the seed of an old life, and in Christ’s crucifixion our life of possession was destroyed and in Christ’s resurrection we rise again to eternal life, the life that is a gift of God, the life which lives in the receptivity of faith to the grace of God’s goodness, giving and loving as we have been given and loved.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Amen.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
The Fullness of Life Swallowed Up Death
A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on March 18, 2012.
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
[An excerpt read from from chapter one of John Steinbeck's The Pearl]
The intrusion of the song of the enemy into the song of the family can be an analogy for the story of humanity as we read it in the scriptures.
Humanity is formed from dust and breathed into by God to have spirit and an identity like the creator – to have fellowship with God and live in peace with one another and the created order.
The song of the enemy enters abruptly into this world with the defiance and ingratitude – the hubris
demanding a kind of power and place that is not for humanity to have – denying the relationship between God and humanity and breaking the fellowship.
This is the perennial diagnosis of humanity in the scriptures – we have found ourselves in a place of brokenness in our relationships with each other, our relationship with the natural world, and our relationship with the one from whom we have been given life.
Like the suddenness of the scorpion's bite, the song of the enemy intruded into our world – of our own doing and we live with the results of this venomous event.
We read in the book of Numbers of how the people of Israel found themselves in a place full of poisonous snakes.
They were bit. Many of them. “And many Israelites died.”
And death seemed inevitable for those who suffered the pain of the surging poison through their system.
So we read, “The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
Little did they expect what the cure would look like.
Moses returns with the remedy as a bronze snake – looking a lot like the ones that are inflicting so much destruction on their lives.
Martin Luther imagines their response: "We are so terrified that we cannot stand the sight of them! If only you would, instead, give us a drink, a cooling plaster, a cooling drink, to take away the venom and the fever!...How can that dead and lifeless object up there benefit us?"
But, we read, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
This miraculous story from the wanderings of the people of Israel in the wilderness of the Sinai desert is interesting in and of itself.
What's more interesting is the way that the writer of the gospel of John picks up this story and points it toward Jesus.
In the story we have people experiencing a terrible trauma, we are told it is because of their ingratitude, their pride and bitterness – their refusal of acknowledging the providing care of God – their refusal of life.
This trauma is terminal. And many have been lost to its dark shadow.
We live in a world that abides under the shadow of death. We are a people who see death around us, who know that we ourselves are destined to die, who grieve with bitter sorrow the death of loved ones.
We live in the shadow of death.
We live in a world where people become empty of life, empty of hope, of meaning. Many live with the pain of broken relationships, of painful memories, of shattered frameworks of meaning.
The shadow of death is the shadow of meaninglessness, of no hope.
We live in a world where people hate. And hate breeds violence and resentment breeds vengeance and we feel unable to live at peace with ourselves or with others.
The shadow of death is the shadow of hate.
And we walk through this land full of serpents, hearing the song of the enemy, and we sometimes don't realize how toxic some of the air that we breathe is.
We feel in our hearts so often the pain of this shadow, the torment of this evil song.
We've become ensnared in a sickness of mind, a sickness of heart – we've become embittered against God, or against a fellow human being, we become full of fear at possibilities of violence or war, or suddenly we are overcome with a cloud of despair which pushes us from the possibility of seeing or feeling love or goodness around us. Or perhaps we come face to face with death itself.
How do we deal with this serpent-ridden world where hovers an unyielding deathly shadow?
It's in just such a darkness that there shines a light inextinguishable. Can you see it?
I pulled out an old bookmark this week that I got from who knows where.
It read: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle” St. Francis of Assisi
And as we move to today's reading in the gospel of John we begin to see the radiating light of that candle of candles, the light of the world who to darkness came, Jesus our Savior.
This may not be a sermon we hear often these days but it's as old as the Christian faith and as we travel in our Lenten journey toward the cross and toward the empty tomb, let us remember the good news that God has made known for the restoration of the universe.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark of night. And it's in the darkness that Jesus illumines the way of God: “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
A new birth, a new creation – that kind of radical change – from nonexistence to existence, from death to life – that is the entrance to the kingdom of God.
Then Jesus recalls the serpent in the wilderness:
“just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent – seeking the healing and restoration of a people who found themselves in a pit of despair – so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Jesus is the response to our yearning for healing. Jesus' being lifted up – his death by crucifixion – is our entrance to healing, to being born again to a new hope of wholeness in the light of God's love.
For, we read, God loved this world so much that he gave his only Son – that the ones that believe may have eternal life.
God removed the shadow of death, God removed the hopelessness, the emptiness, the meaninglessness by an act of free and undeserved, radical love. Love without condition.
Humanity's sickness of death, and despair, and demonic hate – all confronted boldly in the light of the Son of Man. A sick humanity sought to extinguish that light, but darkness did not overcome.
Our resurrected Lord defeated death and the power of death over our minds and hearts and ushered in the realm of eternal life which we can experience now and forevermore.
“‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This victory is of a strange and offensive kind.
The snakebite is healed by looking at a snake. Death is conquered by death.
So St. Augustine writes:
“The serpent’s bite was deadly, the Lord’s death is life-giving. A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power. What is this? A death is gazed on, that death may have no power. But whose death? The death of life: if it may be said, the death of life; ay, for it may be said, but said wonderfully. But should it not be spoken, seeing it was a thing to be done? Shall I hesitate to utter that which the Lord has deigned to do for me? Is not Christ the life? And yet Christ hung on the cross. Is not Christ life? And yet Christ was dead. But in Christ’s death, death died. Life dead slew death; the fullness of life swallowed up death; death was absorbed in the body of Christ.”
“The fullness of life swallowed up death.”
When light came to the world, the darkness sought to extinguish it. But darkness was unable to. The worst that darkness could do was kill the one who was the source of life itself. And there was a death. But there was a resurrection. The resurrection was the triumph of the light: darkness cannot extinguish light. And in that resurrection we have the hope of new life.
We look on the cross as the people of Israel looked on the bronze serpent.
It is the death of death in the death of Christ that with faith we behold and in beholding the clouds of fear, the clouds of hate, the clouds of empty, life-denying sorrow, the clouds of death's finality will be dissolved.
With faith, earnest longing faith, the faith of those who've realized the deathly sting of our common human condition – the poison flowing through our collective and individual veins.
With faith, we approach the light, the candle in the darkness, the one who “was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;” upon whom “was the punishment that made us whole,” and by whose “bruises we are healed.”
For “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,”
but “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Through Christ, God is healing humanity. As we look upon Christ with faith, we are transformed to a new way, a new life, a new hope. The way, the life, the hope of resurrection.
Our sickness is laid upon him and we by the radical love of God are forgiven and given a new start.
We no longer need to live in the valley of the shadow of death, in the painful torment of past pains, of present emptiness, of future anxiety.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus and find yourself resurrected, born anew in the Holy Spirit's powerful transforming presence. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Look – he is lifted up for our healing, that we might be freed from the tyranny of sin and death to the reign of love and life.
For with the Psalmist we "cried to the Lord in [our] trouble, and he saved [us] from [our] distress;
he sent out his word and healed [us], and delivered [us] from destruction.
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
“Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me!”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
The song of evil is loud and tormenting and we live in the midst of a broken world, but the song of the family is what God invites us into. This is the salvation, the renewal of fellowship, of communion, and connection between God and humanity – and it comes through a death and a resurrection. The death of death and the resurrection to life eternal.
With faith let us hear the new song in the light of God made known to us in Jesus and let us lay hold of our salvation and praise God.
Amen.
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
[An excerpt read from from chapter one of John Steinbeck's The Pearl]
The intrusion of the song of the enemy into the song of the family can be an analogy for the story of humanity as we read it in the scriptures.
Humanity is formed from dust and breathed into by God to have spirit and an identity like the creator – to have fellowship with God and live in peace with one another and the created order.
The song of the enemy enters abruptly into this world with the defiance and ingratitude – the hubris
demanding a kind of power and place that is not for humanity to have – denying the relationship between God and humanity and breaking the fellowship.
This is the perennial diagnosis of humanity in the scriptures – we have found ourselves in a place of brokenness in our relationships with each other, our relationship with the natural world, and our relationship with the one from whom we have been given life.
Like the suddenness of the scorpion's bite, the song of the enemy intruded into our world – of our own doing and we live with the results of this venomous event.
We read in the book of Numbers of how the people of Israel found themselves in a place full of poisonous snakes.
They were bit. Many of them. “And many Israelites died.”
And death seemed inevitable for those who suffered the pain of the surging poison through their system.
So we read, “The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
Little did they expect what the cure would look like.
Moses returns with the remedy as a bronze snake – looking a lot like the ones that are inflicting so much destruction on their lives.
Martin Luther imagines their response: "We are so terrified that we cannot stand the sight of them! If only you would, instead, give us a drink, a cooling plaster, a cooling drink, to take away the venom and the fever!...How can that dead and lifeless object up there benefit us?"
But, we read, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
This miraculous story from the wanderings of the people of Israel in the wilderness of the Sinai desert is interesting in and of itself.
What's more interesting is the way that the writer of the gospel of John picks up this story and points it toward Jesus.
In the story we have people experiencing a terrible trauma, we are told it is because of their ingratitude, their pride and bitterness – their refusal of acknowledging the providing care of God – their refusal of life.
This trauma is terminal. And many have been lost to its dark shadow.
We live in a world that abides under the shadow of death. We are a people who see death around us, who know that we ourselves are destined to die, who grieve with bitter sorrow the death of loved ones.
We live in the shadow of death.
We live in a world where people become empty of life, empty of hope, of meaning. Many live with the pain of broken relationships, of painful memories, of shattered frameworks of meaning.
The shadow of death is the shadow of meaninglessness, of no hope.
We live in a world where people hate. And hate breeds violence and resentment breeds vengeance and we feel unable to live at peace with ourselves or with others.
The shadow of death is the shadow of hate.
And we walk through this land full of serpents, hearing the song of the enemy, and we sometimes don't realize how toxic some of the air that we breathe is.
We feel in our hearts so often the pain of this shadow, the torment of this evil song.
We've become ensnared in a sickness of mind, a sickness of heart – we've become embittered against God, or against a fellow human being, we become full of fear at possibilities of violence or war, or suddenly we are overcome with a cloud of despair which pushes us from the possibility of seeing or feeling love or goodness around us. Or perhaps we come face to face with death itself.
How do we deal with this serpent-ridden world where hovers an unyielding deathly shadow?
It's in just such a darkness that there shines a light inextinguishable. Can you see it?
I pulled out an old bookmark this week that I got from who knows where.
It read: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle” St. Francis of Assisi
And as we move to today's reading in the gospel of John we begin to see the radiating light of that candle of candles, the light of the world who to darkness came, Jesus our Savior.
This may not be a sermon we hear often these days but it's as old as the Christian faith and as we travel in our Lenten journey toward the cross and toward the empty tomb, let us remember the good news that God has made known for the restoration of the universe.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark of night. And it's in the darkness that Jesus illumines the way of God: “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
A new birth, a new creation – that kind of radical change – from nonexistence to existence, from death to life – that is the entrance to the kingdom of God.
Then Jesus recalls the serpent in the wilderness:
“just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent – seeking the healing and restoration of a people who found themselves in a pit of despair – so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Jesus is the response to our yearning for healing. Jesus' being lifted up – his death by crucifixion – is our entrance to healing, to being born again to a new hope of wholeness in the light of God's love.
For, we read, God loved this world so much that he gave his only Son – that the ones that believe may have eternal life.
God removed the shadow of death, God removed the hopelessness, the emptiness, the meaninglessness by an act of free and undeserved, radical love. Love without condition.
Humanity's sickness of death, and despair, and demonic hate – all confronted boldly in the light of the Son of Man. A sick humanity sought to extinguish that light, but darkness did not overcome.
Our resurrected Lord defeated death and the power of death over our minds and hearts and ushered in the realm of eternal life which we can experience now and forevermore.
“‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This victory is of a strange and offensive kind.
The snakebite is healed by looking at a snake. Death is conquered by death.
So St. Augustine writes:
“The serpent’s bite was deadly, the Lord’s death is life-giving. A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power. What is this? A death is gazed on, that death may have no power. But whose death? The death of life: if it may be said, the death of life; ay, for it may be said, but said wonderfully. But should it not be spoken, seeing it was a thing to be done? Shall I hesitate to utter that which the Lord has deigned to do for me? Is not Christ the life? And yet Christ hung on the cross. Is not Christ life? And yet Christ was dead. But in Christ’s death, death died. Life dead slew death; the fullness of life swallowed up death; death was absorbed in the body of Christ.”
“The fullness of life swallowed up death.”
When light came to the world, the darkness sought to extinguish it. But darkness was unable to. The worst that darkness could do was kill the one who was the source of life itself. And there was a death. But there was a resurrection. The resurrection was the triumph of the light: darkness cannot extinguish light. And in that resurrection we have the hope of new life.
We look on the cross as the people of Israel looked on the bronze serpent.
It is the death of death in the death of Christ that with faith we behold and in beholding the clouds of fear, the clouds of hate, the clouds of empty, life-denying sorrow, the clouds of death's finality will be dissolved.
With faith, earnest longing faith, the faith of those who've realized the deathly sting of our common human condition – the poison flowing through our collective and individual veins.
With faith, we approach the light, the candle in the darkness, the one who “was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;” upon whom “was the punishment that made us whole,” and by whose “bruises we are healed.”
For “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,”
but “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Through Christ, God is healing humanity. As we look upon Christ with faith, we are transformed to a new way, a new life, a new hope. The way, the life, the hope of resurrection.
Our sickness is laid upon him and we by the radical love of God are forgiven and given a new start.
We no longer need to live in the valley of the shadow of death, in the painful torment of past pains, of present emptiness, of future anxiety.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus and find yourself resurrected, born anew in the Holy Spirit's powerful transforming presence. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Look – he is lifted up for our healing, that we might be freed from the tyranny of sin and death to the reign of love and life.
For with the Psalmist we "cried to the Lord in [our] trouble, and he saved [us] from [our] distress;
he sent out his word and healed [us], and delivered [us] from destruction.
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
“Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me!”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
The song of evil is loud and tormenting and we live in the midst of a broken world, but the song of the family is what God invites us into. This is the salvation, the renewal of fellowship, of communion, and connection between God and humanity – and it comes through a death and a resurrection. The death of death and the resurrection to life eternal.
With faith let us hear the new song in the light of God made known to us in Jesus and let us lay hold of our salvation and praise God.
Amen.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
A Tale of Three Temples
A sermon for the third Sunday in Lent given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on March 11, 2012.
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
The book of Isaiah chapter 56 verse 7 we read:
“These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
God's word to his people was and is: “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
This is radical hospitality, folks.
Notice that it does not read:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *some* peoples.”
It doesn't even read:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *most* peoples.”
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *all* peoples.”
The houses of prayer that God establishes will be houses of prayer not just for some, but for all.
This is what God's grace means. It means that none of us deserve more than any others to pray to God – but that all are lovingly welcomed in to the presence of our God of grace and glory.
Now today's sermon is a Tale of Three Temples.
(1)We have first, the historical temple from our gospel reading.
(2)We then have God's new temple -- which is no longer tied to a specific building or a specific geographic location, but exists anywhere where people are gathered and worshipping in spirit and truth, this new temple we understand as the body of Christ, the people gathered in Jesus' name to worship God. The new temple transcends space and time and consists of all believers everywhere and in every time who praise the God of grace and glory who showed his great love to us in Jesus Christ.
(3)And the third temple is our own bodies in which God dwells as Holy Spirit changing, renewing, guiding and making whole.
There you have it: a Tale of Three Temples.
And all of these temples have been created for this radical hospitality – to be a house of prayer for... ALL peoples.
But we are a people that don't like all peoples. That's a fact.
We can brainstorm in our mind having a get-together at our house and just as much as we can imagine who we would like to be there, we can equally imagine we would not like to be there.
We may believe in radical hospitality, in grace, in love which is unconditional. But so often we live as if there is a line to be drawn between us and them, between in and out, between worthy and unworthy.
But if we look honestly into the message of grace that we find in the New Testament, we realize that there is no place for this kind of exclusivity.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—“ (Ephesians 2:8)
and then a little further on, Paul continuing the same train of thought...
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.... He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.* In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually* into a dwelling-place for God. “ (Ephesians 2:13-22)
The new temple of the Lord is this one body of peace which has been reconciled together by the forgiveness of God – making us all equal in God's abundant grace and calling us all to be that forgiveness and grace to one another.
But let's get back to the first temple.
It's getting close to Passover and Jesus is, like many many many other Jews, making his pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship in the temple.
He gets to the temple and is infuriated. Why is Jesus angry?
Well Jesus knew and believed to be true what we read from Isaiah. That God's temple would be “a house of prayer for ALL peoples.”
and here it is clearly not.
Two things in particular probably angered Jesus upon entering the temple.
(1) The distracting noise and commotion of the sellers and buyers, moneychangers and pilgrims and (2) the unfair policies concerning the poorer worshippers.
When Jesus entered the temple, he didn't enter a building, it wasn't like entering the Valley Church. The largest area of the Temple property was called the Court of the Gentiles. (Gentile is a word that means Nation – so a Gentile was a person who was part of the “nations” – the non-Jewish nations.) The court of the Gentiles was a space surrounding the inner buildings where the priests would prepare and worship and sacrifice. This was the space where the Gentiles were allowed to come and pray. It was a space of welcoming, to allow them to seek and pray to God near but not in the temple.
In this court especially during the time of Passover, there was a lot of commotion, a lot of noise and business. It probably rivalled in noise and distraction, the marketplace where people sold their goods and competed for buyers' attention.
Now some of you could probably maintain the concentration to pray in the midst of an auction, but I know I would have some difficulty.
The practice of selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging money for the temple tax was important for the practice of worshiping in the temple. But it didn't have to be going on in the temple and didn't have to be going on in the only place where the people from non-Jewish backgrounds could pray and seek God.
But it wasn't just the Gentiles, the people from other nations, that Jesus was concerned about, it was fellow Jews as well that were being excluded.
The temple tax at one time was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It funded the maintenance of the building and what not. But it had in recent times became a yearly requirement. It had to be paid in the temple currency which required moneychangers to do the equivalencies. Now the moneychangers of course took their commission so paying the temple tax yearly became an extra burden for the poorer Jews who would come to offer sacrifice and worship.
The wealthier worshipers had no problem footing the extra for the exchange, and could still purchase a nice extra-holy-looking cow or sheep to offer for their sacrifice. The poorer Jews would have to get a pigeon or dove and even that would be a great hardship.
The exploitation of the poor and the distracting din of the marketplace in a place of prayer set Jesus off.
“In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
The temple was not being used as a house of prayer for *all* peoples.
It was a house of prayer for Jews, but not even all Jews.
We might say it was a house of prayer for the 1%.
Jesus was full of zeal and longing for God's house to be as God's house should be. For it to be rid of exclusionary economics and exclusionary politics which spell humiliation and struggle for most and ease and exaltation for few.
This is not what God's call was to God's people – we read in Deuteronomy the description of the character of God:
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Justice for those in need, a welcoming of strangers – this is what it means to follow God.
This is God's call to radical hospitality.
And Jesus was zealous for that kind of grace.
and when that kind of zeal comes up against the exclusionary devices of money and the market's noisy competitive distraction –
when the zeal for God confronts the worship of money, there is a kind of anger which seeks to tear down the obstacles which are put in front of the possiblity of prayer and worship for all peoples.
This is what we are seeing in Jesus' actions.
But this is not the end of the story. This is just the first temple – the tale continues with two others.
When demanded that he give a sign to show his authority to do what he had just done, Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The hearers were confused and scoffed – how could he even dream of rebuilding a temple like this in three days!
But Jesus' death was followed in three days by Jesus' resurrection and we are the community of followers who live in light of a rebuilt temple – the body of Christ which is made up of the believers of all times and all places bonded together in the peace of God's forgiveness and new life.
This temple is ALSO intended to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)
This is to be a place where all are welcome to come and worship, come and seek God, come and pray.
We are to be a community who live in light of the radical hospitality of God toward us. That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While God had every right to hold a grudge against us, he didn't and extended love and welcome and grace. This is the new temple of which we are a part and which we represent to a world that does not know peace, does not know grace, does not know forgiveness.
Let us be zealous with Jesus that it does not become a den of thieves, a cavern for those who feel they are superior, a cloister for the ones who are on the correct side of the issues.
This is not a partisan place, God's new temple is to be just as the old was to be: a house of prayer for all people.
Now one last point:
The apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church writes, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:19-20)
Not only was there a physical temple, there is a new temple which took over and is with us today where 2 or 3 are gathered in the name our Lord Savior. But we have a third temple here. The body of each person who follows in the way that God has called us.
Each body has received grace from God just as the whole body of believers has received grace. We have all been redeemed as a group and as individuals.
Therefore! Paul says, glorify God in your body. Glorify God in the temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Let us be zealous as Jesus was toward the physical temple, to let go of the marketplace in our minds, the exclusion in our attitudes.
Let us be zealous to overturn the tables of greed, of self-seeking and pour out the jars of our selfish gains. Let us get rid of all that is in us that seeks to promote ourselves and allow God to rebuild within us a spirit of grace, a spirit of hospitality, a spirit of concern for the least of these, that we might glorify in our bodies the God who wants our temple to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
Friends, let us turn over to God the temples of our bodies that they might become beacons of the light of God's love, that they might become fragrant offerings which give off the aroma of God's good grace.
May our prayer be the words of the hymn we sang this morning:
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days.
May God grant us wisdom to see the moneychangers in our own souls, the exclusionary attitudes and activities, the partisan spirits and resentments that build up like vines and choke the possibility of love.
May God grant us courage to turn the tables, to make this temple within us a place of prayer for
not some, but all peoples. That the God of grace and glory might be glorified in us, and that many who find themselves enslaved to opinions of others, entangled in embittered partisan resentments, or consumed by their own world of criticism, might see the glory of God's GRACE, the grace that seeks not its own, that loves without condition, and that experiencing that grace might many might find themselves changed and renewed by God's goodness and might glorify the God of radical hospitality.
Amen.
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
The book of Isaiah chapter 56 verse 7 we read:
“These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
God's word to his people was and is: “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
This is radical hospitality, folks.
Notice that it does not read:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *some* peoples.”
It doesn't even read:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *most* peoples.”
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *all* peoples.”
The houses of prayer that God establishes will be houses of prayer not just for some, but for all.
This is what God's grace means. It means that none of us deserve more than any others to pray to God – but that all are lovingly welcomed in to the presence of our God of grace and glory.
Now today's sermon is a Tale of Three Temples.
(1)We have first, the historical temple from our gospel reading.
(2)We then have God's new temple -- which is no longer tied to a specific building or a specific geographic location, but exists anywhere where people are gathered and worshipping in spirit and truth, this new temple we understand as the body of Christ, the people gathered in Jesus' name to worship God. The new temple transcends space and time and consists of all believers everywhere and in every time who praise the God of grace and glory who showed his great love to us in Jesus Christ.
(3)And the third temple is our own bodies in which God dwells as Holy Spirit changing, renewing, guiding and making whole.
There you have it: a Tale of Three Temples.
And all of these temples have been created for this radical hospitality – to be a house of prayer for... ALL peoples.
But we are a people that don't like all peoples. That's a fact.
We can brainstorm in our mind having a get-together at our house and just as much as we can imagine who we would like to be there, we can equally imagine we would not like to be there.
We may believe in radical hospitality, in grace, in love which is unconditional. But so often we live as if there is a line to be drawn between us and them, between in and out, between worthy and unworthy.
But if we look honestly into the message of grace that we find in the New Testament, we realize that there is no place for this kind of exclusivity.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—“ (Ephesians 2:8)
and then a little further on, Paul continuing the same train of thought...
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.... He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.* In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually* into a dwelling-place for God. “ (Ephesians 2:13-22)
The new temple of the Lord is this one body of peace which has been reconciled together by the forgiveness of God – making us all equal in God's abundant grace and calling us all to be that forgiveness and grace to one another.
But let's get back to the first temple.
It's getting close to Passover and Jesus is, like many many many other Jews, making his pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship in the temple.
He gets to the temple and is infuriated. Why is Jesus angry?
Well Jesus knew and believed to be true what we read from Isaiah. That God's temple would be “a house of prayer for ALL peoples.”
and here it is clearly not.
Two things in particular probably angered Jesus upon entering the temple.
(1) The distracting noise and commotion of the sellers and buyers, moneychangers and pilgrims and (2) the unfair policies concerning the poorer worshippers.
When Jesus entered the temple, he didn't enter a building, it wasn't like entering the Valley Church. The largest area of the Temple property was called the Court of the Gentiles. (Gentile is a word that means Nation – so a Gentile was a person who was part of the “nations” – the non-Jewish nations.) The court of the Gentiles was a space surrounding the inner buildings where the priests would prepare and worship and sacrifice. This was the space where the Gentiles were allowed to come and pray. It was a space of welcoming, to allow them to seek and pray to God near but not in the temple.
In this court especially during the time of Passover, there was a lot of commotion, a lot of noise and business. It probably rivalled in noise and distraction, the marketplace where people sold their goods and competed for buyers' attention.
Now some of you could probably maintain the concentration to pray in the midst of an auction, but I know I would have some difficulty.
The practice of selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging money for the temple tax was important for the practice of worshiping in the temple. But it didn't have to be going on in the temple and didn't have to be going on in the only place where the people from non-Jewish backgrounds could pray and seek God.
But it wasn't just the Gentiles, the people from other nations, that Jesus was concerned about, it was fellow Jews as well that were being excluded.
The temple tax at one time was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It funded the maintenance of the building and what not. But it had in recent times became a yearly requirement. It had to be paid in the temple currency which required moneychangers to do the equivalencies. Now the moneychangers of course took their commission so paying the temple tax yearly became an extra burden for the poorer Jews who would come to offer sacrifice and worship.
The wealthier worshipers had no problem footing the extra for the exchange, and could still purchase a nice extra-holy-looking cow or sheep to offer for their sacrifice. The poorer Jews would have to get a pigeon or dove and even that would be a great hardship.
The exploitation of the poor and the distracting din of the marketplace in a place of prayer set Jesus off.
“In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
The temple was not being used as a house of prayer for *all* peoples.
It was a house of prayer for Jews, but not even all Jews.
We might say it was a house of prayer for the 1%.
Jesus was full of zeal and longing for God's house to be as God's house should be. For it to be rid of exclusionary economics and exclusionary politics which spell humiliation and struggle for most and ease and exaltation for few.
This is not what God's call was to God's people – we read in Deuteronomy the description of the character of God:
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Justice for those in need, a welcoming of strangers – this is what it means to follow God.
This is God's call to radical hospitality.
And Jesus was zealous for that kind of grace.
and when that kind of zeal comes up against the exclusionary devices of money and the market's noisy competitive distraction –
when the zeal for God confronts the worship of money, there is a kind of anger which seeks to tear down the obstacles which are put in front of the possiblity of prayer and worship for all peoples.
This is what we are seeing in Jesus' actions.
But this is not the end of the story. This is just the first temple – the tale continues with two others.
When demanded that he give a sign to show his authority to do what he had just done, Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The hearers were confused and scoffed – how could he even dream of rebuilding a temple like this in three days!
But Jesus' death was followed in three days by Jesus' resurrection and we are the community of followers who live in light of a rebuilt temple – the body of Christ which is made up of the believers of all times and all places bonded together in the peace of God's forgiveness and new life.
This temple is ALSO intended to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)
This is to be a place where all are welcome to come and worship, come and seek God, come and pray.
We are to be a community who live in light of the radical hospitality of God toward us. That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While God had every right to hold a grudge against us, he didn't and extended love and welcome and grace. This is the new temple of which we are a part and which we represent to a world that does not know peace, does not know grace, does not know forgiveness.
Let us be zealous with Jesus that it does not become a den of thieves, a cavern for those who feel they are superior, a cloister for the ones who are on the correct side of the issues.
This is not a partisan place, God's new temple is to be just as the old was to be: a house of prayer for all people.
Now one last point:
The apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church writes, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:19-20)
Not only was there a physical temple, there is a new temple which took over and is with us today where 2 or 3 are gathered in the name our Lord Savior. But we have a third temple here. The body of each person who follows in the way that God has called us.
Each body has received grace from God just as the whole body of believers has received grace. We have all been redeemed as a group and as individuals.
Therefore! Paul says, glorify God in your body. Glorify God in the temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Let us be zealous as Jesus was toward the physical temple, to let go of the marketplace in our minds, the exclusion in our attitudes.
Let us be zealous to overturn the tables of greed, of self-seeking and pour out the jars of our selfish gains. Let us get rid of all that is in us that seeks to promote ourselves and allow God to rebuild within us a spirit of grace, a spirit of hospitality, a spirit of concern for the least of these, that we might glorify in our bodies the God who wants our temple to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
Friends, let us turn over to God the temples of our bodies that they might become beacons of the light of God's love, that they might become fragrant offerings which give off the aroma of God's good grace.
May our prayer be the words of the hymn we sang this morning:
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days.
May God grant us wisdom to see the moneychangers in our own souls, the exclusionary attitudes and activities, the partisan spirits and resentments that build up like vines and choke the possibility of love.
May God grant us courage to turn the tables, to make this temple within us a place of prayer for
not some, but all peoples. That the God of grace and glory might be glorified in us, and that many who find themselves enslaved to opinions of others, entangled in embittered partisan resentments, or consumed by their own world of criticism, might see the glory of God's GRACE, the grace that seeks not its own, that loves without condition, and that experiencing that grace might many might find themselves changed and renewed by God's goodness and might glorify the God of radical hospitality.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)