I haven't preached in a couple of weeks. So here is tomorrow's draft. I'll post the final tomorrow. Enjoy.
Have you ever been so consumed with something that you couldn't even think straight? And I don't mean I really want a muffin. I mean so consumed that is fills your every waking and sleeping thought. You can't go to sleep because you can't stop thinking about it. And when you do go to sleep you dream about. The more you think about it the more you want it or the more you have to do it. Let's say it is oh I don't know, George Clooney, just for illustration sake. You love George Clooney. You see every movie. You buy every magazine with him on the cover or that contains an article about him. You scour the internet looking for anything about him, any picture of him, and tid-bit of info even remotely related to him. You join the George Clooney fan club. You name your dog, Clooney. (Not George, it would be ridiculous to name your dog George. You'll save the name George for your first-born child.) You cut out the pictures of George and you paste them on your wall. Or better yet, you create a whole room dedicated to George Clooney. Then you find out where he lives and you set up camp outside his house to watch him come and go. Perhaps you even start rifling through his trash, looking for maybe something of significance something important, like oh I don't know his fingernail clippings. Sound familiar?
I sincerely hope not, because that description is of someone who has gone completely overboard. We might even call them full on crazy. They have lost all sense of what is rational and reasonable. They have lost touch with reality. I mean think about it consumption is what tuberculosis was called in the 19th century. And now it is often used to refer to someone who is consumed by cancer or some other over-taking disease. Consumption does not represent the modicum of good health. It doesn't resemble health at all. And we know that in most cases being consumed by something, being eaten up by it that things are not going to turn out well. There is going to be a terrible toll to be paid for such zealousness.
"Zeal for your house will consume me." Jesus rolls into Jerusalem, like all other observant Jews of his day, to celebrate Passover. He goes into the temple and what he finds he does not like. But why doesn't he like it. It's hard to say, and John doesn't really say why. He just describes what happens. We know that when Jesus arrives in the temple he sees people changing money. Something that would have been absolutely necessary. Think about traveling to another country, the first think you do is get your US money changed to whatever the currency of the country you are in is. Otherwise you can't buy anything, you can't even really get around. Well that is essentially what is happening here. In order to pay their temple dues they need to change their money that has the face of Caesar on it into something that is suitable for use in the temple. The moneychangers were providing a service that was absolutely necessary for any pilgrim traveling to the temple to celebrate the feast. And what about those selling the animals? Well that too was necessary. The offering they made in the temple had to be an unblemished animal. Well have you ever tried to get an animal to Jerusalem while keeping it from any blemish? Alright, well you probably haven't, but suffice it to say it ain't easy if even possible at all. So the people had to be able to acquire an animal that was suitable and the way to do that was to wait until they got to the temple to do that. So what was Jesus so upset about? This stuff was all necessary to be an observant Jew, like himself. To be honest it makes him sound a bit nuts. Right? So why didn't the people who were there just ignore him? You know like we ignore any sort of wing-nut who is hanging out at some public event--the guy who is always holding up the sign that says Jesus Loves You on one side and Elmsford/12 Galaxies/cesjrogrencial ergonomics/nbc:xoxphrozenigul coverage/wasprovrenikil/admonishments minuscule/stratospherical or the guy who got a hold of the microphone at the recent rally on the eve of the supreme court hearing to overturn prop 8. Typically one of two things would happen, either the crazy person would just be ignored or they would get carted off and potentially arrested. But that isn't what happened here in the temple. Jesus was not ignored. He was not carted off and arrested, at least not yet. Instead they listen to him, and they ask him by what authority does he make these demands.
Its as if they knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time until they got caught. Don't get me wrong I don’t think they consciously thought they were doing something completely horrible. I think quite the contrary I think everyone believe that what they were doing was exactly what the institution required. In order for the temple to survive these things were necessary. But at the same time, at the same time, they knew that something had gone wrong. They were just waiting for someone to point it out. Finally someone was pointing out that the balance had shifted. The point was not the preservation of the temple. The temple was just bricks and mortar. It was just an institution that could be destroyed, that could be torn down. The temple wasn't bad; the institution wasn't evil; the practices weren't awful. The people in the temple were doing what it took. They were the ones who you'd want on your capital campaign or your strategic planning committee. If you want the institution to survive then they are the people who you want around. They got it done. And in this case, in this telling in John, Jesus isn't calling them crooks. The money-changers aren't necessarily cheating the people. They are simply doing a job, a job that needed to be done.
It's just that the focus had shifted to something that in the end was fleeting. And in case you didn't get what Jesus was doing, John spells it out for you, albeit in John's somewhat esoteric kind of way. "But he was speaking of the temple of his body." Hey Jesus is not talking about this temple that is a building. Jesus is actually talking about himself. He the human is the temple, the human that is divine, the human that will be killed and then three days later will be alive again. The one who is stronger than death. The one who brings light to the darkness. The one who is right in front of them. That is the focus. He is the place of refuge, the place of peace, the place of sanctuary. And their focus should be on that not on preserving a building or an institution.
I wish that was the end. I wish that the people shifted their focus. But that isn't the case. Nearly every religious organization I'm a part of is so focused on preservation of the institution that they lose site of the true focus. They are holding on so tightly to what is and what used to be that they lose site of the future, of the resurrection. Institutions and organizations are fleeting. Our greater purpose is not the preservation of an institution. And that makes people who are invested in organizations uncomfortable. What will we do without the temple? We have worked our whole lives to build up this beautiful temple or to even rebuild this beautiful temple. We don’t want it to go away. But the answer is that it might. It is merely brick and mortar. The capital campaign isn't the most important thing we do. The good news is not how long we have been around or our images. The good news is not how many people we have. The good news is that life is stronger than death. The light will win out over darkness. The phoenix will rise up out of the ashes. Redemption, renewal, resurrection will come. Even if the walls of the building, even if the church, or even if the church crumbles Jesus will still be there pointing us to the focus, to what is beautiful, to the good news. The good news will not go away.
Lent calls us to shift our focus. To find what is life giving. It is the time when Jesus comes in and flips over all the tables and throws out the marketers. It suggests that we look not at what has been but what will be. I found this song yesterday that points us to this very idea. So I'll end with "The Things I've Gone and Done" by Carrie Newcomer.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
March 1 Sermon
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, and as is the case with every Lenten season the first Gospel text we come to recounts the story of Jesus' time in the wilderness. But most of what we know of it actually does not appear in Mark. In Mark there is no description of the temptations--it merely says that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. The story is quickly inserted in between a very quick description of Jesus' baptism and a trip to Galilee after John is arrested. All of this is done in six verses.
But Mark's description is fairly accurate to how Lent often feels. It arrives quick on the heels of Christmas and Epiphany and before we know it Easter will be right in front of us. Six weeks fly by just like these six verses. But we also know that Lent isn't always confined to just six weeks, not just Ash Wednesday to Good Friday. We can't so easily and quickly pack away our times in the wilderness. Instead sometimes Easter comes and goes and we are still wandering. Many of you know that the week of Ash Wednesday in 2007 my brother was diagnosed with cancer. And on Good Friday of 2008, last year, he died. And even then my lent didn't end. Our wilderness doesn’t wrap up neatly with a trip to Galilee. Mark gets that too, despite the shortness of his account. Jesus arrives in Galilee only after John is arrested. His cousin and the one who had just baptized him has been arrested and would eventually be killed. The wilderness is not always just a place nor is it just a time.
So the wilderness isn't a time and place--it ca. n't be neatly packed into 40 days, then why even celebrate Lent at all? Many churches and Christians would prefer that we didn't. There are too many churches and preachers who gloss over Lent and the wilderness. Who would insist that the whole Christian life should just be about celebration and praise. But the problem is we all know that the world we live in is not all about joy and happiness. We spend a lot of time in the wilderness. We observe Lent so that when our wilderness arrives we might be prepared. And I really think that Mark has something to teach us, a tool to pack into our belt so that we might be prepared when we are hit with the wilderness of life.
That comes with the phrase "he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him." So much of our time in the wilderness feels lonely and isolated. It seems as if no one understands and no one could ever have experienced anything as horrible or awful as what we are experiencing. I know that is what I was experiencing after my brother died. (And for those of you who are regulars don’t worry I'm not going to spend the next six weeks talking about my brother's death. But today I am, and I'm even about to tell a story that I'm fairly certain many of you have heard before but I think it really fits today.) About a month after the funeral I arrived on the Scottish Island of Iona to spend a week living in community with other pilgrims like me. The others were from all over the world and together we covered a wide array of ages and backgrounds. They were delightful and interesting people. But over the course of the week I realized I didn't want to really have anything to do with them. I went through the motions of getting to know these folks, but my heart wasn't in it. I didn't feel as if I could be fully honest and open about all that I was struggling with because I didn't trust that these strangers could hold what I was really feeling. No one could understand. Even with people all around me, I still felt isolated. So on the last day I decided that I had had enough of people so I went for a swim--alright not really a swim so much as a step into the ice cold waters and then a step back out. But the place I went was on the other side of the island and I had heard it was beautiful. So I headed out on what was about a 20 or 30 minute hike. This part of the island is largely inhabited by sheep and cows only, humans live on the other side of the island. As I was walking to the water I walked through what I can only describe as a ravine, high rock walls on both sides of me. And as I got to about the middle of the ravine there was a dead baby lamb lying on the ground. It didn't look as if it had been attacked but merely came to this lonely place and died. I passed it by and came to the beach. While I was laying on the beach a Sheep and another lamb wondered close by. We were there together, me and the wild beasts. I wandered if they were like me. Were they grieving the loss of this lamb the way I was grieving the loss of my brother? For the first time I was feeling as if I was not alone. I was being attended to by angels. And for a moment I was at least able to lay down a bit of the pain that I was feeling, because I knew I didn't have to bear it alone.
When a bit of that weight was lifted I felt lighter and in contrast I also felt more grounded. I felt as if I might better understand the heart of God. I felt as if God was grieving with me and with this sheep and lamb.
What I told the children earlier I think really is an appropriate metaphor for lent. Lent is a time for grounding and I don’t just mean some theoretical place in our heads and our hearts, I mean the physical ground. The wilderness all too often sends us to places away from where we are, the land that we are on. We go to what ifs, we go to lonely places. In the Dr. Seuss book, Oh the Places You'll Go, a book that was originally written as a college commencement address, he wrote about "You can get so confused that you'll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace, and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place…" But when we stop and look around, and notice the world around us, be present to the moment we are in, we see that God is speaking to us right there through the wild beasts. We will notice that we are being cared for by angels. We notice the ground below us, the sky above us, the world around us. And we see that the earth is springing forth shoots of green, blossoms are continuing to appear on trees, and vegetables are popping up out of the ground. Life is continuing. The very ground from which we were formed continues to bear fruit.
In this economic crisis we are being invited to find a new ground, return to the earth, return to a simpler way of living--a way that involves family, friends, love, God. But we have to see this as an invitation. Or we will be stuck in the waiting place, waiting for the market to change or our jobs to start paying more. Even in the crisis and the wildeness we have all we need, but we have to put our feet on the ground.
Lent is about practicing being in the wilderness so that we will be prepared when the wilderness arrives. Many people give up something during lent--it is often wine or chocolate or some other vice. I could rail on and on about how it should be something deeper and more meaningful than simply a new diet, but even in the simple practice of giving up chocolate or whatever it is, we are learning that we can even do with out that. We get back to what is at the heart of what we truly need. We pray and we sit in silence and we listen. We hope that we will hear God speaking through one another, because that is where we most often hear the words of the divine, but we sit in silence and we take a walk on the beach because sometimes the voices of one another aren't enough. There are times when we need to be with the wild beast and simply be tended to by the angels.
Let us enter into this time of preparation. Some of you might be in the wilderness already and I don't know when you'll leave--for you I hope that you will know that you are not walking through this desert alone and that you will find proof of that, proof that won't necessarily come in words. For those who are not walking through a desert right now, store up these moments and practices, practice noticing and seeing God everywhere. Return to the earth and find your grounding. Amen.
But Mark's description is fairly accurate to how Lent often feels. It arrives quick on the heels of Christmas and Epiphany and before we know it Easter will be right in front of us. Six weeks fly by just like these six verses. But we also know that Lent isn't always confined to just six weeks, not just Ash Wednesday to Good Friday. We can't so easily and quickly pack away our times in the wilderness. Instead sometimes Easter comes and goes and we are still wandering. Many of you know that the week of Ash Wednesday in 2007 my brother was diagnosed with cancer. And on Good Friday of 2008, last year, he died. And even then my lent didn't end. Our wilderness doesn’t wrap up neatly with a trip to Galilee. Mark gets that too, despite the shortness of his account. Jesus arrives in Galilee only after John is arrested. His cousin and the one who had just baptized him has been arrested and would eventually be killed. The wilderness is not always just a place nor is it just a time.
So the wilderness isn't a time and place--it ca. n't be neatly packed into 40 days, then why even celebrate Lent at all? Many churches and Christians would prefer that we didn't. There are too many churches and preachers who gloss over Lent and the wilderness. Who would insist that the whole Christian life should just be about celebration and praise. But the problem is we all know that the world we live in is not all about joy and happiness. We spend a lot of time in the wilderness. We observe Lent so that when our wilderness arrives we might be prepared. And I really think that Mark has something to teach us, a tool to pack into our belt so that we might be prepared when we are hit with the wilderness of life.
That comes with the phrase "he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him." So much of our time in the wilderness feels lonely and isolated. It seems as if no one understands and no one could ever have experienced anything as horrible or awful as what we are experiencing. I know that is what I was experiencing after my brother died. (And for those of you who are regulars don’t worry I'm not going to spend the next six weeks talking about my brother's death. But today I am, and I'm even about to tell a story that I'm fairly certain many of you have heard before but I think it really fits today.) About a month after the funeral I arrived on the Scottish Island of Iona to spend a week living in community with other pilgrims like me. The others were from all over the world and together we covered a wide array of ages and backgrounds. They were delightful and interesting people. But over the course of the week I realized I didn't want to really have anything to do with them. I went through the motions of getting to know these folks, but my heart wasn't in it. I didn't feel as if I could be fully honest and open about all that I was struggling with because I didn't trust that these strangers could hold what I was really feeling. No one could understand. Even with people all around me, I still felt isolated. So on the last day I decided that I had had enough of people so I went for a swim--alright not really a swim so much as a step into the ice cold waters and then a step back out. But the place I went was on the other side of the island and I had heard it was beautiful. So I headed out on what was about a 20 or 30 minute hike. This part of the island is largely inhabited by sheep and cows only, humans live on the other side of the island. As I was walking to the water I walked through what I can only describe as a ravine, high rock walls on both sides of me. And as I got to about the middle of the ravine there was a dead baby lamb lying on the ground. It didn't look as if it had been attacked but merely came to this lonely place and died. I passed it by and came to the beach. While I was laying on the beach a Sheep and another lamb wondered close by. We were there together, me and the wild beasts. I wandered if they were like me. Were they grieving the loss of this lamb the way I was grieving the loss of my brother? For the first time I was feeling as if I was not alone. I was being attended to by angels. And for a moment I was at least able to lay down a bit of the pain that I was feeling, because I knew I didn't have to bear it alone.
When a bit of that weight was lifted I felt lighter and in contrast I also felt more grounded. I felt as if I might better understand the heart of God. I felt as if God was grieving with me and with this sheep and lamb.
What I told the children earlier I think really is an appropriate metaphor for lent. Lent is a time for grounding and I don’t just mean some theoretical place in our heads and our hearts, I mean the physical ground. The wilderness all too often sends us to places away from where we are, the land that we are on. We go to what ifs, we go to lonely places. In the Dr. Seuss book, Oh the Places You'll Go, a book that was originally written as a college commencement address, he wrote about "You can get so confused that you'll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace, and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place…" But when we stop and look around, and notice the world around us, be present to the moment we are in, we see that God is speaking to us right there through the wild beasts. We will notice that we are being cared for by angels. We notice the ground below us, the sky above us, the world around us. And we see that the earth is springing forth shoots of green, blossoms are continuing to appear on trees, and vegetables are popping up out of the ground. Life is continuing. The very ground from which we were formed continues to bear fruit.
In this economic crisis we are being invited to find a new ground, return to the earth, return to a simpler way of living--a way that involves family, friends, love, God. But we have to see this as an invitation. Or we will be stuck in the waiting place, waiting for the market to change or our jobs to start paying more. Even in the crisis and the wildeness we have all we need, but we have to put our feet on the ground.
Lent is about practicing being in the wilderness so that we will be prepared when the wilderness arrives. Many people give up something during lent--it is often wine or chocolate or some other vice. I could rail on and on about how it should be something deeper and more meaningful than simply a new diet, but even in the simple practice of giving up chocolate or whatever it is, we are learning that we can even do with out that. We get back to what is at the heart of what we truly need. We pray and we sit in silence and we listen. We hope that we will hear God speaking through one another, because that is where we most often hear the words of the divine, but we sit in silence and we take a walk on the beach because sometimes the voices of one another aren't enough. There are times when we need to be with the wild beast and simply be tended to by the angels.
Let us enter into this time of preparation. Some of you might be in the wilderness already and I don't know when you'll leave--for you I hope that you will know that you are not walking through this desert alone and that you will find proof of that, proof that won't necessarily come in words. For those who are not walking through a desert right now, store up these moments and practices, practice noticing and seeing God everywhere. Return to the earth and find your grounding. Amen.
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