Tables Turn – Coins Roll – Love Inscribed

Lent 3B; Ex. 20:1-17; Jn. 2:13-22; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 3/8/15

Jim Melnyk: “Tables Turn – Coins Roll – Love Inscribed”

A whirlwind of anger surrounds us

as doves, uncaged fly free.

Tables turned – and coins roll off

as merchants seek to flee.

We know the man – his whip in hand,

his hair askew and eyes ablaze.

The temple court in disarray, as

onlookers stare in mindless daze.

Do we all stand under indictment

as the prophet sweeps away

the clutter of the market place,

that holds us in its sway?

House of prayer or den of thieves?

questions hang o’er shattered booths.

The harder paths of peace and love

and the challenge of God’s truth. (Jim Melnyk, 3/7/2015)

           

What do we do with a Jesus who is anything but meek and mild in today’s passage from the Gospel according to John?  What do we do with a Jesus who fashions a whip out of cords and goes wild in the market place that has been set up in the temple precincts?  What do we do with two sets of lessons that one the one hand uphold ancient tradition – the Ten Commandments, while on the other hand seem to make a complete disarray of another – the mechanism in place for temple worship? 

This Jesus is a challenge to us, because whether we like to admit it or not, his critique in the temple that day goes beyond the immediate subject – the stuff surrounding temple worship.  We also have to see it as an enacted parable meant to carry with it much more meaning than the meaning of that one event.  If we can see it as a parable, then we can see it saying something about attitudes toward the Law and our relationships with God, and not just attitudes from two thousand years ago, but attitudes challenging Jews and Christians throughout history – and challenging us today.

Are we ever truly comfortable with the Jesus who makes harsh pronouncements that leave us wondering how we might fare under his withering gaze?  Are we ever comfortable with the Jesus whose words often leave us wondering whether or not we might find ourselves under indictment with others who have become the objects of his scorn?

“Pick out the passages that talk about how much God loves us,” we might find ourselves muttering to those who framed our Sunday lectionary.  We don’t like the passages that make us cringe –because like it or not, we know it’s about more than just a historic “them.”

 

To put today’s gospel story in a proper setting, Jesus isn’t offering a critique on the meaning or place of temple worship in his faith.  Jesus spends time in the temple throughout his life – and the early stories in Luke’s Gospel make it clear that Jesus and his family make the required temple pilgrimages, and they carry out the required temple sacrifices. 

In her book, The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, professor and author Amy-Jill Levine points out that the marketplace necessary to carry out temple sacrifice – the changing of coins and the buying of sacrificial animals – was at one time housed on the Mount of Olives, away from the temple and outside the city. Caiaphas, according to Levine and others, moved the marketplace into the Court of the Gentiles, and they suspect that "some Jews, including Jesus, objected” (p. 152).  I suspect the frenzy of the market, along with the potential profit taking to line Roman coffers, may have created the objections on the part of Jesus.  By the time worshipers got to the temple the focus was meant to be on worship, but it seems all the stuff may have gotten in the way.

The Gospel story called by many, “The Cleansing of the Temple” is one of those rare instances when a story by or about Jesus is told in all four Gospels.  In what we call the Synoptic Gospels, the story takes place early in the week leading up to the crucifixion. Mark places it in a sandwich between the cursing of the fig tree and its withering – making it a statement on the apparent lack of fruit not just on the fig tree, but among the religious leadership in Jerusalem as well.  This act by Jesus becomes one of the final straws for the Roman-appointed leadership in Jerusalem, and it most likely raises the anxiety level of Pilate and his military advisers whose number one mission is keeping Roman control in the region.

The writer of John’s Gospel, however, puts this event right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry instead of days before his crucifixion.  Rather than it becoming the last straw, it seems obvious that John wants to set up – right from the beginning – the challenge Jesus makes against the status quo – the challenge Jesus makes to the Roman-appointed Jewish leadership in the Temple – and in a less obvious way, the leadership of Rome.  “There’s got to be a better way of doing things,” Jesus seems to be saying. “You have let the mechanism for temple worship become the focus, rather than the sacrificial act of worship itself.  You’ve let the rules get in the way.”

Contrary to some suggestions, I don’t think Jesus’ foray into the Temple is about showing us his humanity by expressing his anger – though Jesus certainly does that.  Nor is it about having a better way than Judaism – for it’s actually Jesus’ strong Jewish faith that brings him to the Temple in the first place.  Rather, “Jesus challenges a religious system so embedded in its own rules and practices that it is no longer open to a fresh revelation from God,a temptation that exists for contemporary Christianity as well as for the Judaism of Jesus’ day” (Gail R. O’Day, The New Interpreter’s Bible, 545). 

The Psalmist writes, “The statutes of the LORD are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear and gives light to the eyes” (Psalm 19:8).  The critique Jesus offers is against worship that runs the risk of losing its focus on God – worship that becomes so frenzied, and so caught up in rules and practices, that it no longer brings joy to our hearts – it no longer “gives light to [our] eyes.”  It’s a case of letting ourselves get so caught up in the styling of our liturgies, or the way our neighbor might be dressed, or a child is acting, an acolyte stumbling, or the priest missing a cue or not preaching the way we would like, that we cannot “Lift up our hearts – giving thanks and praise to God” because we’ve allowed ourselves to become so distracted that we let extraneous stuff get in the way.

Letting the mechanisms designed to assist us in our worship of God, or the ways we live out our faith in the communities around us, get in the way can indeed cripple our ability to live as God calls us to live – in love and charity with our neighbors, and in joyful relationship with the God who gives us being.  Jesus does not come on the scene to abolish the Law – as a faithful Jew he embraces both the Law and the Prophets – and sees the keeping of the Law as a clear pathway into the heart of God. What Jesus does challenge, however, is a form of idolatry that allows the people of God to become so enamored with the words and the actions, that they – that we – forget to follow the Way.

Seventy years ago this past January the death camp Auschwitz was liberated.  We said never again – never forget.  Fifty years ago yesterday we witnessed Bloody Sunday in Selma.  We said never again – never forget. Yet according to the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors hate groups in the US, there are some 939 known hate groups in our nation today – a fifty-six percent increase since 2000 – though the number has dropped from a high of 1,300 groups three years ago.  And that doesn’t even take into account the terror groups around the world.  We have to decide what camps still need liberating in our lifetimes – which bridges still need to be crossed – and which tables need to be overturned – before the Gospel of God’s love triumphs over all.

Author Robert Roth writes, “Chipping the Ten Commandments into a marble plaque at a courthouse is the easy way out. The harder path engages the numerous ways the covenant challenges human law and order. Empires, both ancient and modern, are frightened by this sort of commitment to the way God reorders society. Loyalties shift. Greedy values are rejected. Coins roll” (Sojourners On Line, Preaching the Word, 3/8/2015).

The Ten Commandments on the walls of a courthouse – the walls of a school – or even the walls of a church – in no way ensure our embracing them with our whole hearts.  We spend time arguing about where they belong and forget that they actually belong within us – we forget to live what they demand.  We get so caught up in their marketing that we forget what they mean. 

 What God seeks is the chipping of the Ten Commandments – and the chipping of the New Covenant as well – upon our hearts.  As the prophet Jeremiah proclaims of God, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people” (31:33).

We have to decide what we believe to be most sacred in our lives – what causes our hearts to rejoice and gives light to our eyes.  We have to decide where we will find God’s holy covenant written for our lives – on the pages of a book – on the walls of buildings – or in the depths of our hearts.

I Was Outside – You Were Within

Homily for Lenten Noonday Service at First Presbyterian Church, Smithfield

March 4, 2015

Jim Melnyk: “I Was Outside – You Were Within”

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made nown to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another” (John 15:9-17).

During the season of Lent we are encouraged to consider, among other things, the brokenness in our lives and our need for repentance and amendment of life.  The confession in one of the traditional versions of the Episcopal Communion service has the priest and people pray: “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past...” (BCP, p. 331).  Yes, Episcopalians can get downright depressing during Lent.

And let’s face it, there is often much we need to consider in our lives – we know brokenness in our lives.  We know the “S” word in our lives – that’s sin, by the way – even if we don’t like to hear that word.  We know what it’s like to miss the mark – to look out for ourselves – to look out for number one – sometimes – often times – at the expense of another. 

We are wrestle with being egocentric from the very start of our lives – though as infants our self-centeredness is truly a survival mechanism: Hey!  Look at me!  I need food!  I need to be changed!  I need comfort. 

As youth and adults it becomes less a mechanism for survival and more a mechanism for feeding our egos.  We are a “selfie” generation.  Which reminds me – hold on a second while I get this one recorded! (“selfie” snap – see above).

Hopefully we can recognize and acknowledge that we each have a need to consider the reality of brokenness – of sin – in our lives – recognize the need for repentance and amendment of life. 

But I wonder if we might find a more encouraging way of meeting that need, based in part on the portion of John’s Gospel we just heard read a few minutes ago.

In his book, The God We Never Knew, the late Marcus Borg offers readers a wonderful quotation from St. Augustine.  It speaks to the overwhelming presence of God in our lives, giving promise to the words Dietrich Bonhoeffer would later write: “God is the beyond in our midst.”  The following quote is taken by Borg from Augustine’s Confessions (Italics added by Borg).

“How late I came to love you, O Beauty so ancient and so fresh, how late I came to love you!  You were within me, yet I had gone outside to seek you. 

Unlovely myself, I rushed toward all those lovely things you had made.  And always you were with me, I was not with you.  All these beauties kept me far from you – although they would not have existed at all unless they had their being in you.  You called, you cried, you shattered my deafness.  You sparkled, you blazed, you drove away my blindness.  You shed your fragrance, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you.  I tasted and now I hunger and thirst.  You touched me, and now I burn with longing for your peace” (Borg, page 47).

To experience God in terms of this glorious passage from Augustine, is to experience God as our lover – and to experience ourselves as God’s own beloved.  The passage from Augustine is nothing less than a love letter to God, written with all the mysterious intimacy we long for in our relationships with each other and with God.

The passage by Augustine reminds me of a story I once heard by author Kim Taylor and her young daughter, Scooter.  Scooter, it seems, was having a difficult time expressing her feelings.  Kim told her daughter to fold her hands over her heart and say, “Scooter, I love you.”  Scooter was skeptical at first, but her mom told her she had to practice.  The little girl was convinced only after her mom told her the following story.  “When you were a baby, I used to hold you so close to me, your head resting over my heart.  And I would imagine all the love in my heart pouring out into your tiny, little heart, because I loved you so much.”  The next day Scooter came dancing and twirling across the school yard to her mom and cried out, “I’ve been practicing!!!” (Recalled from a story told by Kim Taylor on NPR long ago – apologies for any liberties in my memory)

Would that each of us could envisage God, holding us tightly to God’s breast, with all the love God has for us flowing into our tiny, little hearts – knowing that God loves us that much!  Oh, how we could love ourselves, if we felt that love from God.  And, oh, how we could love each other.  

Oh, how we could more readily recognize our own brokenness and seek God’s grace to repair the damage and be open to forgiving the brokenness of others if we could envision God holding us so tightly.  Oh, how we might better consider how to interact with each other – how to interact with our neighbor – how to interact with even our enemies, if we could envision God holding us so tightly in love.  And maybe, if we committed to placing our own hands over our hearts each day, and telling ourselves that we love ourselves...maybe, just maybe,  we would know what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves – and maybe, just maybe, we’ll fall in love with God all over again.

Where No One Has Gone Before

Lent 2B; Gen. 17:1-7, 15-16; Mk 8:31-38; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 3/1/15

Jim Melnyk: “Where No One Has Gone Before”

* Note, I realize that in the audio file I mistakenly remark that Paul was crucified (legend says that he was beheaded). So much for ad libbing.

Forty-nine years ago a group of intrepid explorers began a five-year mission “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man – [where no person – had] gone before.”  The names of those fictional explorers became house-hold names long ago:  James T. Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, and of course, Mr. Spock, played by actor Leonard Nimoy, who died just a couple of days ago.  As an aside, did you know that Nimoy crafted his famous hand sign on the way the orthodox Jewish men held out their hands when offering the Aaronic Blessing at the end of the service -  God bless you and keep you, God smile on you and gift you, God look you full in the face and make you prosper” (Numbers 6:24-26 – The Message) – and that his famous, “Live long and prosper” was a phrase he created based on that benediction?  The show lasted only seventy-nine episodes, but it was transformational in many ways. 

Technologically, they had stuff like flip-phones and hand-held computers – in 1966!  People born in the last couple of decades have no idea how fanciful that stuff was for us seeing it for the first time in the late 60s.  But Star Trek was also a show that came about in the midst of the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights movement, and the moral lessons we learned from Kirk, Bones, and Spock were even more transformational than their electronic gadgets were inspiring.

In 1968 we saw TV’s first interracial kiss, which took place between Kirk and Uhura. 

Network executives sweated over that one, afraid they would lose their southern network affiliates – which they didn’t, by the way, and perhaps that was part of the beginning of a dream for humanity becoming real.  Writers used stories about alternate worlds with alternate experiences of past wars – one in which the Germans won World War II, as a way of expressing concerns over the ongoing war in Viet Nam.  The Federation was a dream of a time when humankind might come to know the power of love rather than the love of power – but also recognized the brokenness of the human – and not so human – condition that always seems to challenge that dream.

In the 1982 film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (spoiler alert here), then Captain Spock, dies saving the Enterprise from destruction.  As he is dying, Spock asks his best friend, Admiral Kirk, “The Ship – out of danger?”  He then says, “Don’t grieve, Admiral, it is logical.  The needs of the many outweigh…” “Outweigh the needs of the few,” concludes Kirk.  “Or the one,” adds Spock.  At the last, Spock tells Kirk, “I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” 

Intended or not, Leonard Nimoy, who was by the way a faithful Jew, acts out a scene at the close of the movie that is in essence a faithful example of the teachings of another faithful Jew.  In the Gospel of John Jesus tells his disciples, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13).  And again in today’s lesson from Mark’s Gospel, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (8:34b-35).  Jesus has indeed gone where no one has gone before – and Jesus calls us to follow along the Way. 

According to the late Marcus Borg, “The way,” as we understand it in Mark’s Gospel, “is about going with Jesus to Jerusalem, the place of dying and rising…one of the New Testament’s most central images for the path of personal transformation…dying to an old way of being and being born to a new way of being” (Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark, p. 78-80).  The Way of the Cross is what another commentator calls, “a symbol of a God-inspired transformation that leads to a new identity, a new awareness, and a new way of being and doing” (Marsha Snulligan Haney, Feasting of the Gospels: Mark, p. 250). Borg reminds us that Luke adds the word “daily” to his account of Mark’s story, “suggesting that this transformation is a repeated process, not a one-time martyrdom” for us (op. cit., p. 80). 

Paul, Borg mentioned, understood it that way as well when he wrote about himself, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:19b-20a).  Borg states what is probably the obvious for us, in that Paul “doesn’t mean that he has been literally crucified, but that his old self has died and a new Paul has been born whose identity is now ‘in Christ’” (op. cit. p. 80). 

As people of faith, and as followers of Jesus, we, in and through our Baptisms, have also died to our old selves and have been born anew – and our identities are now “in Christ” as was Paul’s. 

We get to choose between a life of transformation or the status quo.  We get to choose between life in Christ and the life of the world.  We get to choose between being disciples who know something about Jesus or disciples who follow Jesus and make a difference that helps shape the dream of God for this world.  

The Oscar Award winning film Selma, which chronicles the 1965 Voting Rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, has been out for some time.  Unfortunately it’s not showing in Smithfield now, but if the Howell Theater brings it back, I’d like to get a group of us together to see the film, if you haven’t already, and gather afterwards to talk about it.  The marchers from fifty years ago stand as icons of the cost of discipleship – icons of people’s willingness to lay down their lives for the lives of not just their friends, but their willingness to lay down their lives for the transformation of a world – a transformation that is still unfolding, only through other incarnations of brokenness that continually need to be addressed.

Along those same lines, back in the fall of 2010 when I told colleagues I would be coming to St. Paul’s, several folks asked me about “The Sign” outside Smithfield, and if it was still up.  Most of us know something about the sign – reminding people that North Carolina was Klan Country – and for some, probably still is.  Thankfully that sign had been long gone, even if some folks around the state didn’t know that – though we all know the Klan still exists today – and they consider themselves to be following the Gospel.

And I have to imagine that the struggle to have that sign removed was a costly one for those who stood against it.  I imagine the fight to remove the sign cost some friendships – I imagine it caused family strife – I imagine it probably cost people business – and I imagine the desire to see the sign come down probably risked some people’s lives as well.  The removal of that sign was an act of true discipleship – it was a moment in which people counted the cost and acted anyway – recognizing that we are all – in the midst of all our diversity – that we are all created in the image and likeness of God, and that we are therefore all worthy of one another’s respect.  We are what Archbishop Desmond Tutu once called, “The Rainbow People of God,” which is about much more than the differences of skin color, and we are a different community than we once were, because we had the willingness to be more than students of Jesus – we had the willingness to be followers – no matter what the cost. 

A couple of weeks ago on the Last Sunday of Epiphany we explored the question,

“What must we die to in our lives?” and today’s lesson drives that home for us.  There are undoubtedly things in our lives we need to let go of in order to fully experience the kingdom of God.  What are the marches that still need to be marched?  What are the signs – not necessarily along the roadsides, but possibly on some of the Church signs these days, on community bulletin boards and the internet, and perhaps even in our hearts – that need to come down?

We know that many of the choices we face in our lives can be hard – that sometimes it is truly a struggle to figure out the difference between right or wrong, and sometimes although we know what is right, it is hard to make that choice knowing the cost.  Sometimes a part of ourselves has to die in order to make a decision that brings us – that brings our community and the world around us – life. 

Jesus calls us to go where we might think no one has gone before – except once we prayerfully consider the challenge we realize that not only has Jesus preceded us into those challenging places, but that people of faith across the ages have preceded us as well – and they all beckon us forward into new life.