Shalom: The Way to Healing
Wednesday lectionary study. The other gospels place this event after the palm processional into Jerusalem. John however places this at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry right after the first miracle of turning water into wine. As you listen keep in mind why John relates this earlier and what he was trying to tell us about the characteristics of Jesus first.
John 2: 13-22
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body.22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
Shalom: Way to Healing
On this anniversary of when I was forced to become a televangelist – god forbid, I remember the many walks my family too to alleviate anxiety. On those walks, we heard the birds breaking forth in song as spring bloomed around us as if everything was continuing as normal. Chips, coos, and then buzzing. What is that – we walk along under high wires, so we froze worried that a wire had fallen and was spitting and zapping around us. Carefully looking around, we realized it was a bird that was copying the sounds of the high wires, a bird speaking the wire wound -things were a bit flipped after all. The quandry we have with this reading of scripture is that tables aren’t the only thing that is flipped. This is hard to align with the Jesus we envision, the kind God come to earth to dwell in our midst holding children in his lap. The polished, clean cut, White God with a gentle halo above his head and flashing, baby-blue eyes with fluffy, white, cuddly lambs in tow. Ick - I exaggerate on purpose, but take care with our minds’ image. I dare say what pops into our heads when we try to picture Jesus is not an angry man dusty and tired from the road weaving together a whip and yelling in the narthex. Italian artist Giotto painted the scene in the temple. He couldn’t quite bring himself to paint the whip in Jesus’ hand – so it is a faint tiny thing you have to squint to see. However, Giotto couldn’t ignore what John actually wrote – the children in this rendition are hiding from an angry Jesus in the folds of the disciples’ cloaks with one even sheltering a dove close to his chest.
How do we reconcile this with our picture of who God is and who God calls us to be? We think we know – we have built our faith on worldly wisdom like the Corinthians – but like the Jews we are confused about what temple Jesus is tearing down. Buildings come and buildings go, but Jesus promises to rebuild the temple in three days if we tear it down, destroy it.
The four lectionary texts today pull a heavy punch loading this third Sunday in Lent with imagery and a challenge to see God and Jesus in a new and fresh way with mystery and awe. The Old Testament and Psalm build for us a foundation that we dare not push to the side. Today’s lessons include the ten commandments and the powerful 19th Psalm where all creation speaks out, and from which we get not one but six hymns and the words I use to open the sermon weekly – “14Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” The psalm moves our hearts and the commandments comfort us. The remaining scriptures for today are the two we read. The epistle to the Corinthians tells us how Paul envisions us being the church and how Jesus has flipped the world bringing new wisdom for Jew and Greek – for all God’s children. God’sfoolishness – more accurately in Greek - God’s stupidity is above and beyond the wisest thinking we are capable of.
The gospels are the Good News – they tell of the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Some say that in doing this they are also a confession of our faiths with each of the gospels being a nuance or confession of a different author – a different perspective on Christ. The Reverend Joseph D. Small says, “Jesus does more than speak God’s word; he is God’s Word. What he says is more than the truth, for he is the Truth. Thus Christ’s prophetic office, in word and act, reveals the truth about who God is, who we are, what God has to do with us, and what we have to do with one another.”
Johns gospel emphasizes and tells Jesus’ story in a unique and compelling way. Compelling – I’ll give it that. There is nothing subtle in John this week. This gospel puts it front and center and elaborates more than the others emphasizing John’s favorite themes of ‘show us’ and ‘signs’ with a collective intertwining of home, temple, and sanctuary. Paul could very well have had this very scene in mind when thinking of human wisdom that completely misses the mark. And I imagine that Paul would have liked to flip some of the tables in the Corinthian churches too. The gospel of John pushes this story earlier to begin with an important truth about Jesus and how important ‘how we are’ with God and one another is.
Normally, this would be the perfect Sunday to talk about taking the church outside the walls. I think we have that lesson figured out, or are well on the way. We have learned important new ways of being with and for one another. But, before you get too comfortable on your couches – think again. Why do we ‘come’ to the church? Why do we come together? We come to hear the Word proclaimed and to share the sacraments. We come for the comfort of prayer, but we also come to be equipped to expand that house. To take the prayer and koinonia of relationship with God back out to the world. Reminded of God’s grace, we remember that we are now Christ’s body in this place. We are supported and built up in love. Are we extending the love to the world, are we healing the relationships and wounds of the world whose very mountains and hills cry out when we don’t speak?
25For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. 26Consider your own call, brothers and sisters
David Lose says, “…then we are sent out to look for God and, even more, to partner with God in our various roles and venues to love and bless the people and world God loves so much.” He wonders if we see our homes, workplaces, schools and all the places of our lives as places where God is present and working through us for the sake of the world. In John’s words, the signs – the miracles of God are all around us. Do we show the world?
As we move back to ‘normal’ will we fall back into our foolishness or have we ventured more into being the house, extending the hands and showing the beautiful grace of God’s foolishness?
When we think we know what church should be, when we get into routines built on the right things – our ritual tendencies as creature of habit build a comfortable Jesus, bound to a sanctuary – not allowed out of the restrictions and ideals we impose. It sneaks up on us. Jesus with a whip is uncomfortable. The careful balance of the church showing the love of Christ but never, ever at the expense of another child of Christ is not easy to embody. How do we embody a healing that requires larger surgery? A different healing – after all Jesus brought a whip to begin the work. Dare we admit to ourselves that the bandaids we bring are propping up traditions and letting wounds fester? This healing requires attention, it requires patience, a care to bring about the wholeness of shalom.
We must dare to be tools of this healing of our broken world. Rather than hopping from issue to issue with the attention span of a gnat, we must dig deep and listen to one another and our neighbors to hear and begin to understand. Self-reflection is good but is no longer enough. We must sit with ‘other’ and reach out a hand to begin to be able to offer our wonderful sanctuary as a place for all. The Reverend Andrew Prior says, “In our current rituals there is deep love of God. There is heart rending dedication to God, and to the service of God, and to the love of all God's people on earth. But there is something unbending about them which we cannot see, for all our trying; something to which we are blind. Like the Jerusalem temple which was compromised by Rome, and by rote ritual, and was being abandoned by the Essenes and others, there is something in what we do, or how we do, that means the people around us do not see God among us. We need our tables turned over.”
What is that something? Prior is speaking to his situation, but a member of our church once said to me that he didn’t understand. The message of Christ is so compelling, so wonderful full of grace and love – why doesn’t everyone get it. Why don’t they see it? Do we like the birds living by the wire need to tune ourselves to a new frequency?
We take life into the temple, our sanctuary and get healing and wholeness here. Even online, we are bathed in the comfort of our ritual assured of Christ’s love and grace. But are we wise in sharing that with our neighbor, community and world? The Greek centered their feeling in the gut – we tend to think of knowing things in our minds or feeling them in our hearts. I think the Greek’s had something here. The wisdom of our faith is in our guts. I know in my gut that when I feel something the most clever or when I am most comforted, it is time to look around. Who is left out? What unintended message am I sending? Why don’t they see? Why doesn’t everyone know the amazing saving grace of Jesus? Go with your gut, reach out and expand the house of Jesus. Who can we reach out to today? What do they look like?
About that image in our minds when we think of Jesus – does it look a bit like you? It’s part of our human tendency to try and relate to God. Take care though that we do not try to tame Jesus to our norms and our wisdom. Don’t make God too familiar. Flip that table – imagine God looks like ‘them’ – the ‘them’ you want to roll your eyes at and walk away from – yes, that person. Picture Jesus looking just like that. Start there.
flip? What do you hold most dear – what would happen if it flipped? Who have we learned to speak to in new ways? What ritual needs to stop to make way for new? Who are we still missing by not hearing their language? How can we truly reflect God out to the world so that that we are building the kingdom in God’s image not God in our image? How do we follow in the difficult footsteps of Jesus even when they call on us to cast aside the norms and wisdom of society demanding we open our doors and our hearts to all.
We sing loudly the words – Here I am Lord. Dare we answer – Here I am Lord – I will Go Lord. Dare we be foolish and hear a new voice – speaking a new song? A buzz, a chirp? Dare we be foolish for our God? Only by holding all God’s people in our hearts will we have set a table that doesn’t need to be flipped. Welcome others into our lives, into our house, into our sanctuary healing together, loving together into the wholeness of the body of Christ – His Church. Shalom – Amen.
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