Saturday, March 7, 2015

Lent 3B March 7, 2015


Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

          We all need some structure – too little and we fall apart, too much and we feel in prison Anglicans pride ourselves on spiritual balance, avoiding both spiritual rigidity on one side and spiritual lawlessness on the other. We think we see these among Roman Catholics and fundamentalists and also among the more liberal churches and faiths.

          We need structure. We need an internal spiritual structure, a rule of life that includes balanced attention to the body and to the soul – regular times to sleep, to eat, to work, to play, to pray. We need places to be for each of these.

          God’s plan for the world he created is stated in the covenant at Sinai with the people God set from physical slavery in Egypt, the people with whom he establishes a covenant of spiritual freedom. The covenant comes down to us in negative terms, but the meaning is positive.

          God who made the world and made his covenant with Noah, and with Abraham, God who brought his people “out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” is the only god.

God alone is to be worshipped. Inscriptions give names and pictures of over 1500 Egyptian gods and goddesses. Many are shown with human bodies and animal heads. Nothing in all creation can adequately represent God. God is greater than his creation. God is compassion and mercy and love.

God’s name is sacred - and so are the names, reputations, and honor of all people who God made in God’s image. I spent yesterday in a 6 hour course to renew my commission as a Notary Public. I use that to help with absentee voting and other things at Deerfield. The state form for affirmation is “I affirm on my personal honor.” God’s name is sacred; God’s honor is sacred, and our honor as creatures made in God’s image is sacred.

 God’s plan for the world includes times of rest and recovery. Times of prayer are holy. Slaves have to work all the time. God’s plan gives us freedom to pray, freedom to seek his holiness in our lives.

There’s an old story about a great-grandmother living with her family. She was nearly blind, had lost her teeth, and was finally reduced to eating her mush from a wooden bowl. When she finally died the family throw out the bowl, but the youngest child rescued it. When they asked her why, she said, “I’m saving it for you.” Societies are rightly judged on how we treat the very young and the very old. Honoring parents is the spiritual basis of all civil authority. When the Rotary Youth Exchange sends and receives young people – high school juniors – from Europe and Asia we require them to know the 5 D’s: Don’t drink, drug, drive, date exclusively, or do anything dumb your mother wouldn’t approve of.

God’s plan for the world he made and redeemed in Jesus includes safety and security of life, of relationships, of property. God’s plan includes truth-telling, and it includes a society and people free of the sin of envy. 

God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the desert to establish with them a covenant that they would live by God’s perfect plan for their lives. God rescues us from slavery to sin by the death of Jesus and establishes in Jesus’s resurrection a new covenant, making us members of his body, and giving us his Holy Spirit of truth and power so we can live by God’s perfect plan for our lives.

          The religious leadership of Jesus’ day had broken the covenant. They built the Jerusalem Temple to God’s specifications. In the center was the Holy of Holies – the empty chamber symbolizing God’s continuing presence. Around it was the court of priests where the animal sacrifices were made, and around the court of priests the court of Israel for the people of the covenant. Around the court of Israel was a large open space, the court of the Gentiles for all people. But the Gentiles stayed away in droves, and the religious leaders filled the place of prayer with “approved” sellers of “approved” sacrificial animals. The religious leaders required the payment of offerings in “temple money” coins of the long gone independent commonwealth rather than the coins with the heads of the Roman emperors. It was a closed system in which the priests determined the rate of exchange, then sold the “temple money” coins back to the money changers. Jesus over threw that system.

 

          Jesus overthrows all our systems to manipulate God’s plan to our advantage. He overthrows all our plans to structure our lives to avoid the hard call of God on our lives, to attempt to build lives that keep God at a safe distance. The leaders of the people took great pride in their 46 years rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple.  A generation after Jesus’ death and resurrection that Temple was destroyed and all that remains is a retaining wall of the Court of the Gentiles.

          Part way into Lent I invite you to think about the structures of your life. Do they help you to focus on God’s plan for your life? What walls have we built to keep God at a safe distance? How have we misused God’s plan to our own advantage? What are our versions of the spiritual rackets Jesus wants to end?  How can we truly live in the freedom of God’s covenant of freedom in Jesus’ death and resurrection?

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”