Saturday, June 13, 2009

Seeds of Love

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 14, 2009; 2 Pentecost, Proper 6, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 4:26-34) – Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
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"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed..." I would like to combine that opening phrase from today's gospel with another phrase, from 1 John: "God is love." (4:8; 4:16) The seeds that God sows are seeds of love, because God is love.

One of the original images of God is the image of a gardener. Genesis begins one of the stories of creation this way: "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden..." (2:8) Because God is love, what God does is love; what God plants is love. The kingdom of God is as if God scattered seeds of love.

We see the seeds of love in the other creation story in Genesis. In the process of creation, over and over God looked with love at what God had created, "And God saw that it was good." (1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25) Then after God had created humankind in God's own image, and given the earth to our stewardship, the story says, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."

The seeds of God come to us as God's fundamental love and blessing upon us. God is love, and God loves us. God sees the world God has made and God looks upon humankind, and God declares God's loving acceptance, God's blessing upon us: "It is good."

Now we know ourselves to be not-so-good, don't we? And some of us worry about our not-so-goodness. Will God quit being love? Will God quit being loving and accepting toward us?

The story of Jesus is God's great answer to that question. Will God quit loving and accepting us? "No!" God continues to love us, even when we are at our worst, when we act out of fear and guilt and alienation, even when we act with deadly violence and crucify goodness, God is love.

How can God be this way? Let's expand the seed image into the next mini-parable in today's gospel. "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed... like a mustard seed, ...the smallest of all the seeds."

The smallest of all seeds for humanity, is a little baby. Whenever we see a little child, our universal response is, "Oh! How beautiful!" Every human being has a fundamental acceptance and love for a baby, for a little child, the smallest of all the human seeds.

But what if the child becomes fussy and starts making noise? Maybe even gets angry and furious. We still regard the baby as good and beautiful, don't we? When a child becomes fussy, we know that the child may be hungry and is crying because it wants food. Or maybe the baby is wet and needs a change, some clean diapers. Or sometimes it is just tired and needs some rest. When a baby begins to fuss and acts up, we lovingly look to its needs – feeding, cleansing, inviting rest.

Imagine, if you will, God our Creator/Parent, lovingly regarding us. We are all infants in God's infinite eyes. God looks upon each of us as God's very own child, and God says, "Oh! How beautiful!" And God beams upon us the rays of love – enduring, infinite love.

The story of Jesus shows us God's intention for us, especially when we are at our worst – when we get extremely fussy and angry and we act out. In Jesus, God becomes one of us, one with us. And look what Jesus does. Jesus gives us the gifts that every good parent will give to a child. Jesus feeds us; Jesus cleanses us; Jesus gives us rest. It's what we see in the gospel story of Jesus.

When we are hungry, God in Christ feeds us. The only miracle of Jesus that appears in all four gospels is the feeding of the multitude. Jesus feeds everyone. And the radical hospitality of his table was scandalous in his culture. He ate with peasants and rich tax collectors, with sinners and righteous Pharisees, with women and foreigners. He fed not only their physical hunger, but also their spiritual hunger. Teaching about a God of love, who reaches out with blessing to the poor, blessing to those who mourn, to the meek, and to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. On his last night with his friends, when everything was falling apart, he gave them bread and wine, telling them that they would know him to be present whenever they would do this in remembrance of him. When we are hungry, God in Christ feeds us.

When we are soiled and dirty, sitting in the mess of our own making, God in Christ cleanses us, heals us, and restores us to newness of life. One of the reasons Jesus got in trouble with the Temple officials was that he made forgiveness freely available to all, just for the asking. Instant diaper change. You are clean. The characteristic work of Jesus day after day was his work of healing. Taking our brokenness and restoring us to wholeness. He invited everyone into the way of transformation – from sadness to joy, from guilt to freedom, from brokenness to wholeness, from alienation to communion. When we are soiled and broken, God in Christ cleanses and heals us.

Fed, cleansed, loved, accepted – we are invited into rest. Peace. "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My burden is light and my yoke is easy." Christ has already won the victory. We can relax. All is well. You don't have to go anywhere, do anything. You are accepted. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted, as you are. Relax. Rest. Receive Sabbath. When we are weary and tired, God in Christ gives us rest.

Like little babies, we get fussy and cranky and unhappy – when we are hungry, when we are dirty, when we are tired. In the name of Christ, the Church continues doing the same thing that Jesus does.

For the hungry, the Church gives freely the bread of life and the cup of salvation, the food that feeds us with divine life and makes us one in communion with ourselves, with God and with one another.

For the guilty and broken, the Church proclaims God's word and gift of forgiveness, touching us with God's healing presence to reclaim our purity and wholeness as God's own beloved children.

For the tired, the Church invites us into Sabbath rest. Leave the world and rest here a while. Breathe deeply and easily, and simply be, here in the arms of your Creator – embraced, lifted and held in the eternal peace which is your birthright.

Fed, cleansed, rested, we are renewed to go forth into the world rejoicing in the Spirit, to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

God is sowing seed. Seeds of love. Food for the hungry, cleansing for the soiled, healing for the broken, rest for the weary. But it's all one thing. It is Love. For God is love.

Lest this sound too idealistic and sweet, don't miss the point of the mustard seed. What about the mustard seed? Jesus says, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God...? It is like a mustard seed..." Now, you need to know what Jesus' listeners knew. The mustard seed is a weed. No farmer would want a mustard seed mixed among the plants in his field. And heaven forbid that it would grow so large that the birds would nest and roost in it, nasty birds that will snatch up the farmer's seed and peck at the fruit as it ripens. The mustard seed is a joke. "The kingdom of God is like... a mustard seed!" Jesus the comedian. It's like his parable "the kingdom of God is like leaven." Everyone knows leaven is unclean and corrupting. It's like his story of the good Samaritan. Everyone knows Samaritans are bad. It's like his story of the dishonest steward who was commended for using unclean money to secure friendships.

God's mighty works are among the insignificant and the unclean. God embraces the little seeds and the nasty weeds. The kingdom of God comes to the little, the leperous, and the lost. God is love, and it is the little ones, the hungry, the dirty and the tired who need love most.

We are God's garden. God sows us with seeds of love and declares, "It is good." And even when we become weedy and a shelter for nasty seed-eating birds, God embraces us with a comprehensive love. God's mighty works are among the insignificant and the unclean. Bringing food to the hungry, cleansing to the unclean, healing to the broken, rest for the weary. The gardener is showering you with love. Take, eat. Be cleansed and satisfied. Jesus says, "Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Mapping Relationships

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 7, 2009; Trinity Sunday, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Collect for Trinity Sunday) – Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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We've had a beautiful week. It's a lovely time of the year in the Ozarks, isn't it? The sun and rain have greened the earth. We've had some cool evenings and mild sunny days. It's harder now to see the broken limbs from the ice storm and its frigid assault just a few months ago.

All of this teeming life and fecundity is a by-product of relationships. Our earth spins a complete circle on its axis once every twenty-four hours and its relationship to the sun's light gives us day and night. The planet revolves around the sun in a 365-day orbit, a relationship that measures our years; and a slight tilt of the earth's axis in relationship to the sun creates the beautiful flavor of our four seasons.

It's all made possible by relationships. The very being of our life is energized by the mass and movement of our earth, the light and energy of the sun, and the gravity and motion that defines the dance of life between them. The sun, the earth and the forces between them are a singular system that nurtures and sustains our very life.

Here's another way to think about it. The sun is the light and warmth beyond us, transcendent in the heavens, source of the energy that is creating life. We walk into the daylight, and feel the sun's intimate warmth on our face, its light beside us illuminating our way. We eat a meal, and the sun's vital energy is captured by photosynthesis, united to the ground of the earth, and converted into edible foods that sustain us within, entering and nourishing every molecule in our bodies. The sun beyond us, the sun beside us, the sun within us, energizing our world and blessing our lives.

We have an intimate, life-giving relationship with the sun. No wonder early humans worshiped the sun, as a powerful, generous source of life and light.

Well, I hope you've picked up the trinitarian flavor of this conversation thus far – the earth, the sun, and their relationship in space; the sun beyond us, beside us and within us, giving us energy for life. Trinitarian patterns. I'm convinced that a trinitarian pattern is imprinted in the heart of virtually everything in creation. From the dance of the atoms to the symphony of the stars, all of creation is in relationship, and relationship is fundamentally trinitarian.

For any relationship to exist, there must be self-definition between each of the parties and the relationship that exists between them. Atoms are a nucleus, electrons and the atomic field that connects them. For love to exist there must be the lover, the beloved and the love that unites them. For intelligence to occur there must be the thinker, the object of thought and thinking process itself. For creation to happen there must be creator, the medium of creation and the artful act of creating.

All of life is trinitarian, and in that sense everything is created in the image of God. We know God as one Being, a singular source of life and energy – Being Itself. And we experience God as three: God the Father, God-beyond-us; God the Son, God-beside-us; and God the Holy Spirit, God-within-us.

We look beyond us and sense the presence and power of God the source and creator of all, transcendent, "dwelling in light inaccessible from before time and for ever," as we pray in Eucharistic Prayer D. "Fountain of all life and source of all goodness, you made all things and fill them with your blessing; you created them to rejoice in the splendor of your radiance." We are moved with awe – to worship and adore God-beyond-us.

We also know that God has drawn near. Whenever human beings experience beauty, truth or goodness, we know the near presence of God, manifest in the ordinary stuff of our existence – the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God-beside-us. In Jesus we see the human face of God, God incarnate as one of us, the Word made flesh. Showing us how to live as authentic humans, inviting us to walk with him along the way of life – Jesus, God-beside-us, our loving friend and guide.

We also know God within us, the divine agent of inner renewal and transformation, breathing all things into being, mysteriously present, energizing us with the yearning for union and wholeness that alone can fulfill us. God the Holy Spirit, loving us into being and then blowing us into the new and unexpected way of life – God-within-us.

C. S. Lewis enjoyed calling church doctrines, like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, maps. They are maps of reality. Maps aren't the reality that they represent. If I follow a map to the Fayetteville square on Saturday morning and look up at the Farmers' Market, and then look down at a map of Fayetteville, I am turning from something real to something less real.

Even though a map is only colored paper, C. S. Lewis said that there are two things that are important about a map. First, a map is based on the cumulative experiences of thousands of people. A map of the Atlantic Ocean is based on the experience of thousands of people who have sailed and flown over the actual ocean. When we stand on the beach and gaze at the ocean, we have a "single glimpse." The "map fits all of those glimpses together." A map reflects the cumulative experiences of thousands of people.

And the second important thing about maps, Lewis said, is that if you want to go anywhere, you need the map. "As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to [Europe]."

The church has a lot of maps. They chronicle the combined the experience of centuries of faithful people and their relationship with God and with one another. One of our maps is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity – God is One God in three Persons. It can be a fascinating thing just to look at that doctrine, to think about and ponder the theology of the Trinity.

But if you want to know God, you are going to have to let the map lead you into the reality it represents. You'll need to go exploring – let the map we call the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity lead you toward the reality that it describes.

Can you embrace the reality of God-beyond-us – the awesome, transcendent source of all that is, beyond time and forever? Can you walk with God-beside-us – the Way of love, compassion and courage inviting us to die in order to live? Can you enter the dazzling darkness of the immanent mystery within, the yearning spirit drawing us forward and deeper into transforming union?

What we are talking about is relationship. Our relationship with reality itself. Our dance with God, giving light and life to our being.

We look into the vast, infinite wonder of God-beyond-us and we experience ourselves in relationship to the all. We walk intimately in relationship with the loving presence of God-beside-us, leading and guiding us into life abundant. We open trustfully to God-within-us, the energizing spirit that breathes us into being from our inmost depths. It's all one God: creating, renewing, sustaining us into being. One relationship experienced in three persons. The Holy Trinity – our map revealing the experience of generations in relationship with the infinite and holy presence. The Holy Trinity – our map and guide into the fullness of our relationship with God.

Happy Birthday!

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
May 30, 2009; Pentecost Sunday, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15) –Jesus said to his disciples, "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

"I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But, now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, `Where are you going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.".
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On Pentecost the Church was born. God's Holy Spirit breathed fire into a group of huddled, perplexed disciples, who were trying to figure out what to do. Their leader had been executed. After three days he appeared to them, convincing them that his life had been resurrected from death. But then he left them; they experienced his Ascension, his departure from them, a profound absence. And so they waited – waited in a condition of not-knowing, yet in a spirit of anticipation.

On the Jewish Feast of Shavu'ot (sha-voo-oat) – also known as Pentecost because it is 50 days after Passover – when pilgrims from throughout the Jewish world came to the Temple to present the first fruits of the harvest, the Spirit energized the Church into life. Today, Pentecost, we celebrate the Church's birthday.

Part of what we'll do today for this birthday event is to celebrate some of the ministries of this church – recognizing our Sunday School teachers, giving awards to our young choir members, commissioning new servants in our Healing Touch ministry. We'll also have a Birthday party, our annual Parish Picnic after today's 11:00 service. Don't miss it. But most especially today, we will baptize – bringing friends to the waters of new birth where they will be filled with the fire and breath of God's Holy Spirit. And we will feast. We will partake of the heavenly banquet of Christ's life, and be renewed and strengthened for our work. The Spirit is moving. It is Pentecost. Happy Birthday!


Some years ago I picked up a practice to help me begin to pray. As I start a period of prayer, I will first observe my breath, watching it freely move, in and out. Then quietly I will pray, "Oh God, you are closer to me than my own breath. May each breath I take deepen my awareness of you." (from Mark Link, You)

God is as omnipresent and as life-giving as the air we breathe. God's Holy Spirit is the atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being: Like the air, invisible and unnoticed, until it blows, sometimes with refreshing breezes, sometimes with rending force that can shake foundations.

There is an old story about a seeker who came to a holy teacher with the request: "I want to know God; teach me to pray." The teacher took the seeker to a nearby stream, where he suddenly thrust the seeker's head under the water and held it. The seeker struggled, but the teacher would not release. Finally at the point when it seemed that the seeker would drown, the teacher released his grasp, and the seeker burst out of the water gasping for breath. "When you want God as much as you wanted that air," the teacher exclaimed, "then I will teach you to pray."

At the core of our being, where our deepest desires lie, we do desperately want God. At the center of our being, we desperately want to love and be loved; we desperately want meaning, understanding and purpose; we want our lives to count for something – something greater than ourselves. We want to be safe and secure, we want to rest and be at peace; we also want to be energized and truly alive. We want to be comfortable in our own skins – at one with ourselves. We want to be in healthy relationships with our families, our neighbors and our community. At our deepest place, we truly want to be at one with everyone and everything, in a living union with the whole of life. At our core, we want it all. God is all.

God's Holy Spirit is the energy of God breathing us into being – breathing all into being.

Here's the way parishioner Lesley Knieriem describes it when she does our presentation on the Holy Trinity for our Inquirer's Classes each fall and spring: "God the Holy Spirit – ...the Sacred Breath or the Divine Wind – is always proceeding blowing lifting raising swirling inspiring binding together pushing pulling healing enlivening creating redeeming sanctifying loving."

The Spirit is sometimes a quiet and subtle Sacred Breath: Like the invisible air, still and omnipresent around us. Reaching into our lungs and breathing life to every inner molecule of our body, transmitting sound, wrapping plants and animals and everything in a life-giving planetary hug.

The Spirit is sometimes a shattering Divine Wind, tearing away foundations, revealing fault lines, shattering our certainties, transcending the old ways and storming the new upon us with tempestuous power that can make us feel like we are drowning.

But from the torrential waters of Baptism comes the death that brings new life. We ride the storm into the baptismal waters of Christ's death and burial. We are raised to the new birth of resurrection as God's own children and given the fire-breathing breath of the Holy Spirit.

In God's Spirit our desperate needs are satisfied: We are loved and enabled to love; we are given meaning and understanding and purpose; we know our lives count, for we are God's beloved children. Our safety and security is given; we can rest and be at peace. We are energized, on fire with God's Sacred Breath, bringing compassion and justice to everything we touch. We can be comfortable in our own skins, at one with our neighbor, even at one with the whole earth, for as Dame Julian of Norwich said, pondering the fate of those who have never heard the Gospel, all God does is done in Love, and therefore "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Happy Pentecost! Happy Birthday! Happy Re-birth Day!

When Worship Substitutes for Justice

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 14, 2009; 3 Lent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 2:13-22) – The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 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!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" 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.
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In 63 bce, a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabean family not only ousted the foreign Syrian rulers, but also removed the role of high priest from the ancient family of Levi. Scholars believe that some followers of what they regarded as the more legitimate high-priestly family withdrew to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found starting in 1947.

During Jesus' life, there were four major families who competed with one another for appointment as high priest. The Roman governor appointed the office. During that century, the term of most high priests lasted only about four years. But Caiaphas was the high priest for eighteen years, including the entire ten-year term when Pontius Pilate was governor. Obviously they got along very well, the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, and the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

Imagine the ambiguity that the people felt when the priest who represented them before God on the Day of Atonement was the same person who represented them before Rome the rest of the year. (Much of the historical material for this sermon comes from chapter 2 of Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan's book The Last Week.)

Despite their ambivalent feelings toward the high priests, Jews loved their Temple. In 40 ce, when the emperor Caligula planned to install in the Temple a statue of himself as Zeus, tens of thousands of unarmed men, women and children confronted two Roman legions; they were willing to be martyred to protect the holiness of their temple. They loved the Temple.

They also remembered the days of Jeremiah when the prophet accused the rulers of Judah of injustice, saying in the name of God, "If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place... Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?" (Jeremiah 7) For Jeremiah, the Temple had become a refuge for robbers, a safe house for injustice. He joined the tradition of the prophets Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah in demanding justice from God's worshipers. Over and over, through the prophets, God declared to the people, "I reject your worship because of your lack of justice." Jeremiah went so far as to say that God would destroy the Temple because it had become a haven for perpetrators of injustice and a den for robbers. For prophesying against the city and Temple, Jeremiah was arrested and nearly executed.

The Gospels remember the day when Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem and performed an action in the tradition of Jeremiah and Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah. Jesus shut down the Temple. He drove out those who sold the sacrificial animals, he overturned the tables of the money changers. "Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" he cried. And in Mark's version, he recalled Jeremiah's accusations, telling the people they had again made the Temple "a den of robbers." In the Temple that day, Jesus challenged both the Roman imperial power and the Jewish high-priestly collaboration with that power. Jesus fulfilled Jeremiah's threat. He shut down the Temple and its works of injustice. Jesus fulfilled the message of so many prophets, when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God's Temple, or for us, God's church.

It was a symbolic action. The next day the markets were reopened. It was a pivotal action. From that moment the authorities determined to do away with Jesus. It was a prophetic action. Jesus announced God's judgment, and he acted out God's judgment in a dramatic symbol.

These kinds of dramatic, symbolic actions happen frequently. They happen in the cause of justice, and they happen in the cause of injustice.

I remember during the Vietnam War when protesters broke into draft officees and overturned drawers of file cards, sometimes pouring blood on them. A friend of mine who was outspoken in the Civil Rights movement had a cross burned in her yard. A group of young men hijacked two planes and crashed them into the symbols of international capitalism, the World Trade Center in New York. At Fayetteville High School straight students will voluntarily refuse to speak for a day in solidarity with their gay classmates, some of whom have to live in "the closet." A group of regional politicians recently tried to live a week spending no more than $25 on their food, the customary food stamp allowance. Whenever there is a state execution in Arkansas, a group holds a candlelight vigil in front of the Washington County Courthouse. When American colonists resented an unjust tax on tea, they emptied a ship's cargo into the Boston harbor. Iraq just sentenced a journalist to three years in jail for throwing his shoes at President Bush.

We are all familiar with dramatic symbolic actions.

It seems to me that two questions challenge us in the face of today's story about Jesus' action, when he shut down the Temple. First, how do we know when a symbolic action is in the cause of justice and right, and when is that act unjust and wrong? We have to apply the values of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets to our judgment. The prophets insisted that God seeks to uphold the poor and vulnerable, the orphan and widow and alien. Jesus acted consistently out of a motivation of love and compassion, especially on behalf of the outcast and broken. With whom do we side when we hear about symbolic actions?

But the other question that challenges us is the same one that challenged the Temple on that day. Are we zealous in the cause of justice? The prophets tell us that comfortable worship which is detached from justice is unacceptable to God. Amos spoke the word of the Lord: "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ...Take away from me the noise of your songs; ...But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5) And Hosea: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) And Micah: With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? ...Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? ...He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6) And Isaiah: "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; ...I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. ...I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; ...cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1)

It is a good thing to pray and to worship. It is a good thing to come to church, and to make our communion. But if we are not engaged actively in the pursuit of justice, we run the risk of our prayers being unacceptable to God. And if we fail to rescue the oppressed, help the alien, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow; if we neglect to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, we risk the charge of merely being a refuge, a den of robbers.

The lesson of Biblical history is that when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God's Temple. That's not what we want for this congregation. Let this be a place of authentic and healing worship as well as a center for justice and advocacy on behalf of God's purposes. Let us pray well, let us serve well, and let us work well, in the name of Christ.

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