The scene of Jesus in the Temple
with whip in hand seems to contradict our picture of a gentle
Savior who tells us, I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will
find rest for your souls. Today we see an angry side of Jesus.
We do note that it never says he actually whipped anybody or
hurt anybody. He was consumed with zeal to honor God.
There's
a spiritual translation for this memorable episode. If you and
I are the Temple of the Lord, then we must be consecrated to
the Lord. The Holy Spirit does the work of cleansing us, getting
rid of all that doesn't belong in God's Temple. Whatever
distracts us from the life of prayer, whatever is not of God,
needs to be overturned and thrown out of this Temple. The countertops
of greed and envy must be swept, the shelves of bitterness and
resentment must be cleared, side boards of fear and doubt removed.
It's amazing how things can collect that we no longer need
or even want—and how they can crowd God out of our lives.
Our personal Temple should be regularly cleaned and spruced up
and rededicated to its true purpose.
Now here's a transition between these two passages. If there
was one place folks expected to find God, it was in the Temple.
Many good people made personal sacrifices to go on a pilgrimage
there, to get close to the Holy of Holies. The surprise is, the
attitude of gain and exploitation had all but driven God away.
There was no sense of the divine presence, no feeling of holiness.
You might as well have been at a flea market. The place where God
was presumed to be most present—God could hardly be found.
But that's not all. Our reading from Corinthians tells us:
the places where nobody expected to find God—where some thought
God would NEVER be—there God was most likely to be present.
Where do we often find God's Son? With the broken, the
beaten down, the sick, the losers and the drifters, the unreligious
and the forgotten. He chose to be with the foolish, and he befriended
the weak.
There's an interesting phenomenon going on in our country
today. It is Spring Break time. For many, that means party time
in some place sunny and with a beach and palm trees. But for
a lot of students there is a new look to spring break. It has
been growing for some years now, but this year it is especially
true. Spring break is mission time—particularly in the
area hit by Katrina. Young people are looking for ways to help
and looking for significance. They want to do something that
touches peoples' lives, that makes a difference for those who
are hurting. So, there are two competing trends. Commercial culture
calls us to greater self-indulgence. The call of God draws us
to service and altruism. We believe the realm of God is involved
in this and will grow like the mustard seed Jesus spoke of. It
is a way of life that has small beginnings—hardly
noticeable—but by and by it is the biggest thing around.
It happens that way in our soul. Sometimes it takes a long time
to germinate. It is like one of the seeds they found frozen in
ice up in the Italian Alps several thousand years old. Then they
planted them and lo and behold, they grew.
The new life in Christ is a fragile plant. It needs care, nurture,
guidance, prayer, strengthening. And sometimes people discover
it only in later years. It can seem silly. Why waste our time
on matters of the heart, matters of the soul? These are the most
important matters of all.
Let me share a Katrina story. Maybe
some of you saw it on the news a while back. It was about a family
who lived in the Lakeview section of New Orleans. When Katrina
was going to hit, they were able to evacuate to Destin, Florida.
Then something awful happened. Karen Schlotter, wife and mother,
had an accident with a rental car in Florida. She was twenty
eight. That left Darrell, the husband, and their two year old
son Luke. Darrell is a building contractor and on TV he seemed
like the kind of guy who pours a lot of energy into his trade.
Suddenly, he was the primary caregiver of a two year old child.
Their house, like everyone else's was a mess. What to do?
While a lot of people were deciding to rebuild or not, Darrell
got a crew together and restored the house beautifully. Now it
stands in the neighborhood like a beacon of hope. It is close
to the 17th street canal. Maybe it wasn't wise, maybe it
was foolish, but maybe there is a greater wisdom there. Darrell's
emotions are still close to the surface. That house seems like
a work of his soul: for Karen who lost her life, for Luke, for
the larger community. It is a beacon of hope.
From among our congregation some have gone to help in Louisiana,
including Jim and Glenn Wilson and Andy Cooney. Priscilla Bell
also traveled there. Their work brought hope to not just one
family but to a whole neighborhood. Collectively, as people from
all over America go, there's a strengthening of the bonds
of community and in many cases of the Christian church. Out of
weakness and devastation, something new is emerging.
But this teaching of scripture does not come readily to us—we
often want to avoid weakness—especially our own. We want
to get past it as soon as possible. But we ought not to rush
too quickly, for there, at the point of need and vulnerability,
we just might meet God. Though we gravitate toward the seemingly
strong and powerful, the Apostle Paul reminds us, the Lord says,
my strength is made perfect in weakness.
In the Greece of New Testament times, everybody loved a good
debate. Philosophers and debaters were the rock stars of their
day. Score one for the Stoics! The Epicurians are on the board!
Apparently the church also got caught up in the hype. They allowed
arguments and ideology to blind them from the one thing necessary:
Christ, the crucified and risen Lord. Loving God was supposed
to be their primary mission, but that was the last item on their
agenda. It seemed like it had been taken off their agenda. They
said "we have these miraculous powers, we have accomplished
this, this, and the other thing. We hold firmly to these articles
of faith. Aren't we special?" But the Lord is there
like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof: Yes, but do you love me?
God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. What does
it mean? It could mean God is so smart that even at his least
smart, he is smarter than we are. God's weakness is stronger
than human strength. I am sure that is true, but that is not
what it means. It means that the things that we often regard
as silly, pathetic, hopeless, or ridiculous are often the very
place where God can break through. Human strength relies on force—sometimes
force of intellect, but when all else fails, brute force. God's
power comes to us through an unlikely means: the utter helplessness
of the cross.
Rita Berglund has a unique ministry with children who have
cancer. This ministry was born out of her own son's experience
of cancer. She wrote a book called An Alphabet
about Kids with Cancer. A is for Aches, B is for Body, C is of course for Cancer,
D is for Dying. On it goes. Then she gets to U. U is for understanding. "Because
cancer can be a terrible and difficult thing, everybody needs
lots of understanding. Take time to listen to the people around
you. Take time to talk about what you are thinking and feeling
and doing. Take time to make new friends. Take time to celebrate
old friends. Understanding is way of making the hard work of
living with cancer a little easier"
This week's challenge: look for God in unexpected places.
Watch the news with eyes of faith. Listen for the points of need
and even helplessness in the lives of those around you—and
even your own life. See beyond devastation to new life. See the
crocuses poking up through the ground. See the Cross of Christ,
take a good look at it—and know that there, at the world's
darkest day, God is most powerfully present, and resurrection
will not be far off.
Let us pray: Lord of all, in love you continually approach
us. Often we fail to see you in those unlikely places. Give us
eyes to see you where we might not expect to, and to follow Christ
into needy lives and broken places. Amen. |
