A Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Steven L. Thomason
St. Paul’s EpiscopalChurch in Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 11, 2012.
St. Paul’s Episcopal
March 11, 2012.
The Scripture
Texts for the Third Sunday after the Lent, Year B, are:
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.]
On
the last day of December a couple of years ago, Diana Butler Bass received a
New Year’s greeting from a friend who wished her the gift of “discontent” and
enclosed this prayer:
O God, make me discontented with
things the way they are in the world and in my own life. Make me notice the
stains when people get spilled on. Make me care about the slum child downtown,
the misfit at work, the people crammed into the mental hospital, the men, women
and youth behind bars. Jar my complacence, expose my excuses, get me involved
in the life of my city and world. Give me integrity once more, O God, as we seek
to be changed and transformed, with a new understanding and awareness of our
common humanity.[1]
I
suppose not many among us would consider “discontent” a gift, but it is just
such an impulse that lifts the corner of complacence and invites us to consider
the possibility of “other.” It is the fuel for innovation; it is the fulcrum
for change in its various forms; and it is, I would contend, a necessary
component in the admixture of faith. It seems to me that Lent is an ideal time to consider the invitation into the unsettled gift of discontent. It begs the question, do things
have to be the way they are?
Which
is what, I think, Jesus must have thought when he entered the Temple courtyard
during the Passover Festival. Something about the status quo upset him, and in
the winter of his discontent, he took action.[2]
So
just what was Jesus so unhappy about? Sadly, the Church, for much of its
history, has taught that Jesus’ action was a repudiation of the temple practice
of animal sacrifice altogether. Most scholars now agree that there is no
evidence for such a conclusion, that it has anti-semitic overtones, and that
Jesus was never interested in wanton disregard of the Law and its tradition. He
was a faithful Jew who practiced the religion earnestly, even while being
guided by its overarching directives to love God and love neighbor which informed every detail of how he lived life under the Law.
There
is considerable evidence, however, that the temple economy had itself become
gluttonous and usurious, taking advantage of the poor who were just trying to eke
out an existence amid imperial oppression, while adhering to the religious
requirement of devoting themselves to God within the context of the temple
economy.
The
meat was then returned to the family making the sacrifice, with a portion
donated to the priest and his family, and together with sacrifices of grain and
other food items, the holy meal was celebrated by the family acknowledging God’s
generous blessings in their lives. It was a part of the orderly conduct of a
society whose religious practices were central to their identity.[3]
But
when Jesus enters the temple square something sets him off. Some suggest that the moneychangers and their animals
had migrated from their designated places in the outer courtyards into the holy
space of the inner temple court. And, moreover, it is likely they were charging
inflated prices for the animals and pocketing the difference. A religion’s
well-intentioned venue of assistance for pilgrims gone awry, and at the expense
of those just trying to be faithful.
It
stirs Jesus to action. He turns their tables over, spilling their coffers on
the ground, and quickly fashions a whip to shoo the animals out.[4] You can just imagine the scene as the
moneychangers scurry to collect their change and gather up their animals amid
the chaos of a crowded square, which would have had thousands of people there for the festival.
But
there is nothing that would lead us to conclude that Jesus’ actions that day
did little more than irk those in power and create a temporary disturbance to
their operation… Except--except that it must have turned a few heads, and some perhaps
followed him, and believed in what he was saying and doing, and found the courage to act in their own right. We who sit here today bear witness to their legacy of
faithful action, stirred by the passions of discontent with the world as they
found it, while also finding joy and hope that a loving God was engaged in ushering in a new world order, and had invited them to work in it.
And
in the wake of the temple’s destruction a few decades later, they remembered
what Jesus said, and managed to find meaningful expression in this body being
the temple wherein God chooses to reside.
Now
I should state here than when taken to extreme, discontent can sour, turning
restlessness to rage, with destructive consequences both for the one
discontented, and often for others who bear the brunt of such venomous
invective. Or if discontent is not guided by a prevailing sense of compassion
and a deep desire to work for change, then a cynicism resigned to inaction may
set in. I don’t think that is what we are talking about, either when Jesus
takes on the temple leaders, or in the invitation for us to consider discontent
a gift in its own right.
I’ve
been reading Diana Butler Bass’s latest book, Christianity After Religion, in which she writes:
“Religious
discontent is indistinguishable from the history of spiritual renewal and
awakening. Religion is often characterized as contentment, the idea that faith
and faithfulness offer peace, security, and certainty. In this mode…the church
[is depicted]as an escape from the cares and stresses of the world…[But] in the
prophetic mode, faith discomforts the members of a community, opens their eyes
and hearts to the shortcomings of their own lives and injustice in the world,
and presses for human society to more fully embody God’s dream of healing and
love for all peoples.”[5]
I
think many of us choose to be here at St. Paul’s because it is a place where we
are striving, together and individually, to be faithful to such a prophetic
vision, whereby we refuse to become too settled in our seats of comfort as long
as we see injustices prevailing in our time.
To
be sure, we are pastorally-inclined, both within our community and for those
outside of it. A healthy community strikes the balance between its pastoral and
prophetic identities. Remember, Jesus retires from the temple courtyard and then shares a holy meal with his friends who needed it. It is what we do here at this table as well--we are nourished, we support one another, then we go about the life together, caring for one another.
We,
too, are concerned for the well-being of each other—but not just ourselves, but
for the world as well.
Some
may say, now is not the time…to take
on this or that injustice. I am reminded of Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, written to
well-meaning white pastors in Alabama who were pleading with him to wait in his
cause of civil rights. I think we’d still be waiting for the “right” time had
not his and others’ prophetic voices of discontent been heard…
Some
may say that we have a wanton disregard for scripture or for our tradition when
we stand with those who are oppressed, rather than condemning them as outsiders.
I am reminded of the biblical tradition of prophets like Joel and Micah and Amos, and Jesus,
whose prophetic voices called for “justice to roll down like a river,” and for
us to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God,” and above all
else: love God and your neighbor.
To
be prophetic is to live with the tension of discontent with the world as it is,
and make no mistake, now is the time, this is the place for action.
For this community, as we earnestly live into a new spiritual awakening....
For your prophetic voices, expressed in a broken hurting world...
For your courage to act, in God's name...
--may God’s holy name be praised.
[1]
Butler Bass, Diana. Christianity After Religion, New York: HarperCollins, 2012,
p. 83ff.
[2] This encounter with the moneychangers is
recorded in all four gospels, a fact that scholars generally agree enhances its
historical placement in the record of Jesus’ life. But its place in the gospels varies: here in
John’s gospel it occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, while in the other
three gospels, it occurs near the end of his life. Here, Jesus makes the
connection with the temple of his body; elsewhere he does not. But in all of
them Jesus is portrayed clearly as discontented with something he saw, and
among the throngs of people who were present for Passover, he acted.
[3] The animals were set apart for this
sacred purpose, not as some antiquated practice of animal cruelty cloaked in
religious fervor seeking to assuage an angry God, but as a way that people
could eat fresh meat safely and in the context of their religious tradition
which demanded that all aspects of life be lived in reference to God. Would
that we slaughtered our food as humanely and gratefully in our own time!
[4] There
was no evidence that Jesus used the whip on the people, by the way, as is
sometimes claimed by preachers, although the writer of John’s gospel uses an
odd sentence construction to keep us guessing: “Making a whip of cords, he
drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle.”
[5]
Op. cit., Bass, p. 88.
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