Sunday 19th March 2006Lent 3
Fr David Cherry
Exodus 20 : 1 – 17 ; I Corinthians 1 : 18 – 25 ; John 2 : 13 - 25
‘….the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God’ – words from the epistle this morning.
It is God’s communion with you and me which uncovers in us this true and heart-felt desire.
St Luke gives us the story of the young Jesus at home in the Temple, among scribes and Pharisees ‘about his Father’s business’. He is at home in the centre of the religious establishment, debating with the learned and wise. The Temple, in that story, is a place where wisdom for life is to be found; where the will of God is considered and guidance sought. From there, St Luke’s tells us, He ‘increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man’. Jesus grew in his vocation as the Beloved Son of his heavenly Father.
The cleansing of the Temple in the Synoptics is found before the final events of Jesus’ earthly life. St John gives it near the beginning of his gospel – chapter two and in the same chapter as the wedding in Cana. The message there was of huge, empty pots for the religious rite of purification standing empty. The old covenant had run dry. The sign at Cana is that it is Jesus who will fill them with water and transform them. What is old will be renewed; what we bring will be given new meaning. In St John’s gospel this is the first sign.
And then the next sign is an outworking of what those empty purification pots signified: a disruption that leaves us bewildered - the turning of the tables on the old order of profiteering, power and competition; the exacting of a price for worship and all the human commerce, the product of human envy and idolatory, that is alien to God and true religion. The ‘Zeal for thy house which has eaten him up’ is the zeal of those who want to defend the old religion, the vehemence of those with vested interests. Every sign that Jesus gives will be received as a threat by the religious authorities. And with good reason for the cleansing of the temple is a sign that the old is now redundant – as redundant as a fig tree which will not bear fruit and is condemned to wither.
And Jesus’ fury? It is a paradox. In effect Jesus is saying: “If the only God you can recognise is a god of vengeance and violence, look here he is: recognise him now in his Temple overturning the things you love and worship, the idols of your profiteering, by the only means you can recognize your alien god: violence. Read the sign in your own terms.”
The terms are ours: It is we humans who make of religion an idol-god in itself and demand an exacting, inhumane price in the name of it. We may not agree with Richard Dawkins that all religion is the cause of war; but we need to own that what humans have done to our world faiths and how we have used them to our own ends is catastrophic.
We have just sung: The dearest idol I have known / Whate’er that idol be / Help me to tear it from thy throne /
And worship only thee
No longer at home among the scribes inhaling the wisdom as he did in his early teens, Our Lord, having grown and been anointed with the vocation that is uniquely his, acts in the moment, giving us a sign. It is Christ himself now who in himself is inaugurating a new order, a new culture of the dispossessed and powerless around himself.
St Paul is beginning to grasp the contradictory truth of the power of Jesus’ death when he writes ‘….the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God’
To those who are being saved – those who are allowing this new culture to come home to them - will understand the message and be filled with hope; those who are defended against it will find themselves disillusioned and their hopes perishing before their eyes.
Humanity is prone to idol worship, to possessing and trying to capture, to hold onto power, wealth – to control, often at the expense of our very souls. “For what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his very self?” asks St Matthew. Our idols come at a terrible cost to ourselves and others.
In the Post Communion prayer for last Sunday we prayed to a God : ‘who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves’. This is where we find ourselves – the human condition.
May God save us from being so wrapped up in the maintenance of the Church, a religious status-quo or of this beautiful building even; or trapped by limited aspirations that we fail to notice the inclusive culture of God’s love which overtakes us.
And the first lesson, the Ten Commandments from Exodus: Fr Timothy Radcliffe reminds us in his book (What the Point of Being a Christian?) that Laws are there to remind us what it is we really want – what we really and most naturally aspire to. The Ten Commandments remind us that we do not want to be lost in a cycle of covetousness or envy; jealously guarding our lives against any intrusion; we do not want to live in denial of how we are lest we be disturbed.
Paradoxical signs leave us in a different place; their strangeness confuses us, leaving us wondering who we are now that we find ourselves relativised and in our proper place. Signs are disturbing. They’re disconcerting. That’s the point. They leave us self-questioning, self-critical. Who am I now? How do I live? What are my values? What is really most important to me? What is the Church really for?
It is a great pleasure and privilege that we can extend our love through almsgiving in Lent to the church abroad and feel their claim upon us through the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; and to welcome Mary Corish with us today to speak to us about the work and projects of USPG. May we feel some kind of communion with all who love our God in cultures which are so different from ours; united with those who desire God as much and as deeply as we do; and for the coming of God’s kingdom of justice and freedom.
It is God’s communion with you and me which uncovers in us this true and heart-felt desire; a desire which unlocks our fear and sets us free to love.
As Passiontide draws nearer we begin to ponder the powerless of God in Jesus reversing the wisdoms of this world; the commonly held belief systems, a product of human fear and expediency:
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?... the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men
.
All this so that you and I may live in freedom and generosity – a living and corporate sign to others of the One and only true God in our midst.
The Cross is a sign of contradiction: powerlessness against the mania for power: to them that are perishing it is foolishness; but to us who are being saved from illusion it is the power of God. Amen.