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Worship Times Refreshments & Christian Education Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From March 19, 2006 Actions, they say,
speak louder than words. Actions speak louder than
words. Every wall in the sanctuary that could be glass was. And for good reason. Like an amphitheatre, the sanctuary pitched slightly downward so that each parishioner could have an unobstructed view of sky and the striking expanse below. The Sunday I visited happened to be Palm Sunday, that occasion in the life of the church when we remember Jesus' triumphal entry into the pilgrim-packed city of Jerusalem. The Sunday that, in three of the four gospels anyway, marks the beginning of Jesus' earthly end. Before the service someone came to the microphone to make a quick announcement. It was the Christian Education director inviting folks to walk the somber Via Dolorosa (the Stations of the Cross) that the Sunday School had labored to create the day before. "Meet us out back after church," the director said brightly. Next the worship leader took the microphone. "Hey what about those..." and he named some sports team. That week-end a pro game had captured all Arizona's attention. The congregation hooted and hollered for the smashing victory the day before. Finally it was time for worship to begin. "Turn to the back of your bulletin where you'll find our opening hymn." The praise band started playing softly in the background. "Now, sing like you mean it," the leader encouraged as the music swelled. The hymn was one written expressly for contemporary congregations. It had a rhythm snappy enough and a melody catchy enough to remind me of a theme song to one of the westerns of my youth. Bonanza, maybe. "Jesus, Jesus, Our Jesus was a rebel, a livin' lovin' rebel, our Jesus was a rebel who said it like it was." For four full verses, the hymn continued in this vein. Somewhere between the peppy tune, the well-intentioned language of the hymn, and the setting itself, I experienced what can only be called dissonance. Disharmony. Theological indigestion. What had been cooked up to go down easy was not settling well with my soul. Jesus was a rebel, a revolutionary if you will. Each of the four gospels makes it plain that it was Jesus' rebelliousness in Jerusalem that was the downward-turning point in his ministry. Jesus' passionate cleansing of the Temple, so fierce and furious, is the action that spoke louder than any words he could have ever uttered. This action, combined with Rome's perception that he was an insurgent, is what led to Jesus' arrest, trial, and death. Jesus was a rebel. In the first three gospels, the Synoptics, Jesus' outrage at the oppressive Temple system takes place at the end of his ministry. In Matthew, Mark, as well as in Luke, this dramatic and direction-changing moment comes after all the preaching, all the healing. It comes after all the unsatisfying encounters with the Pharisees and scribes. It comes after Jesus has wandered his homeland sleeping in strange beds, eating at the tables of new friends, and hearing the stories of the hurt and the helpless, the last and the least, the cast aside and the cast offs. In the Synoptic gospels, Jesus' fury is unleashed only after his ministry has taken him far and wide. But in John's gospel, this table-turning happens almost immediately. In John, Jesus' rebelliousness, his radical comment on the corruption and exploitation of the Temple system, this is what sets the tone for everything to follow. From the get-go, John's Jesus means to give notice: he sees plainly what is wrong. He will not stand by and accept the unacceptable. No, Jesus' ministry will not begin with him sauntering the edges of his society, slowly turning over a rock here and a rock there to consider its underbelly, until he finally sees that a religious revolution is in order. No. In John, Jesus goes straight to the heart of his faith - Jerusalem and its Temple - and without hesitation or help, he does something intended to turns it upside down. In John, Jesus' actions, and not pontifications or explanations, not debates or dialogue, in John, Jesus' provocative action at the Temple is his message. "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" Jesus says armed with pure passion and an improvised whip. Tables tumble this way, cattle scramble that way. Screeching and squawking, birds loosed from cages take to the sky, while sheep scurry helter-skelter, bleating as they go. Money-changers fall to their knees, madly scraping the ground for the coins that got away. With his heart full of God, Jesus sees what others cannot - a Temple system that over time has lost its way, becoming an impediment to grace rather than its source. Believing that their God dwells only in the Temple, Jews must make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to perform the rites and rituals proscribed by their faith. These are expensive undertakings; once they arrive in the holy city, pilgrims are obliged to buy the animals they wish to sacrifice. They are also required to pay Temple tax. Additionally, pilgrims are charged for the service of having their Roman money converted into coins acceptable for holy purposes. To worship rightly in first century Palestine is an expensive proposition, one that so benefits the priests and the Temple system that it places a tremendous burden on the poor. A burden that burdens Jesus as well. With his heart full of God, Jesus sees that it is more than reform that is warranted here but an entire revolution. A revolution in thought and practice. A revolution in belief about how and where God is found. Jesus' passion, his compassion, his love for God and God's people leave him no choice. In a symbolic act of dissent, Jesus overturns the moneychangers' tables; he sets the sacrificial animals free. Making it impossible for people to carry any goods in or out of God's house of prayer, Jesus shuts down Temple operations altogether. From that moment on, Jesus' actions pronounce, God can be found in every human heart and within every faith-filled, forgiving community. For those whose lives depend on this Temple system, for those whose economic and political privilege is tied to the perpetuation of generations-old Temple practices, Jesus the provocateur poses the ultimate threat. Which is why he will not die of old age but on the cross as a still-young man. By and large,
believers of the northern hemisphere do not know this
Jesus in John's gospel, the one who would launch his
ministry in such a revolutionary way. But believers in
the southern hemisphere do, and in him find hope and
inspiration. Why? Because this Jesus is their savior not in some far-off existence in another life. He is their savior here and now, in the living of lives that are riddled with the pain of poverty borne of injustice. As their Christ, as the one whose transformation-seeking passions were in action in Jerusalem, the poor of the southern half of the planet know that wherever structures oppress Christ works to lead revolutions of love. This is the Jesus of the southern hemisphere. But in the northern hemisphere, in the many places where privilege and power flourish, we don't much know this Jesus who upturns tables and shakes the foundations of established systems. A few do. A few know this Jesus. People like the brothers Berrigan, Dan and Philip, American Catholic priests who, during Vietnam and again during the height of the cold war, risked and served prison time for the sake of their table-turning Lord. So did Martin Luther King, Jr. A few know this revolutionary Jesus, this man willing to put his passions to work and his body on the line for the sake of the powerless. This past week-end and again tomorrow, as the war in Iraq hits the three-year mark, any number of people in North America and Europe are putting their passions into action for Christ's sake to call for an end to a tragic and perhaps unwarranted war in which military losses will never come close to civilian casualties and the world-wide consequences of this war's violence. The congregation that Palm Sunday morning, chirping away in Arizona about the rebel Jesus? That congregation was no different than most of the faithful in this great nation of ours. Something in us recognizes Jesus as a rabble-rouser but all our years of Jesus, Savior, Meek and Mild, all those images of him with his flowing blond hair and sweet blue eyes makes it hard for us to see Jesus for who he really is. Our journey into Lent is neither easy nor comfortable. It takes us to vistas that demand that we look out upon parts of the human story, parts of our own stories, that are profoundly difficult to take in. Our journey into Lent asks hard things of us, including hard questions about who this one is that you and I have come to know as our Savior. Lent is not the time for comfort. Nor it is the time for easy answers. It is a time to be troubled, troubled by all the right things. That said, allow me to trouble you just a moment more, then I will entrust you to the Spirit of Truth, whom Christ sends to each of his beloved. Christian writer Dan Clendenin writes that today's passage from John is "an unnerving story that reminds us that there is no such thing as 'business as usual' with Jesus, and that all who come to him must come on his terms, not ours." Who is this Jesus we come to? Who is this Jesus who has a hold on our lives? If for him there is no such thing as business as usual, then what is it he is calling us to? And how do we answer not with words but with passionate action? These are my questions for us this third Sunday in Lent. As you pray over these questions, my prayer is that the Spirit of Truth lead you, the Spirit Christ promises elsewhere in John's gospel: "I have said these things to you while I am still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything... Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." (John 14: 25-26.) Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel I am grateful for John Dear's clear and compelling book, Jesus the Rebel: Bearer of God's Justice and Peace, and especially for his chapter "Tables Overturned," from which I have borrowed information and even some precise wording. For those unfamiliar with his bold witness, John Dear is a well-published Jesuit priest serving the poor in New Mexico, a follower who not only studies Jesus' life but who lives in a manner similar to that of Jesus the rebel. This sermon was also enriched by the insights of Dan Clendenin expressed in his internet posting of March 13, 2006, Subtle as a Sledgehammer, found at journeywithjesus.net |
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