(Mark 11.15-19)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
The Last Sunday after Epiphany: February 14, 2010
The second in an eight-part series of reflections on the last week of Jesus’ life,
based on the chronology in the Gospel of Mark. Today is Monday of Holy Week.
Our Bible story this morning is from the Gospel of Mark. It is Monday of the last week of Jesus’ life.
Listen for a Word from God.
Jesus and the disciples arrived at Jerusalem. Immediately on entering the Temple Jesus started throwing out everyone who had set up shop there, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of the bankers and the stalls of the pigeon merchants. He didn't let anyone even carry a basket through the Temple. And then he taught them, quoting this text:
My house was designated a house of prayer for the nations;
You've turned it into a hangout for thieves.
The high priests and religion scholars heard what was going on and plotted how they might get rid of him. They panicked, for the entire crowd was carried away by his teaching.
At evening, Jesus and his disciples left the city (Mark 11.12-19, The Message).
May God help us hear and live this word. Amen.
Several weeks ago we were at Starbucks for our Monday evening coffeehouse conversations. We read the story you just heard. And I asked the dozen people there what they’d heard preachers and Sunday School teachers say this story means. We all said the same thing. Jesus was angry because the people changing money in the Temple were charging too much. They were padding their commissions. That’s why Jesus stormed into the Temple, turned over all their tables, and drove them out.
It would be really convenient for most of us if that’s what this story was about. If Jesus is angry about Temple moneychangers making a little too much money, that doesn’t rock my world too much. He’s not asking me to do anything differently … so I can just cheer him on as he tells those greedy moneychangers where to get off.
But that’s not what this story is about. To hear what Jesus is saying, all we have to do is listen to the words he uses … and where they come from. (For a good treatment of what Jesus was really doing in the Temple, see Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’ Final Week in Jerusalem, Harper San Francisco, 2006, pp. 47-53, and Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, SPCK, 2001, pp. 149-54). After he clears out the Temple, Jesus becomes the teacher. He uses words from the prophet Jeremiah. Who was speaking for God when he said, You've turned [God’s] house into a hangout for thieves (11.17).
When Jeremiah spoke for God 600 years before Jesus, he wasn’t talking about moneychangers padding their commissions. He was watching people come into the Temple, worship God, go out of the Temple. And not live any differently. Even though some of them came to the Temple every day to pray, nothing changed. They still ignored street people and orphans and widows. They still supported their government when their government killed, stole, and oppressed (Jeremiah 7.3-7, 11).
When Jesus cleans out the Temple, he’s not complaining about unethical moneylenders. He’s saying the Temple is doing nothing to show people a different way to live. They are still backing violence, theft, and oppression. Jesus’ actions say to the Temple authorities, “You have completely forgotten what it means to be leaders in the house of God. The Temple is where people are supposed to learn what justice looks like. This is where people are supposed to enter, and feel God’s love and forgiveness and be given new life … so they can go out and fall in love with the world. But you, Temple leaders, have thrown God out. You’ve turned the Temple into a place where you show people what injustice looks like. And then you dare tell people that’s the kind of world God wants.”
And when I hear Jesus say that the Temple has forgotten what it means to be God’s house, I wonder what he’s saying about the Christian Church.
The Apostle Paul calls the Church the body of Christ (I Corinthians 12.27). When the Risen Christ looks at his body, I wonder what he sees. And what he thinks. This story from Mark leads me to wonder, Why does the Church exist? And are we doing what the Risen Christ wants his body to do?
This is way too big a question to deal with in one sermon. Or after worship in one sermon talkback. So I’d like to start to answer this question by looking at the word church. And by liberating our imaginations, so we can see some of what the body of Christ might be.
I want to make a modest suggestion. That we imagine replacing the words the church with the words the Way. I didn’t invent this phrase. Right after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the people who came together to follow him called themselves the Way (Acts 22.4). I want to reclaim that word, because I think calling the church the Way frees us to become more like Jesus wants his body to be.
The phrase the Way offers a sense of movement. Following Jesus on the Way is not about staying put and staying comfortable. It’s not about building some grand structure and expecting people to come there and be impressed and become like us. Christ’s Spirit is moving within us. Stirring us up. Making us restless. Healing us. Loving us and loving us and loving us. We move through our world. We see beauty that inspires us to commit ourselves to create more beauty. We see brokenness that breaks our hearts. And we know we need to walk alongside those whose brokenness breaks our heart. So we can help them heal. And so we can be healed by the ones we thought we were healing. But who become Christ to us. And whose friendship changes us forever.
To think of ourselves as the Way instead of the church asks us to be light on our feet. We can’t have too much of anything that’s heavy. We can’t have too much stuff. Or too much nostalgia. Or too much certainty about way things ought to be done. People of the Way don’t have too many valuable and beautiful things we’re afraid might get broken … or stolen. Instead, we move through this world with a spirit of lightness and freedom. That’s one of the things I find most exciting about us. We’re light on our feet. We aren’t weighed down by the things that can become more important to us than following Jesus.
Imagining ourselves as the Way instead of the church reminds us we never arrive. We never get there – wherever there is. The Way says what life is about is walking beside others who are walking beside Jesus. Falling down, picking each other up, falling down, picking each other up … as we try to do this almost-impossible thing of being Jesus’ body on this earth. Loving, loving, loving … forgiving, forgiving, forgiving … rejecting violence always … letting joy fill us so we never become bitter … taking the risk of seeing the face of God in our enemy. And letting ourselves fall more and more in love with this Jesus, with each other, with ourselves. We let ourselves fall more and more in love with the motley collection of people we stumble across, and who stumble across us … people who decide the life they’ve been looking for forever is the life of following on the Way.
It’s still pretty true that the most segregated period of the week is Sunday mornings. Most congregations do not resemble a rainbow but tend more toward primarily one color. I look at those who Jesus hung out with with a deep sense of envy. One writer speaks to my envy. “What an extraordinary thing it must have been to sit around a table with that eclectic mix of Zealot revolutionaries, Roman tax collectors, peasants, Samaritans, prostitutes, and fishermen, all conspiring to find a radical new way of life” (Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution, Zondervan Press, 2006, p. 139). I wish I knew how to build friendships naturally with people who don’t look and sound so much like me. I know we can’t become that eclectic mix if we think following Jesus is about people just naturally finding their way to us and our church. If we’re people of the Way … if we believe we have been given Good News to share … and if we believe God waits to meet us in people who don’t look or sound like us … then we have to risk stepping out. We have to risk stepping out of the known and the comfortable and the established and the safe. To form friendships with people who come from different places and have very different stories than we do, we have to find ways and find the courage to enter the scarier worlds where others live … and let them be our hosts … and let them change us ….
Finally, the image of the Way says we see the world as it is. You’ve been on the hiking trail for several hours. A 1000-foot vertical rise awaits you. You might wish the path sloped gently downwards, right through the doors of Café Ladro. But what’s real is that thousand-foot vertical rise. People of the Way can’t hide behind stained-glass windows and mahogany doors and burglar alarms, and pretend what’s outside isn’t there and doesn’t need them. People of the Way see what’s in front of us. And we imagine ways to respond. With love, humility, and justice. Without violence or defensiveness. With a desire to make friends with what and whom we fear. So we all might walk with each other and with Jesus on the Way.
Every week here at Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ, we say we build a faith that asks questions and changes us. I love this phrase. Because following Jesus is all about asking questions. And all about changing. Following Jesus is about living a rhythm of movement. So we choose to leave what is comfortable. We choose to step away from what we know into what we do not. Into places we’ve never been before. Because life is not about arriving but about being on a rhythm of movement. So we are willing to let go of so much that we’d rather cling to … so we can be light on our feet. And allow Jesus Christ to lead us. To places where most people don’t look our sound like us … to places where we are stretched and challenged in painful ways … As people of the Way, we allow Jesus Christ to lead us to places where we see how the world really is … even if we don’t want to see it. Because this is God’s world. Even if seeing it breaks our hearts, this is God’s world. It’s where Christ wants to lead us.
One of you gave me a book for Christmas by someone who has followed Jesus on the Way to some of the most broken places on this earth. This man and his family have spent their lives living alongside people who call these violent, impoverished places ‘home’. And these unlikely neighbors have fallen in love with each other. The writer dedicates his book to a man whose name he doesn’t know …
To the man begging in India,
who turned my world upside-down,
so that I could stand upright
(John B. Hayes, Sub-merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World, Regal, 2006).
That’s what Jesus wants his body to do. We travel as the Way … we follow people who follow Jesus on the Way … and we let our journey turn our worlds upside-down. So we can stand upright. And see the world as it is. And fall in love with it anew. Amen.
*The title is from the dedication page of John B. Hayes, Sub-merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World, Regal, 2006
0 comments:
Post a Comment