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"In the Middle"
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church - The Rev.
George Smith
3rd Sunday in Lent – March 15, 2009
Exodus 20: 1-7
1 Corinthians 1: 18-25
John 2: 13-22
We are in a middle time – the middle
of Lent. For three weeks, the sanctus bells have been silent,
the altar candle sticks put away, no flowers in sight. The middle
is often a different and difficult place. It has other names
- the sophomore slump, mid-life crisis, the day after the car
warranty expires, primed and yet to be painted, four loads of
laundry folded and four to go, the ides of March (note that
today is March 15), and the book of Lamentations, which falls
half-way through the Bible. The middle is an uncertain place
– too far into to go back, and the end is far away and
often not in sight. This year, Lent extends far beyond a season
of the church year. Our whole world is in a time of Lent, of
serious and prolonged self-examination after we have seen trusted
systems of investing, economics, finance and healthcare become
either badly broken or destroyed altogether. For the first time
in 80 years, the world’s economy will stop growing. The
Japanese economy is declining at an annual rate of 12%. We all
know that the U.S. economy is shrinking as well. Bernie Madoff,
the once revered and trusted investment uber-manager is now
in jail, and investors who thought they had $64 billion now
have nothing but regret and anger at being part of a giant ponzi
scheme. For our nation, it was not a good week for news on the
education front where U.S. teenagers scored 23rd out of the
world’s 30 developed countries in math and science. In
his inauguration speech, President Obama made this assessment
of our situation, “The economy is badly weakened as a
consequence of the greed and irresponsibility of some, but also
our collective failure to make hard choices.” Paul Gilding,
an Australian environmentalist and business expert calls our
world situation “The Great Disruption.” In the middle,
life may be disrupted but does not stop. It becomes intensified
often in painful and difficult ways. Were there signs that we
would be in this mess? Listen to a satirical report from the
Onion newspaper, 2005 issue:
Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd.,
a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items
for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the
“sheer amount of garbage Americans will buy. Often, when
we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’
I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone
will ever buy these.’ ... One month later, we will receive
an order for the same product, but three times the quantity.
How can anyone have a need for such useless garbage? I hear
that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it,
judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen
said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want
an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible.”
With or without salad shooters, the good
news is that we do not wander aimlessly in Lent. Jesus is in
the desert for forty days, but he isn’t lost or twiddling
his thumbs wondering what to do. As always, our Scriptures offer
important guidance. Today’s reading from the Book of Exodus
provides one of the most important narratives of the Bible,
the revelation at Sinai, and the reading from John is the dramatic
and chaotic scene of Jesus herding animals and turning over
tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. At a time when we
are in the middle, both texts are about beginnings. Both offer
insights into foundations of meaning, purpose and direction
for all of humanity. In Exodus, the tired and bedraggled refugees
from Egypt are at the base of Mt. Sinai – which before
them is a symbol of strength and permanence, and a place where
they are transformed into a people with an identity. They are
given a set of instructions. We call them the Ten Commandments
but the Exodus text gives them another title; “all these
words.” Most people, whether religious or not have heard
about and probably can list these many words - several if not
all of the commandments. They fall into two categories –
one that defines the terms of relationship between the people
and God and the other that defines a structure for the life
of the people living in community. There are two categories
but both relate to each other. There can be no community without
partnership with God, and partnership with God is impossible
without a just and properly ordered community. The Ten Commandments
tell us that God and humanity are forever intertwined. Yes,
God also includes consequences and rewards – but notice
that there is optimism in that the punishments are for just
three or four generations but the blessing for a thousand. God
is lopsidedly loving and committed.
The Hebrew people are new to all of this
and although they don’t have a good excuse, at the first
moment of uncertainty, when Moses lingers on the mountain longer
than expected, they pool their gold and whip up a golden calf
– a substitute god, their own god that they can control
and worship on their terms. This is done at the very foot of
Mt. Sinai itself where with singing, dancing and frolicking
they declare mockingly, “This is your God, O Israel, who
redeemed you from Egypt.” Up on the mountain, God gives
Moses the bad news of what is happening down below and tells
him to get down the mountain and return to the people. Then
God says that he wants to destroy the Jewish people and make
Moses a great nation – a harsh but not unreasonable punishment.
They have betrayed God by worshipping a Golden Calf at the very
place where God said, “I am the Lord your God….you
shall not have any other Gods.” What is truly remarkable
is the way that God says this to Moses. God does simply say
or declare what he will do. In fact, he requests permission
from Moses to destroy the people. Listen carefully to the words
God says to Moses, “And now, “hanikha lil”,
or “give me ease” that my anger may rage against
them and wipe them out.” Give me ease? Why does God ask
Moses to give Him ease – permission if you will, and what
is the leverage that Moses has over God? Of course, God can
do whatever God wants and doesn’t need permission. The
answer to this question is a key principle to all Scripture
and our lives as people of God. Going back to the beginning,
to the story of creation, it is plain and clear that in the
design of creation, God desires and intends for partnership
with humanity. We see this when the first thing that God says
to humanity is “Be fruitful and multiply.” God finishes
creating on the sixth day and humanity continues the work going
forward. Now at Sinai, God will not act unilaterally. Unless
Moses gives ease or lets go, God will not destroy the people,
deserved as it may be. Perhaps we should be surprised that Moses
doesn’t give God permission to destroy them. For both
Moses and God, continuing partnership between God and humanity
trumps justice. And this will be seen again and again.
The scene from John’s Gospel can be
seen as a corollary to the revelation and Golden Calf debacle
at Mt. Sinai. Now generations after Moses has died and the Jewish
people have inhabited the land of Canan, building cities and
kingdoms, Jesus encounters not just corruption in the Temple
but a basic system that has undermined the partnership between
God and humanity. That the Temple is a central focus for religious
life is not the problem. Under the religious authorities, complex
rules for making payments to the Temple and offering animal
sacrifices have come to be the means of relationship and encounter
with God. The Temple has become an idol, a black hole –
an end in itself, an establishment that perpetuates itself while
masquerading as relationship with God. The Temple is a giant
ponzi scheme – it looks like God but there is really nothing
there. John’s Gospel is clear that God is not found in
a Temple of columns and stone but in the person of Jesus. It
is Jesus who is God in relationship with humanity, a symbol
of utmost engagement, in flesh and blood, in family and friendship,
in healing and teaching, and in audacious opposition to those
who promote dead and corrupt religion. Paul writes to the congregation
in Corinth that the claim of God in Jesus is seen as utter foolishness
by most of the world. The world wants to see a god that writes
messages in black smoke, causes earthquakes and swiftly destroys
people and cities in a display of power of might. The world
does not like or want a Galilean peasant on a cross. But what
action says more about commitment and engagement with creation
than the cross, allowing that grip that Moses had on God to
go to an extreme, to in fact strangle God, and God allowed it
to happen. But as Paul writes, “God’s foolishness
is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger
than human strength.”
Unlike Pilate, God does not wash his hands of humanity. I would
say that it by all counts is a lopsided relationship. God asks
our permission but we don’t ask his. Without question,
we can walk away from God, but when we do, our creating becomes
chaotic and deadly. In baptism, we are marked as Christ’s
own forever, and we likewise promise to never let go of that
hand – to never give God ease, committing ourselves to
a relationship that is reciprocated beyond anything we can hope
or imagine.
The middle is a hard place to be, whether that middle be the
third Sunday in Lent, the third month of a job search, or the
third pile of laundry. But what is true for the beginning and
our destiny is true in the middle: every day is the reality
of a magnificent and on-going creation, a partnership between
God and humanity that began on the sixth day and has continued
ever since, through great joys and trials, slavery and exodus,
crucifixion and resurrection and many, many middles. May God
bless us and keep us in our work together.
Amen.
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