Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

VIDEO

Christianity is weird.
And if you take it seriously,
it will make you seriously weird as well.
This is the good news.

Of course, 
this might not sound like good news.
After all, most of us
(even here in Baltimore)
don’t want to be weird;
we just want to fit in and get along.
We never really outgrow 
that fear that lodges in us
around the time we enter Middle School—
the fear of being mocked as a weirdo:
not liking the right things,
not wearing the right clothes,
not listening to the right music.
Despite our culture’s strong emphasis
on individuality and authenticity,
at the end of the day 
we are remarkably conformist:
we tend to follow
paths that will win for us 
the approval and admiration 
of those around us. 

St. Paul tells us that
“Jews demand signs 
and Greeks look for wisdom.”
We all want signs that confirm 
that we are on the proper path
toward strength and security;
we all want wisdom that will enable us
to navigate the world as it is.
What we don’t want is a sign
that becomes an obstacle we stumble over
and which makes us change our path;
what we don’t want is a wisdom
that suggests that the world as it is
might not be the world 
that we should be striving for.
But this is the sign and this is the wisdom
that Jesus offers us,
because what he offers us is the cross:
“a stumbling block to Jews 
and foolishness to Gentiles”—
something so counter 
to the desires and expectations of the world
that to those who seek signs of power
it looks like weakness,
and to those who seek words of wisdom
it sounds like folly,
and to those of us who just want to fit in,
who want to like the right things,
and wear the right clothes 
and listen to the right music,
who just want to get along 
without being thought weird,
is seems like a recipe 
for an extremely unhappy life.

Of course, over the centuries 
we have found ways to tone down 
the weirdness of Christianity,
to cover over the cross,
to accommodate the Gospel 
to worldly understandings
of power and wisdom.
We have turned the law of God 
into common sense advice
that will ensure a healthy and happy life
and the smooth running of society,
rather than the commanding voice of the Lord
calling us to offer our entire selves 
as a living sacrifice to God.
We have turned Jesus into a teacher 
of sensible moral lessons,
or a savior who has suffered 
so that we won’t have to,
rather than the disruptive prophet
who interrupts religious business as usual
and offers his body, crucified and risen,
as the true temple that we must enter
if we wish to worship God in Spirit and in truth.
We have made Christianity into a force of stability
that guarantees happy marriages and strong nations
and all the other things that we consider normal desires.

But the Gospel is not so easily normalized.
The figure of Jesus 
discovered in the pages of Scripture,
the life of the Spirit manifested
in that collection of oddballs we call
the communion of saints,
the peculiar practices of the Church,
which week by week invites 
those who have died in Christ
to feast on his flesh and blood—
all of this makes it hard to deny 
just how weird Christianity is.

We might think of Lent 
as our annual invitation
to turn from the world’s power and wisdom
and rediscover and re-embrace 
the weirdness of the Gospel.
We begin by smearing ashes on our heads
and being told that we must die; 
and we conclude by lighting candles in the dark
as we spend hours listening to old stories
about a universe being built from nothing,
a son nearly sacrificed at God’s behest,
an army drowned by miraculous waters,
and a tomb found empty
and a dead body mysteriously missing.
And in between we strive 
by fasting, prayer, and works of charity
to wean ourselves away 
from the world’s normality
so that we might enter into that weird world
where weakness is strength
and foolishness is wisdom,
where the dead don’t stay dead
and faith, hope, and love abide.

Christianity is weird, 
and if you take it seriously
it will make you seriously weird as well.
It will make you love like Christ loved
by placing on your shoulders the cross,
the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light
because it is the weight of love 
pressing down upon us
even as it bears us upward to God.
It will make you weak and foolish
with the power and wisdom of God.
In these days of Lent,
may God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.

Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

“Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
I think we Catholics today can congratulate ourselves
on having avoided this.
Well, apart from bingo and raffles 
and bake sales and holiday craft fairs
and sales of fairly-traded coffee and chocolate
and also Lenten fish fries.
But apart from those, we’re doing really well.
And even those things are relatively harmless,
and may even serve salutary purposes
of raising money for good causes 
and of building a sense of community.

But Jesus is, I think, criticizing 
something more than mere commerce.
He is offended by something more
than money changing hands in a sacred place.
Throughout his ministry,
both in his words and in his actions,
Jesus teaches that our relationship with God
should not be thought of as a transaction
in which I give something to God—
some slice of my time and attention,
some thing that I give up as a sacrifice, 
some number of good deeds—
in order to receive some benefit,
whether this be a crude expectation
of prosperity and material gain
or, perhaps more likely, 
the more sophisticated desire
for peace of mind and spiritual consolation.
This is the idea that I can give God 
some determinate amount of my love,
or at least of my obedience,
in order to receive some specific reward.

The entire life of Jesus is an assault on this idea.
In embodying for us the God who is love,
the God with whom we can strike no bargain
but to whom we can give nothing less than everything,
and from whom we can only receive with gratitude,
Jesus seeks to drive from the temple of our hearts
the idea that our relationship with God
is an exchange or transaction,
lashing this idea with the cords 
of God’s mercy and love,
offered to us free of charge.

Jesus does this just so that we 
can come to know God truly,
to grasp what it means 
to love and be loved by God.
We generally don’t approach as transactions
the relationships that matter to us most.
I don’t offer my wife a kiss
just so she will mow the lawn;
I don’t take out the garbage
just so she will do the laundry;
or, at least, if I do, 
I feel slightly ashamed of myself.
Because love is not a matter 
of calculating costs and benefits.
Love is a matter of giving everything 
when you have nothing to gain in return,
of receiving everything
when you have nothing of your own to give.
In love’s economy 
we are all both generous donors 
and humble beggars. 

And this is true above all with God.
Jesus teaches us through his life
that God’s love cannot be purchased,
that God’s laws are not 
the price sticker on divine favor,
that our obedience is not the currency 
with which we purchase prosperity 
or inner peace 
or even our salvation. 
Jesus teaches us this 
with agonizing clarity
in his death on the cross,
when he gives himself totally 
into his Father’s loving hands
to win for us the precious gift of eternal life.
The shocking message of the Gospel
is that the love that is God 
is most fully shown forth
in the pain and shame 
of Christ crucified,
which St. Paul tells us is
“a stumbling block to Jews 
and foolishness to Gentiles.”

As anyone who has ever fallen in love can tell you, 
love can make you look weak and foolish
in the eyes of the world.
It can make you look weak and foolish
because it pulls you out of the economy
of reasonable exchanges,
of calculating costs and benefits,
of giving in order to get.
Spouses, parents, or anyone blessed
with a true and lasting friendship
all know the weakness of being overwhelmed by love,
the foolishness of not caring whether what you give
is balanced out by what you get.

And Jesus tells us that this is what God is.
Think of the deepest 
and most enduring love you have known.
Think of the sacrifices 
you have made for that love.
Think of the unrepayable gifts 
you have gained from that love.
Think of the ways that love 
has broken open your heart.
God is all of that and more.
On the cross God embraces 
weakness and foolishness
because that is simply what love does.
And in that embrace God reveals 
the power and wisdom of love,
for, as St. Paul says,
“the foolishness of God 
is wiser than human wisdom, 
and the weakness of God 
is stronger than human strength.”

Our souls are God’s temple;
our hearts are God’s house.
Let us not make them marketplaces
in which we seek to transact the business
of bargaining with God for our salvation.
Let us rather let Jesus cleanse them.
Let us allow ourselves to be weak and foolish
for the sake of crucified love.
Let us make our hearts into homes 
within which we welcome
the power and wisdom of God.
And may God have mercy on us all.

 

Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinthians 2:22-25; John 2:13-25

Paul says in our second reading
that Jews demand signs
and Greeks look for wisdom.
As a first-century Jew,
Paul saw the world divided up
pretty neatly into Jews and Greeks—
those who were heirs of God’s covenant
and those who were not.
Jews, heirs to God’s covenant,
looked for the saving power of God to appear,
restoring Israel to its former strength and prosperity.
Greeks, lovers of wisdom,
looked for knowledge
that could help them lead the good life,
one that would lead to happiness.

We today don’t typically
divide the world up between Jews and Greeks,
but it seems to me that it is still true
that people are looking basically
for two different things from religion:
some—those who demand “signs”—
seek manifestations of divine power,
hoping that they can tap into that divine power,
can use God’s power in their lives
to make those lives better;
others—those who look for “wisdom”—
seek a knowledge of how the world works
and, particularly, how one leads a good life
so as to attain happiness for oneself and others.
To put it slightly differently,
when it comes to religion,
some seek supernatural power
and some seek ethical insight,
some seek magic
and some seek morality.

The seeker of magic might feel drawn
to the setting of our Gospel reading:
the grand Temple built in Jerusalem by Solomon
and rebuilt by king Herod,
the dwelling place of the divine presence,
where God’s favor could be bought painlessly,
for the price of an ox or a sheep or a dove.
Within Israel itself,
this magical approach to religion
was criticized by the prophets,
who decried those who came to offer sacrifice
and neglected justice for the widow,
the orphan,
and the stranger.
Yet the magical mindset is powerful
and the temptation persists to turn God
into a cosmic vending machine
of painless prosperity.

The seeker of morality,
on the other hand,
might feel drawn
to the scene depicted in our first reading:
the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.
Rather than painless prosperity,
moralists pursue a path of strenuous effort
to transform their world and themselves,
and construct God’s kingdom of justice and peace.
Ignoring the fact that God’s Law
is revealed to Israel amidst signs and wonders,
dark cloud and thunder,
to a people who stand in fear and trembling,
the seeker of moral wisdom
sees God’s agenda clearly laid out,
only awaiting our implementation,
looking to us to tend to the widow,
the orphan,
the stranger.
There is nothing magical,
or even particularly mysterious,
about it.

You can see these two approaches to religion
in the different ways
people approach the disciplines of Lent.
The seeker after magic sees it
as a time to win God’s favor,
through giving things up, or taking things on—
offering small sacrifices in hope of great blessings.
The seeker after morality approaches Lent
as a time for moral improvement
through giving up bad habits
and seeking more strenuously
to make ourselves and our world better.

But Paul seems to suggest
that being a Christian
is about neither magical power
nor moral wisdom
but about Jesus Christ crucified,
a stumbling block of weakness
to those who seek divine power
and a foolish waste
to those who seek clear moral guidance.
The magical mindset is repulsed by the notion
that God offers, not painless prosperity now,
but new life that is found only
on the far side of the agony of the cross.
The moralist scoffs at the foolishly wasted life
of one who could have done so much good in the world
if only he had acted more prudently, more wisely.
People seek either magic or morality,
but Jesus offers us neither.

Or, rather, he offers us both,
but in a form we can only recognize
if we embrace the logic of cross and resurrection:
“Destroy this temple
and in three days I will raise it up.”
As Paul tells us,
the weakness of the cross is the power of God;
the foolishness of the cross is the wisdom of God.
The sacrifice that defies all cost-benefit analysis,
the giving of our lives to a cause
whose outcome we cannot control,
the pouring out of our very selves
into the abyss of divine love,
this is true power and wisdom,
this is the true meaning of Lent
and of the entire Christian life.

People are not wrong when they seek in faith
for supernatural power and ethical wisdom,
for magic and morality.
But the message that we as Christians
are called to bear to the world,
is a message of magical weakness
and moral foolishness,
the message of the Temple
destroyed by human hands
but rebuilt by God,
the message of Jesus Christ
crucified and risen for us
and for our salvation.
Let us seek signs.
Let us seek wisdom.
But let us never seek them anywhere
save in the cross of Jesus,
the sure foundation of our hope.

Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

I found myself thinking this week
about the word “lapidary.”
I’m not sure it’s a word
that I’ve ever spoken aloud (until now),
and though I’ve read it on a number of occasions
I think I have had only the vaguest sense of its meaning—
the idea that it described a statement composed of few words.
And my vague sense was correct: it does mean that.
The term comes from the Latin lapis or “stone,”
so a lapidary statement is one
that is suitable for carving in stone.
It is a monumental statement,
a statement that is short and eloquent,
because carving stone is difficult
and whatever you carve in it
is going to be around a long time,
so you better make sure it’s something worth saying.

In our first reading, from the book of Exodus,
we hear proclaimed what is perhaps
the most famous set of lapidary statements ever:
the ten commandments.
They are quite literally lapidary,
for we are told a bit later in Exodus
that God gives Moses stone tablets
upon which are engraved
the words of the commandments.

Presumably God chose these words carefully.
But the pithiness of the commandments
is directed not so much to the stone of the tablets
but to the stone of our human hearts—
hearts grown hard in sin,
hearts that seek to make themselves
impenetrable to God’s word.
Some of the commandments are particularly pithy:
“You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.”
Each of these commandments
is only two words in Hebrew.
When we hear these commandments
and inwardly squirm,
feeling accused,
feeling even convicted,
this is the feeling of God’s lapidary word
being carved into the stone of our hearts—
monumental words that we cannot forget,
even if we try.
And we do try.

In our Gospel reading
Jesus comes to the Temple in Jerusalem,
the holiest place in all of Israel,
and finds it turned into a place of commerce.
Only hearts grown stony could forget so thoroughly
what the Temple was supposed to be:
a place of meeting between God and his people,
a “thin place” where heaven and earth touch,
where one could enter into
the life-giving communion of humanity with God.
Now the Temple is a place of monetary exchange:
a place where those who have get more,
where those who have not are exploited,
where the true God, the living God, is forgotten.
Into this place of stony hearts
Jesus comes as God’s lapidary Word:
a Word who is pithy and piercing
in both speech and action:
“stop making my Father’s house a marketplace”—
stop treating God as an idol whose grace
is turned into a commodity to be bought and sold.

As then in Jerusalem,
so now in our own lives:
Jesus the Word comes to carve himself
into the stone of our hearts:
a Word of power and wisdom that
can pierce our hearts,
can overturn the tables of business as usual,
so that God’s commandments can reach
to their very core of our hearts,
so that they can be healed of sin.
In the Middle Ages spiritual writers spoke
of the experience of “compunction,”
which literally means being punctured,
but was used to speak
of the experience of repentance,
the experience of God’s word penetrating
to the core of our hearts,
calling us back into relationship
with God and each other,
calling us to let God remake
the temple of our heart
into a “thin place”
where heaven and earth can meet.
Let Lent be a time to hear that call,
to let Jesus,
God’s lapidary Word made flesh,
pierce our stony hearts,
so that he might live in us,
and we in him.

Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25, John 2:13-25

Both our second reading and our Gospel

speak of our human desire for some sort of sign.

In John’s Gospel the people ask Jesus for a sign

that would help them to understand 

his mysterious actions in the Temple

and to know whether or not to believe in him.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians,

he says that the Greeks will not believe 

without rational arguments,

and his own Jewish people will not believe 

without signs.

The word “sign,” in the New Testament,

carries some pretty heavy theological freight –

meaning something like a “miracle” or a “mighty deed” –

something that is an indicator of God’s presence and activity.

It might help, however, to step back just a bit 

from these theological meanings

and to think about signs in their more mundane sense:

as things that help us figure out where we are

and that point us in the right direction.

One thing about signs in this mundane sense

is that you have to keep your eyes peeled for them,

and sometimes they can be very hard to see:

I certainly have had the experience of driving at night,

perhaps through heavy rain and high winds,

not entirely sure that I am even moving in the right direction,

and squinting through my foggy windshield

trying to read names on street signs

but finding myself unable to see one.

I don’t know if it’s a prayer or a cry of frustration,

but I have found myself muttering under my breath,

just give me a sign!

Not the heavens opening up,

not an angel with a flaming sword,

but just something to point me to where I need to go.

You also need to know how to read the signs:

to know that the squiggly black line

means the road is about to get curvy

or that what looks like a “T”

means that your road 

is about to dead-end into another road.

You have to make sure 

that you’re not so busy looking for one kind of sign –

say, a sign with a street name –

that you don’t miss another, 

perhaps more important, sort of sign –

say, a Stop sign.

Misreading signs, or reading the wrong signs,

can be a dangerous business.

Now many of you are perhaps thinking,

Why don’t you just get a GPS?

Why squint through your windshield 

on a dark and rainy night,

trying to catch a glimpse 

of a road name or highway number

to reassure you that you are moving in the right direction,

when you can have the dulcet tones 

of your Global Positioning System,

perhaps speaking in the voice of your favorite celebrity,

telling you, “turn right ahead” or

“you missed your turn; turn around and go back”?

Well, maybe a GPS would be a good idea for driving,

but in matters of faith 

there is no Global Positioning System.

As far as I can tell, 

God does not sit on your shoulder

and say “turn right ahead”

or “you’re dating the wrong person; 

turn around and go back.”

As far as I can tell, we have only signs 

that we must try to read and interpret

without ever having vision 

as clear as we would like it to be:

that is what we mean by the word “faith.”

The people in our Gospel who ask Jesus for a sign 

are not wrong in asking;

their error lies in not understanding 

that when he says,

“Destroy this temple 

and in three days I will raise it up”

he is saying that his death – 

the destruction of the temple of his body –

and his resurrection to new life on the third day

will be the true sign of God’s power

and the only real basis for faith in him.

The Greeks are not wrong for wanting wisdom

and the Jews are not wrong 

in seeking signs of divine power;

the error is in not seeing, in the crucified Jesus,

“Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

The cross is the sign that shows us the path to true life,

the sign that we must discern in faith.

St. Thomas Aquinas said that whoever wishes to live fully

only need look to the cross

and reject what Christ rejected there

and desire what Christ desired there.

What Christ rejected was all attachment 

to riches and honor and glory;

what Christ desired was love, patience, humility

and obedience to God (Sermon 6 on the Apostles’ Creed).

In this way, the cross truly is a sign 

that directs us on our journey toward God.

There is no cosmic GPS for the journey of faith,

no magic voice to guide us through each and every turn.

Indeed, the journey of faith often takes place

on what seems to be a dark and unmarked road

with heavy rains and strong winds.

But when the road seems darkest 

the cross of Jesus still shines forth,

showing us where we are, 

pointing us in the right direction,

and revealing to us the path to true life.

Lent 3

During this Lenten season
we have been focusing on our call as disciples of Jesus —
our call to sit at his feet and learn from him,
our call to follow him where he would lead us.
Of course part of the difficulty in reflecting on our call as disciples
is the difficulty we have in thinking of ourselves as disciples at all.
“Disciples?” we ask.
“Weren’t those the people who followed Jesus around
2000 years ago in Palestine?”
We tend to this of the disciples as Jesus’ contemporaries,
and we presume that the time of discipleship is past.

But even once we grasp the idea
that “disciple” is a more general term
that can include us today as we seek to be followers of Jesus,
I suspect that we continue to feel that we are at some disadvantage
by comparison with those
who could actually see Jesus with their own eyes
and hear Jesus with their own ears.
I don't mean to make excuses,
but I sometimes find myself thinking that
if I could have heard Jesus' preaching with my own ears,
if I could have seen Jesus’ miracles with my own eyes,
then I would have the same kind of faith,
the same kind of hope,
and the same kind of love
as disciples like Peter or James or John or Mary Magdalene.
If I could have been Jesus’ contemporary during his earthly ministry
then I could have heard first hand
his call to sit at his feet and learn from him,
his call to follow him where he would lead me.
If I could have been his contemporary,
then I could have been a real disciple.
As it is, I feel as if the best I can do
is be what the philosopher Kierkegaard called
“a disciple at second hand.”

But our Gospel today indicates that being Jesus’ contemporary
did not necessarily confer any advantage
with regard to being his disciple.
In today’s reading from John’s Gospel,
Jesus performs a rather strange, disruptive act
in the temple in Jerusalem,
utters some cryptic words about his Father’s house,
and speaks mysteriously
about a temple being torn down and rebuilt in three days —
and his disciples are left, frankly, baffled.
They have no idea what he is talking about.
They see his actions with their own eyes
and hear his words with their own ears
and they are at least as puzzled as we are.
John tells us that it was only several years later,
after Jesus had been raised from the dead,
that they begin to understand
that it is his body that was the temple
torn down and rebuilt in three days.
John tells us that it is only after,
when Jesus’ mortal voice had faded from their hearing,
that, “his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.”
Though they were his contemporaries,
they found it no easier than we do to believe his words
and to answer his call to come and be his disciple.
As Paul indicates in our second reading,
the words and actions of Jesus
seemed foolish and weak when viewed from the perspective
of human wisdom and human strength.

So Jesus’ contemporaries were as bad off as we are
with regard to discipleship.
They had as much difficulty as we do grasping the truth
of “the foolishness of God,”
of feeling the power of “the weakness of God.”
Indeed, they were in some sense worse off than we are,
because they only learned later
what we have proclaimed to us now:
that “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
They had to await Christ’s resurrection before they could
“believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.”
The faith, hope and love of the disciples
was born from the empty tomb
and Jesus' risen presence among them.

But for us, Jesus Christ crucified and risen
stands in our midst right now,
if we can but see with the eyes of faith
and listen with ears of hope.
Indeed, if Jesus is not present to us here and now
as much as he was present in Jerusalem two-thousand years ago —
indeed, if he is not in a sense more present to us
because he has been raised to new life in the Spirit —
then we might as well stop now and all go home.

So for Lent, I’ve decided to give something up:
I am going to give up making excuses.
I’ve decided to stop telling myself
that if only I could have been there
to see and hear Jesus with my own eyes and ears,
if I could only have heard his own voice calling me,
then I would be a real disciple,
then I would sit at his feet and learn from him,
then I would heed his call to follow him where he would lead me.
Because the fact is, the risen Jesus is here now,
calling me and calling you;
his own voice is calling us, no less than it called his first disciples.
If we believe that Christ is risen and active in our midst
then the time for excuses is over
and the time of discipleship has begun.