March 15, 2009 - Lent 3 (RCL)
Have you ever gone
to the Cathedral of St John the Divine
in New York City?
It’s up on 100th and Amsterdam,
and is a massive Gothic Revival church, standing up high above the street
and covered with elaborate carving.
A few years ago, I took some of the teenagers from my last parish in South Jersey to see it.
They were totally overawed by it,
and tried to figure out how many of their churches would fit inside. At least ten, we concluded, and that was just the floor space; if you include the height as well, it would be way more.
It was a wonderful visit. We were welcome to wander as we pleased, to look at the various chapels, to visit the gift shop, to stop and pray
in this place that was both strange to us and familiar,
a place of pilgrimage
but also a place that day by day
uses the same words that we do in every Episcopal church
to pray.
Two of the kids had some spending money
and bought silver crosses,
a souvenir of the visit,
and something to remind them
of their faith in Christ.
We were welcome, but as I read the gospel for today, I wondered what would have happened
if we’d shown up at the Cathedral
and as we came up the steps
we could hear noises coming from behind the doors,
loud shouting,
and the clang of cash registers,
and people coming back down the steps
looking harassed.
And then, if we’d opened the doors, we’d discovered
that the gift shop had expanded to fill the first third of the Cathedral,
and as well as the gifts, there were a bunch of the sort of stalls you see on street corners,
but instead of pocketbooks and DVDs,
they were selling
prayer books at discount prices
and Anglican rosary beads,
and candles,
and they were all calling across each other
to get our attention.
And there’s a sign,
“US dollars not accepted. Change your cash into Cathedral coins.”
And what if, when we tried to go past, into the nave, someone had pushed in front of us,
three crosses hung over his hand,
“I can give you these for a really low price,”
and another,
“you’ll need this guide to tell you what to do,”
and when we finally make it through,
what if we came across a big sign.
“Cathedral access restricted. Only members of the Episcopal Diocese of New York
allowed past here. All others, pray here.”
And a couple of kneelers,
squeezed in between some stalls.
Thankfully,
that’s not what we find when we go into that Cathedral, or our own in Garden City,
or National Cathedral in Washington.
We’re welcome at all of them, welcome
to come visit and worship,
without being distracted by salespeople
or asked to change our money,
or limited to the entryway.
But when Jesus went into the temple that day,
that
was what it was like.
Tables with money changers,
all the things you might possibly need, or want
or never even have dreamed of
to be used in worship.
And because they still did sacrifices,
all those things included animals - doves fluttering and sheep baaing and cows mooing
and that indescribable smell of farm animals
kept too long in an enclosed space,
and even if you could fight your way through
the signs were very clear.
No Gentiles past here.
If you were born something
other than Jewish,
even if you worshiped the Jewish God
you weren’t welcome.
Your only place to pray
was out here in the court of the Gentiles,
out here among the money changers
and the cattle and sheep and doves.
Most Jews probably didn’t even notice. They needed somewhere to buy their animals for sacrifice;
this courtyard
had always been the place for that.
“Don’t complain about the noise and the smell;
you foreigners
are lucky we let you in at all. Just get on with your praying
and then go back
where you
belong.”
But Jesus noticed.
He noticed the piles of dung on the floors,
and the piles of money on the tables.
He saw the couple in the corner, travel stained and dark-skinned,
standing hands over their ears,
eyes shut in concentration,
lips moving with the prayers of the faithful.
Jesus noticed
and was absolutely furious.
And he turned
and shoved a table crashing over,
the stream of coins clanging on the stone floor.
and he began to herd the animals outside, their hooves clattering,
“Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!”
And in the sudden silence
you could hear the words of the couple over in the corner,
“Come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord,
who stand by night in the house of the Lord!
Lift up your hands to the holy place,
and bless the Lord.
May the Lord, maker of heaven and earth,
bless you from Zion.”
And suddenly it all erupted. Angry voices,
“Who are you to come in here and destroy our livelihoods?”
“What right have you got
“How are you going to pay for my animals
that are out in that street?”
Jesus’ answer? “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
And they knew he was crazy. The temple had been begin half a century ago, and it still wasn’t finished. Three days? He was out of his mind.
We don’t know what happened next.
The story doesn’t tell us.
Did the moneylenders throw Jesus out? Did he sneak through beyond them, into the quiet of the inner temple? Or did his disciples hustle him outside, terrified of what might happen if the people in the temple
decided to ask
for compensation?
It was only later that they understood
that the temple Jesus was speaking about
was his own body. The body that hung lifeless on a cross and was laid cold in a grave,
and three days later
appeared to them
overflowing with life and love.
And the connection
is this.
For the Jewish people, the temple
was the place the Jews went
to meet God. It had replaced the ark of the covenant, that box that contained
the two tablets of stone
that had the ten commandments written on them,
that box that made real to them
the presence
of God,
the ark of the covenant
that had been carried around with them
back before they had settled in the promised land,
carried around
and when they camped, housed
in the tent of meeting,
the tent where their leaders
meat
with God.
And when they settled, when the city of David, Jerusalem as we know it,
was built,
it was the great King Solomon
who built the first temple,
a new home
for that ark of the covenant,
and so the temple itself
became the sign of God;s presence,
the place
where their leaders
could meet
with God.
But it was limited.
Only those
born Jews
could get inside the temple proper,
only those
born from the priestly family
could go inside the holiest space.
Access to God
was limited.
And what Jesus was about,
Jesus’ whole life, his teachings, his miracles,
his presence among them,
his very body,
What Jesus was about
was that limited access to God
wasn’t good enough.
And if the temple
that Jesus was talking about
was his own body,
then what he was really saying
is that God
lived in him,
that he himself was the place
where human beings
could meet God.
Jesus
us where we
meet God.
Of course,
we don’t get
to wander round Israel with him
We don’t get to sit on a hillside
and listen to him teaching,
or crowd into a house and watch him heal someone
lowered down from the rooftop,
or row in from fishing
for a beach breakfast of fish.
But we still get to meet God
in Jesus.
We get to meet God
when we read the words of Jesus
faithfully recorded
in the gospel.
We get to meet God,
when we pray
in Jesus’ name.
We get to meet God
when we eat the bread of his body
and the wine of his blood.
We get to meet God.
And while we would hope
that a place of worship
wouldn’t become a department store,
or bar from worship
those who don’t pass some arbitrary test
of membership,
while we hope
that all would be welcome
who come to worship our God,
we know
that because of Christ
we are not dependent
on a place
to meet God;
we can meet God anywhere,
anytime,
in the person of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009