On the Way to Wonder

First Reading: Numbers 21:4-9

⁴From Mount Hor [the Israelites] set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. ⁵The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” ⁶Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. ⁷The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. ⁸And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” ⁹So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Psalm: Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

 ¹Give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good,
  for God’s mercy endures forever.
 ²Let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim
  that God redeemed them from the hand of the foe,
 ³gathering them in from the lands;
  from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.
 ¹⁷Some were fools and took rebellious paths;
  through their sins they were afflicted.
 ¹⁸They loathed all manner of food
  and drew near to death’s door.
 ¹⁹Then in their trouble they cried to the Lord
  and you delivered them from their distress. 
 ²⁰You sent forth your word and healed them
  and rescued them from the grave.
 ²¹Let them give thanks to you, Lord, for your steadfast love
  and your wonderful works for all people.
 ²²Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving
  and tell of your deeds with shouts of joy.

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:1-10

¹You were dead through the trespasses and sins ²in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. ³All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. ⁴But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us ⁵even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Gospel: John 3:14-21

 [Jesus said:] ¹⁴“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
  ¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
  ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

CHILDREN’S SERMON        

My daughter wrote this poem in 2009 for her class of four year olds.  It is a rework of a Veggie Tales song but it works as a poem too.

God wants us to have some patience, please,
When we’re standing in a line
Or are sitting down to dine.
God wants us to have some patience, please
And we get it starting on our knees.

When we’re standing in the hall waiting for our turn to drink
The person in the front takes so long we start to think
That when finally it’s our turn there will be no water there
So we use our hands to shove and we roar like a big bear.
But to shove and roar’s not nice, and it doesn’t help at all.
A better thing to do is count to 10 and stand up tall.
You will get your turn to drink and when you do you’ll take some time.
And you don’t want those behind you to keep shoving out of line.
So remember to have patience when you have to sit and wait
‘Cuz it’s what God says to do even when it’s not so great

When you figure out this patience, you’ll be thrilled to find out, too,
That there’s time when you are slow and when others wait for you
So when all is said and done patience grows in you and me
Sometimes I wait for you, and sometimes you wait for me.
Try to test this patience out…you’ll see…

That God wants us to have some patience, please,
When we’re standing in a line
Or are sitting down to dine.
God wants us to have some patience, please
And we get it starting on our knees.

SERMON

Today’s readings are so full of classic favorite Bible quotes that it is hard to see the forest because of the trees.  The temptation is to sit back and think, “We’ve got this one.”  John 3:16 “For God so loved….” We all know. It has been called “the Gospel in a nutshell.”  Ephesians 2:8,9 “By grace we are saved….” is foundational to our belief in salvation by grace and not by works.  The familiar is so comfortable that often we loose the depth and intensity of its meaning.  As a youth I warbled the favorite love ballads and looked forward to that magical moment when Prince Charming would propose.  He did.  I agreed.  And I discovered I was still me and life still had to be lived.  “Been there and done that!” clouds the magic of someone claiming, “I love you.”  For the abused person, I suspect God’s promise of love is met with some of the same cynicism.  For the abused, “grace” is a difficult concept.  So today I want to look at our texts through the eyes of the Old Testament reading.

         As I look at Numbers, the people of Israel have left Egypt, received the Ten Commandments, and sent spies into the Promised Land who came back with scary reports.  The people panic and see themselves as grasshoppers in their own eyes.  They are now wandering for 40 years while a generation dies off and there is a transition in leadership.  Only Joshua and Caleb will survive to lead the people.  Aaron, their first priest, has died.  Miriam, the song leader, has passed.  The chapter starts with victory and the defeat of a Canaanite king.  We read in v. 4 that following that victory,  “the people became impatient on the way.  The people spoke against God and Moses.”

         “Impatience” leads to their sin of murmuring.  Their wants are not in line with their haves.  The Promised Land has not been reached … yet!  Their eyes have shifted from the God who gave them victory just a verse before, just a year before, perhaps minutes before; their eyes have shifted from God and thankfulness to self and want.

         Paul in our Ephesians reading phrases it, “³All of us once lived among them (the people of this world) in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.”  The pleasures of Egypt are remembered and the memories of slavery have faded. Those of us who have been baptized as infants, raised in a Christian home, and have sought to follow, sometimes dismiss the “testimonies” of the dramatic conversions to Christianity but that does not mean that we, in our own way, have not become impatient with God and had those times when our eyes shift to our wants and our desires.  When life takes a turn to the left and not the right, I am prone to mutter, “Now, God, what was that about!”?  I do not want illness, poverty, riots and arguments and perhaps for a second I wonder what God is up to.  We are all guilty of impatience.  We are all sinners.  “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Did I hear an “AMEN!” to that — or perhaps we hung our head in acknowledgment. 

          When we are impatient, our focus shifts from God’s wants to our wants.  But also our focus shifts from the big picture to the “now.”  Impatience is not thinking long term but is very present focused and has lost sight of the victories of the past and the promises for the future. The people whine, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”  They have forgotten the slavery of Egypt.  They have forgotten the ten plagues, the sea of reeds, standing at Mt. Sinai.  How easily we forget and become numb to the big picture.  We want to charge forward before we are ready.  I cannot help but wonder if our present cultural outburst of demonstration to demand rights, of partnering and being impatient with commitments, or reports of mass slayings – all points to an impatience with life.  Our wants in the now govern our behavior.

         Impatience seems to me to also show a problem with tunnel vision.  We are so focused on the now and ourselves that we forget the context we are living in.  Poverty, justice, discrimination become centered on my life, here in the present and we lose track of the progress of history and our global context.  That does not make poverty right, it only means we are not looking in context and forgetting our resources.  I worked on a suicide prevention phone service out of Hollywood Presbyterian Church in my young adult years.  People called all night in despair.  As we listened, talked and became a caring presence – and evaluated really how serious the person was about suicide – we tried to help the person identify resources available to them.  The people of Israel were tired of free food provided daily, were tired of being led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  They were tired of having clothes and shoes that did not wear out.  They wanted to go shopping.  They were tired and impatient.  When we become tired and impatient with our plight in life, we are probably looking at our wants that have become needs, we are thinking in the present and we have lost sight of our resources.  We have become impatient and self-centered – we are sinners.

Enter poisonous snakes!

         “⁶Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.”  Do you notice that God is credited with sending trials that catch the Israelites attention and drive them to God?  We all have those “snakes” that kill our joy for life.  Perhaps it is guilt over a wrong we did and we cannot forgive ourselves.  Perhaps it is hate for someone who abused us.  Perhaps it is gossip that cut deep.  So often these snakes sneak up on us and kill life.  Dr. Dirk Lange, my worship professor at Luther wrote a book the Deaconesses are reading for Lent, Today Everything is Different.

          “The book is centered on the experience and witness of clandestine          prayer groups in East Germany that, throughout the 1980s, continued   to grow, becoming more public and occasioning massive demonstrations that finally resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall       (November 1989). (introduction)” 

         “Prayer takes the faith community out into the street,” not in massive resistance and protest marches but seeking space to breath in daily life.  The word resistance was never used!  Poisonous snakes were killing the Israelites even as Communism was suffocating East Germany.  Even so shame, guilt and regret kill us and steal joy.  What do the people do? The people repent, go to Moses and ask him to pray for them.

         The Israelites believe God sent the snakes that cause them to evaluate their priorities, their coping strategy, that face them with their own helplessness and the futility of their grumbling.  How sad that often prayer is our last resort when we are at the end of our rope rather than our first response to center ourselves, remind us of our resources and remind us who is in control!  I find it fascinating that caught in a national pandemic where people are dying, we turn to masks and vaccines and I hear very little about a call for a national day of prayer.  I am not saying that masks and vaccines are wrong but as I watch movies of former days of crisis like the Bay of Pigs and the crisis in Cuba, I see pictures of people flocking to churches, not closing them.  The poisonous snakes face the Israelites with the reality that their lives are in God’s hands and they run to Moses to pray for them.

Nehushtan

         God tells Moses to make a serpent of bronze, nail it to a pole, lift it up and the people who are bitten should look to it and be healed.  This symbol became known as Nehustan and became part of the Jewish religious practice. Eventually it is worshipped itself, perhaps not similar to the magic we give to wearing a cross.  Nailing our snakes to the pole, possibly a cross image, and honestly naming it, opens the door of God’s grace. Grace:  God’s riches at Christ’s expense.  God answered the cries of the people and the prayers of Moses, not with formulas for penance but with grace, salvation that gave the people advocacy (they had to turn to look) and acknowledged God’s power over the dilemma, imminent death.  “⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  Grace is a gift given, not a present earned.

         We Lutherans camp on this verse.  I am not saved because of my great faith, not because I turn to look at the pole.  It is Christ’s work of nailing the snake to the cross that saves me.  Because God loves the world, God reaches out and gives us Jesus.  Being in relationship to Jesus saves, not the cross he was nailed to.  Salvation is not our doing but Christ’s.  It is a gift.

         Lent 1 reminded us of God’s grace in saving Noah and his family in the Ark and then setting a rainbow in the sky to remind him and us that God will not destroy us by water.  Lent 2 reminded us that Abraham was chosen by God, to be the patriarch of a stiff-necked people, God’s people whom he would work with so that all nations would be blessed through them.  Lent 3 we were reminded of the Ten Commandments that govern these chosen people and distinguish them.  Obedience blesses and disobedience brings problems.  Lent 4, today, we hear of how people, impatient with God’s ways are saved by turning to the cross symbol. 

         John 3:16, from our Gospel text, is embedded in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus who came at night asking how to be saved. What could he do to become one of those blessed people?  Jesus responds, nothing!  Birth in God’s kingdom is not a physical act a person can perform but a birth of faith in a gift of grace.  Nicodemus must be born again into relationship with God.

         It is easy to become impatient with God as we look around our world with all its problems.  Perhaps a change in government will help.  Perhaps a vaccine will add years to our life, but will it add life to our years? We read John 3:16,  “For God so loved the world  (you and me)  (even when we are impatient with him) that he gave his only begotten son (Jesus) so that who ever (regardless of language, intelligence, or age) believes will not perish but have eternal life.  Whether we turn to a pole with a snake or turn to an empty cross, we are reminded of God’s love and grace.  We lift our eyes and bow our hearts in thanksgiving.  Let us recite John 3:16 together,

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Lord, guard us from impatience and may our salvation never become a routine truth but ever be received as grace.  AMEN.

First Reading: Exodus 20:1-17

¹God spoke all these words:
  ²I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me.
  ⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, ⁶but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
  ⁷You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
  ⁸Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
  ¹²Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
  ¹³You shall not murder.
  ¹⁴You shall not commit adultery.
  ¹⁵You shall not steal.
  ¹⁶You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
  ¹⁷You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Psalm: Psalm 19

 ¹The heavens declare the glory of God,
  and the sky proclaims its maker’s handiwork.
 ²One day tells its tale to another,
  and one night imparts knowledge to another.
 ³Although they have no words or language,
  and their voices are not heard,
 ⁴their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the        ends of the world, where God has pitched a tent for the sun.
 ⁵It comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber;
  it rejoices like a champion to run its course.
 ⁶It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens and runs about to  the end of it again; nothing is hidden from its burning heat.
 ⁷The teaching of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul;
  the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to | the simple.
 ⁸The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart;
  the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.
 ⁹The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever;
  the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
 ¹⁰More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold,
  sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb. 
 ¹¹By them also is your servant enlightened,
  and in keeping them there is great reward.
 ¹²Who can detect one’s own offenses?
  Cleanse me from my secret faults.
 ¹³Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of  a great offense.
 ¹⁴Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be     acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. 

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

¹⁸The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written,
 “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
  and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Gospel: John 2:13-22

¹³The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” ¹⁸The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” ¹⁹Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” ²¹But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²²After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

CHILDREN’S SERMON:  The Tortoise and the Ducks

         Aesop tells how we all know that the tortoise carries his house on his back.  It is said Jupiter punished him for not coming to his wedding and being so lazy.  The tortoise bemoaned his plight in life, crawling around on short stubby legs with a house on his back.  Two ducks came by and offered a solution.  Hold on tightly to this stick and we will show you the world – and so the tortoise did.  The ducks picked up the stick and carried the tortoise high into the sky.  A passing crow exclaimed, “This must be the king of tortoises!”  The tortoise was so pleased, he answered, “Why certainly…” but as he spoke, he let go of the stick and fell to his death.

Let us pray:  Lord may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing to you and may I never forget that your word is the stick that carries my life to heights I never imagined!

SERMON

This Lent our Old Testament readings are reminding us of different “covenants” God has made with us that help us remember who we are and whose we are.  Lent 1, we worshipped a God who gave us the rainbow with Noah and promised never to destroy us again by water.  In the waters of baptism Jesus started his public ministry.  Lent 2, we worshipped a God who gave us a promise through Abraham that God’s intention is to bless us so that we might be a blessing to the nations.  There may be suffering, rejection and death but resurrection will follow.  Today, Lent 3, we continue our journey of remembering who we are and whose we are.  The Old Testament reading is the passage concerning the giving of the Mosaic Covenant, Ten Commandments, that if followed bring blessing and if disobeyed bring trouble. 

         The third commandment tells us

         “⁸Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall    labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to      the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your         daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien     resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and          earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day;     therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”

Sundays are days designed for blessing and renewing us as we remember God.

         One of the few times we see Jesus display anger comes from our passage today.  It is approaching Passover and Jesus is in Jerusalem, at the Temple, the center of worship.  At first glance, we see Jesus’ anger as he sees the temple being treated like a “marketplace.”  Jesus erupts in zeal and overturns the external activity.  The Jews then ask for a sign of his authority to act like this and Jesus talks of destruction and raising of the Temple.  Lastly we learn that Jesus is talking of the temple of his body, not the building, the Temple, that he knows will be destroyed in 90 AD.  Marketplaces, destruction, and bodies – three points for today to remember on our Lenten journey.  Creation, recreation, and new life, these patterns define our lives.

Marketplaces

         We Lutherans tend to be a bit tight-lipped about our identity and if asked who we are, will probably answer relationally or vocationally. We identify by sharing the marketplace of our life.  My name is ….  I’m the wife or husband of ….  I work at …..  I live over there.  These are all descriptors of our marketplaces. Introductions are important.  Six, sometimes seven days a week we spend in the marketplaces of our life.  Jesus is standing in the Temple courtyard, the religious marketplace of that day.

         I was struck upon returning to the United States, how often many modern churches resemble airports, having book stands, cafes, announcements of activities and programs of the church in the entry way.  Of course it is all done tastefully but it reminded me of the airport waiting areas with duty free shops, restrooms, play areas for children and TVs.   Our churches, even like the Temple in our reading, take on the atmosphere of a marketplace.  The creation story opens the Bible with a flurry of activity also.  It is not until the seventh day that God seems to sit back, appreciate, and rest.  The Sabbath is the last day of the week.

         Interestingly, though, when God gives the Ten Commandments, he does not start with the marketplace of creativity and activity but starts with  
“²I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me.”  Most important is not what we do for God but who God is to us.         Jesus confronts the Jews with anger.  They have their priorities wrong.  God reverses our value hierarchy in the giving of the Ten Commandments.  Our first priority is not to buy a sacrifice for our sin, for what we have done in the marketplace, but to get our spiritual identity clear.  We start, the commandments, with God, his name, and the Sabbath. 

         Also I find it interesting that “marketplace” has become “in” lingo with the Affordable Care Act.  It implies health care that even the poor can afford to invest in.  It implies that not just the “select” but the “ordinary” person can participate. It offers an option that is competitive with other plans and hopefully will drive the price of insurance down.  Perhaps we might ask ourselves if faith these days is a competition for the involvement of people as they pick and choose which church, which faith they want to invest in.   We, the shopper, have been given power as we choose and the market offers us a menu to fit our need.  My son would say, “Drink your kool-aid, Mom, and I’ll drink mine.”  Thus Sunday becomes a choice among many options and we shop for the alternative that fits our budget, that suits us.  Enter Jesus who turns the tables upside down.

         Jehovah, God, is not a choice among many Gods.  Jehovah is the I AM.  He is the only God.  We don’t buy shares and invest hoping for a future profit.  There are not varying prices to fit the amount of sin we want forgiven or the poverty of our life.  Like the Jews, we tend to make faith and religion, a marketplace like our jobs and relationships.  Jesus forms a whip, turns the tables upside down and creates a scene, a mess.  Lent calls us to reflect on whether we have put the cart before the horse and if we have not made church into “marketplace.”

Destruction and Resurrection

         The Jews are flabbergasted.  By what authority can Jesus just enter the Temple and create a mess?  What is the SIGN of his authority?  Jesus now says the words that will be held against him at his trial.

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 

From our historical perspective, we understand that Jesus was talking about his death and resurrection.  The leaders, though, do not have our advantage and think he is talking about the Temple, the outer courts where the marketplace is happening.  But, as usual, Jesus is digging deeper.  He   has gone from upturning a marketplace for buying for a sacrificial system to reminding the Jews, the commandments are about relationship. Sacrifices allow the person to “purchase” a clean conscience with the earning of their hands, six days of the week. He is going to a more core issue.  Our first priority is God.

          More over,  the Jews should remember that  if the Temple is destroyed, faith will survive.  The Jews have survived the destruction of the Temple in the past and will survive the destruction of the Temple in the future.  In the face of persecution, faith survived because faith is not based on sacrifices but on God.  Jesus points to the past and to the future and prophesies the present that is unfolding.  It is not the Temple but faith that governs the choices we make.

         How faith works in our lives must be turned upside down.    We advertise for Jesus, “try it, you’ll like it” but here Jesus clearly says that his way of faith will create tension – suffering, rejection, and death as we discussed last week – with the values of the world.  Faith cannot center on the Temple and its sacrifices.  Faith centers on people and challenges us to recreate, reconstruct our value system, not just offer a sacrifice for our breaking of rules.  We must not only offer sacrifices but also make choices that will feel like death but result in resurrection.  On Sunday we choose if we are we going to get that rest we so dearly need from the stress of the marketplace all week or are we going to go to church?  Are we going to forgive that stupid offense of the other, one more time!, or are we going to keep carrying the grudge?  That memory of ourselves or the other that just won’t get buried in our subconscious or forgotten keeps popping up at awkward moments and won’t stay put at the foot of the cross!  In so many ways, the life of faith challenges the values of the world.  Sacrifices will continue but do not put the end to sin.  It is only as Jesus is sacrificed that there can be resurrection.

         The first three commandments focus us on God and the last seven focus our lives with each other, and confront our selfish tendencies.  Judging from the divorce rate today, honoring of marriage is a genuine challenge.  Murder still fills our courts not to mention demonstrations and riots.  We call slander, “misinformation” as if truth of events depends on the point of view of the reporter.  Coveting and want are never satisfied as we champion “the good life” that we all deserve, right?  We don’t want life as it is but want…what is it we want?  It is the sign of our actions, our life, as we consistently die to self and grow, rise up, by the power of God that give Christ and us the authority.  Ultimately Jesus has authority because he is God but the sign that gives him authority is his life that is a living demonstration that the Ten Commandments are right.

         The sign of authority of Jesus is the life he lived, his embodiment of the principles he taught.  “Destroy this temple,” destroy this marketplace, take away all the trappings of religion and what are we left with?  Without the marketplace of religion, we are left with faith.  But I think Jesus is saying more than getting our values straight.  People who are not Christian often do all sorts of good.  Other religions have wonderful gurus and leaders that have been exemplary.  Jesus points to something more ominous – his upcoming death.  He must be destroyed, must be eliminated, and rejected, die and his resurrection will be the sign of his authority.  He will be the ultimate sacrifice that destroys death.  The empty cross is his sign.

The New Temple

Jesus has shifted the conversation from marketplace works.  Jesus has pointed to his death and resurrection as the sign of faith that survives the destruction we go through in our battle with the world.  The disciples later realize that Jesus was voicing an astounding fact about the temple.  That focus on temple as building is about to change.  “He was speaking of the temple of his body.”   Jesus predicts the shift that is going to happen as faith moves from faith in a place, the Temple, to faith in Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice for sin, to a new kind of temple, “the body of Christ,” the church.  1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul asks us “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”   We believe that Jesus’ body and ours is the real Temple that can go anywhere, that will be transformed for eternal life, and that testifies to the truth of God’s love that is stronger than religious rules and laws, stronger than death, and always is as close to us as our own heart.

         The Noah Covenant was God’s promise to not destroy us by water and is demonstrated in the rainbow.  The Abrahamic Covenant was God’s promise to form a nation of people that will bless all nations.  The Mosaic Covenant found in the Ten Commandments is a covenant of what that kingdom God is forming will look like.  New laws will not be voted in with each leader and each congress.  God’s favor will not depend on the sacrifices we can afford to offer nor the good deeds of our life.  God’s favor will be a gift available to all languages and people as Jesus satisfies death and his temple will be found in his body, the church.

         The tortoise was wrong.  He was not cursed with carrying his house but was blessed that wherever he went he was home.  Even so is the Christian who carries the Holy Spirit in his heart.  The tortoise was wrong to think he might be the king and not to acknowledge that he was carried by holding on tight to the stick, the Ten Commandments that carry us to new heights.  The ducks or the “goose” is the Holy Spirit who carries us to see the world.  Thank you, Lord.  Hold on for the rest of Lent.