Feast of St. John the Evangelist

Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP - Collect for the Feast of St.. John, Dec. 27)

Who is St. John? By tradition, St. John was one of Jesus’ closest disciples, the one to whom he entrusted his mother as he was dying on the cross; the one sitting next to him at the Last Supper, leaning his head against the Lord’s chest; one of only three disciples to be with him in his agony in the garden of Gethsemane and in the same intimate group present at his transfiguration.

St. John, by tradition, was the youngest of the disciples; you can pick him out from the other disciples in paintings because he’s the one without a beard.

"The Last Supper" by Jacopo Bassano, 1542

He was the younger brother of James; the two of them had been fishermen before Jesus called them as disciples, and Jesus gave the two of them a nickname: “Sons of Thunder” because apparently they were a lot of trouble.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, John and the other disciples became leaders of the church in Jerusalem and suffered persecution. John’s older brother James was the first of the twelve to be killed. As the believers fled the persecutions in Jerusalem, John is said to have gone to [what is now] Turkey, where he started several churches, including the church in Ephesus.

As persecutions continued, tradition says John was tortured by being put in a vat of boiling oil. Another story says he was given a cup of poisoned wine to drink, but when he blessed the wine, the poison rose out of it in the form of a snake. This story is the source of one of John’s more unusual symbols – a chalice with a snake in it. John was later exiled to the Island of Patmos, where tradition has it that he saw the visions recorded in the Book of Revelation. After the death of the emperor Domitian, John returned from exile to the church in Ephesus, where he continued to teach and lead that congregation and also visit other churches and bishops in the area. By this time, John was in his 90s.

Irenaeus, in some of his writings, recalls as a young boy listening to Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, recount stories of his memories of the apostle and evangelist John when he was at the church in Ephesus.

One of the stories passed down about him (recorded by St. Jerome) says that when the apostle John was very old, his messages became shorter and shorter, until all he would say when he preached was, “Little children, love one another,” and this he would say to them over and over. One story has a congregant ask him, “Master, why do you always say this?” He answered, “It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough.” Near the end of his life, John’s disciples carried him into the church, so he could speak to his congregation. When they had brought him in and the people were quiet, he raised himself up on one elbow and said to them, “Little children, love one another” and lay back down.

John, the youngest of all the disciples, was the last to die, and the only one to die a natural death of old age. He was a leader in the early church for probably 70 or more years. His life was one dedicated to the Gospel, to proclaiming God’s love for us in the person of Christ and requiring from us the appropriate response of love.

The writings attributed to John and his community are among the most poetic, beautiful, and striking in all the Bible. St. John is called “the Evangelist” because an evangelist is someone who tells the Gospel, the “good news.” John’s Gospel stands apart from the other three. It has a different way of looking at things. Where Mark starts telling the story of Jesus’ life at baptism and Matthew and Luke begin with his birth, John goes back to before the beginning of time and finds Jesus there, with God his Father, creating the world.

Reading the prologue to John’s gospel, especially, is like looking down on the whole of Christian theology from far above it. When you look out the window of an airplane, you can see entire cities, even whole states or countries, laid out below you. The Rocky Mountains look like scrunched paper bags, the Pacific Ocean like a piece of textured glass. It’s totally different from the view at ground level. That’s how John writes – he gives us a bird’s eye view of how everything fits together. This is why John’s symbol is the eagle.

But John’s symbol is the eagle for another reason as well…

Have you ever watched an eagle hunt – or a hawk? We have a hawk that lives near the church; you can hear him sometimes. When he’s hunting, he’ll perch high up in a tree or on a power line, sitting very still, looking down at the grass for mice - or he’ll circle slowly in the air. And what happens when he spots what he’s looking for? He folds in his wings and dives, like a missile.

This is another attribute of St. John’s writing: he zeros in on what is most central in Jesus’ life and teaching and drives all his efforts toward getting that one point across. Just like the eagle - that’s the whole point of going up in the air in the first place, not just to admire the view, but to get enough perspective that it’s possible to see what’s most important.

Our lectionary sees this quality in John’s writings also. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each have priority as the primary source for the Gospel readings for one year in our three-year cycle, but John’s Gospel doesn’t have a year to itself. Instead central passages in John’s Gospel are read every year at important points. Those who put together the lectionary cycle realized that what John focused on was key, and if people heard nothing else all year long – if they never came except during Advent and Holy Week, Christmas and Easter – they would hear the whole message of the Gospel in John.

And what does John’s Gospel say? From the heights of his expansive theological vision, the Evangelist zeros-in on a single command: love one another.

Beginning with the Prologue now, at Christmas, we start from before time, to understand what it means that Jesus was born as a baby – John tells us that the Word, in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made – the Word, Jesus, became flesh and lived among us, and by his becoming one of us, he gave us the right to become children of God. And what does that mean?

It means God loves us; he loves his Son, and his Son loves us. And our appropriate response is love – love God; love Jesus; love each other.

By the time we come through Lent, this message is distilled in the Maundy Thursday liturgy, whose content comes from John’s Gospel – the word “Maundy” is from the word “mandate” or “command.” What was Jesus’ command to his disciples at the Last Supper? He told them “I give you a new commandment… Love one another as I have loved you”

In the letters attributed to St. John later in the NT, we hear this message repeated again and again, and we can well believe that this was, in fact, the message he drove home to his congregation. After all his writings and all his years of teaching and leading the church, he had centered on this one thing: love one another. Listen to what 1 John says in various places.

Ch 4: 7-11 7 Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, ... 8 He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Ch 3 11 For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,

18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.

23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. (1Jn 3: 11,18,23)

Dec. 27, 2009

Given to St. John's, Silsbee -

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This is St. John’s Episcopal Church, so if we’re taking his name, we ought to resemble him. We ought to be recognizable as relations to him. Let’s work to continually cultivate love for each other – and express love in action, as well as in words. Today, as we celebrate the feast of our patron, hear the Beloved Disciple’s constant message: “Little children, love one another.”

Happy St. John's Day! Today is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, and we are St. John’s church, so this is a special day for us. It’s an opportunity to remember who we’re named for. It’s a chance to reflect on what our name means for us, because names are not arbitrary, especially names that are chosen.

Is it lawful...to divorce?

18th Sunday after Pentecost - Year B

Readings: OT, Psalms - Job 1:1; 2:1-10 Psalm 26 or Genesis 2:18-24 Psalm 8 NT- Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Gospel- Mark 10:2-16

O gracious and everliving God, you have created us male and female in your image: Look mercifully upon [all married people], and assist them with your grace, that with true fidelity and steadfast love they may honor and keep the promises and vows they make; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen. (BCP p. 425)

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Wow, let’s just tackle that question, shall we? Because I’m super-well qualified to do so. And I’m sure it’s what you were hoping I’d pick to talk about.

But, it is an issue that affects probably most of us in some way or another, and it’s something Jesus addressed. That in itself is reason enough, but in addition, I think we can see, in the forcefulness of Jesus’ words, what God’s hopes for us are relationally and what we’re meant to be to each other.

When you’re listening to this passage, did you notice who Jesus was speaking to when he got all upset about this? The questioner is not someone in the middle of a painful crisis, sincerely needing and seeking guidance and help. No, who we have here are the Pharisees coming up “to test Jesus” and this is where they’re coming from when they ask “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Now, these men spend most of their day every day studying the law; they know what the law says about divorce.

So Jesus answers their question with another question: “What did Moses command you?”

By tradition, Moses was the one who gave Israel the Torah – the Law – one passage in the Torah related to the issue of divorce is in Deuteronomy.

Here’s what it says:

“Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife...” (Deut 24:1-4)

So the Pharisees answered, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

Jesus comes back at them – “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Strong words.

Later, when they were back at the house, the disciples asked Jesus about it again, and he framed the situation from both sides – if the husband divorces his wife and remarries, it’s adultery; if the wife divorces her husband and remarries, it’s adultery. Even stronger words.

Now, I don’t know this, but I’m imagining that possibly some walls are going up right now if they weren’t already up just at the reading of this Gospel. Please try to keep listening.

For one thing, remember the point at the beginning: who is he talking to? People who are asking for a generic ruling on a generic subject, looking for loopholes, justifications. And he gets mad.

Contrast that with the way he treated the woman who was caught in adultery, when everybody wanted to stone her. Here’s a specific situation, with specific people. If the question was about the law, the law was clearly broken. But what did Jesus do? He pointed out that no one was without sin, so no one can rely on the law to justify themselves. We all depend on God’s mercy to forgive us and restore us to right relationships with God and with each other.

I think one point Jesus was making with the Pharisees and with the disciples in speaking so forcefully about divorce is that divorce destroys relationships and creates distance, not only between people (those directly and indirectly affected), but also between us and God. It’s not about what’s lawful, what people are allowed or permitted to do; it’s not primarily about he law at all. It’s about people. It’s about what God intended for us and wants for us in our relationships with each other and with God.

The Pharisees’ question was framed from the perspective of someone looking at divorce from outside of it. The question is generic, hypothetical: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

You want a rule? You already have a rule – what does it say? “It says we can divorce.” Okay, so there’s your rule. But the rule is because you’re hard-hearted; when you use it for your own convenience or to hurt the other person, you’ve missed the point of what this relationship of marriage was created to be. Marriage is a relationship between people, specific, individual people, not generic/hypothetical people. Don’t reduce the relationship to rules and loopholes. Marriage was meant to put people together to make them something new, in themselves and in relation to the community.

Marriage is sacramental: it’s a vehicle through which Christ offers grace to both people, and to others around them, including children – what is the gift of life itself if not a supreme grace from God? If you’re married, you yourself are one manifestation of God’s grace to your spouse. In the covenant of marriage, you love and serve your husband, your wife, as Christ loves and serves the church. You are an image of Christ, potentially the clearest image your spouse sees of who Christ is. If your wife had only you to judge from, what would she think Christ is like? If your husband had only you to judge from, what would he think Christ is like?

One of the most powerful witnesses of our Christian belief in Christ’s incarnation, for those who are married, is that, when Christ’s grace is at work in your marriage, you can see him in each other. This is the point, at least part of the point of Jesus getting so upset with the Pharisees for trying to find justification and permission for divorce. The point is not what’s permissible under the law – what can we legally get away with in our dealings with each other. The point is that, in our relationships with each other we can come to know God in ways that we can’t know him on our own. Our relationships, particularly the bond of marriage, are avenues of God’s grace – that’s why marriage is a sacrament – that’s why the community of the church itself, as a body, is a sacramental thing and why just being here together for the purpose of worshipping God is beneficial to us - it’s a way God is tangibly at work in us, visible to us. God is present to us through each other. Those of you who are married not only offer God’s grace to your spouse in your relationship, but you also spread it to your family and everyone who knows you, including your church family. Marriage is a gift to the church, and the church has a responsibility to support people in their marriages; when people are married in the church, in fact, we all promise to “do all in our power to uphold these two persons in their marriage.”

Sometimes things in a marriage go haywire and become destructive. God created marriage, and marriage is a good thing, but it can be warped into something awful to the point that, in comparison, divorce is better. If one or the other or both people don’t want to change their destructive relationship, divorce might be necessary to save the people. This doesn’t mean that divorce is good. I have never heard anyone say, “I love getting divorced – I hope it will always be this way!”

No matter what the precipitating situations were, divorce is a terrible loss. It’s a loss of relationship, and also a loss of identity, because of what we heard Jesus quote from Genesis – when two people marry, they aren’t two separate individuals anymore; they’re one.

Have you ever super-glued your thumb and finger together? What happens if you pull them apart? 

I’ve been told that divorce is like that.

Divorce laws exist because individual people are of infinite value and shouldn’t be destroyed, even by marriage. But divorce was never anybody’s plan or goal, least of all God’s. The plan for a sacramental relationship between two people is marriage. So the point is not to find legal justifications for divorce but to understand what the intent of marriage is.

What does God want to do in you that he can best do through your marriage? Many things, probably. This would be a good question to take up with him – you can also take it up with your wife or with your husband, because, if you will recall what I said a minute ago, your marriage is an avenue of God’s grace – it’s one of the ways God speaks to you.

Amen.

Come Eat Supper

Easter 7 - Year B

Readings:  Acts 1:15-17, 21-26   Psalm 1   1 John 5:9-13   John 17:6-19

Lord Jesus, thank you for reuniting us with God, our Father. Amen

There’s a podcast I subscribe to called “This American Life” from NPR in Chicago. Each broadcast, they have a theme, and they tell three or four different kinds of stories based around the theme. The last one I listened to, the theme was “Reunited, and it feels so good…”

Jesus is reuniting God, the Father, with his children. The first step was when he became one of us, when he was born as a baby and became our brother, growing up in a family and seeing from the inside what our lives are like. Then, he started talking to us about God, his Father – our Father - what he’s like, what he wants to say to us and how he wants to relate to us.

Finally, he started telling us he was going to leave, but that we wouldn’t be alone – we wouldn’t be left comfortless, as we prayed in the collect – because we would be able to talk to God, to Our Father, directly now.

Earlier on, people had become afraid to talk to God. When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the law, there was fire and thunder, and the mountain smoked, and everyone was terrified. They told Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us or we will die.” (Ex 20:1819)

After that, God communicated to his people through the law and then through the words of the prophets, priests and kings, but it was not a perfect system because a good many of those folks were not dependable and garbled up the message or ignored it or said whatever they felt like. So, finally, God sent his own Son to bring the message – to communicate with us, and the way he chose to do that was by becoming one of us.

While that is hard to comprehend in itself: that God’s Son would become a human being – the even more astonishing thing – which is also the more important thing about Jesus coming to live with us, is that in doing so, he brought us back into a relationship with God – and a closer relationship than we had before.

The Exsultet – the hymn at the beginning of the Great Vigil of Easter, says “How blessed is this night/ when earth and heaven are joined/ and man is reconciled to God”

Being reunited to God was a difficult process, certainly not without pain. First, there was the pain of the initial separation – and then a prolonged period of estrangement that was also painful for both us and God. Then, God had to be separated from his Son in order for his Son to enter our lives. That separation was painful for both of them, even though it brought Jesus into a closer connection with us.

Then, once Jesus had reestablished a connection with us, in the bonds he formed with his disciples and followers, he had to leave to go back to God, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.”

And that meant a separation of one type of closeness with us, even though it began to bring us all back to a closer connection with God.

“The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day, you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you…” (Jn 16:25b-27a)

Jesus has been telling them he’s going to have to leave, and that things are going to get pretty hairy when he leaves, but that, through him, they have the same access as he does to seek help from God – his Father and their Father.

Then, while they’re sitting there, he begins to pray for them. It’s like he’s bringing God in the room and introducing Him to his disciples and introducing them to Him.

“I have told these folks about you; I told them what you said, and they’ve received it and know you’re the one who sent me. Now, I’m asking you – protect them, and unify them, just like we are. While I’ve been here, I’ve looked out for them, but now I’m coming back, and so I’m asking you to look out for them now.”

And pretty soon after this prayer, he gets arrested and killed, and things do get pretty hairy for the disciples, and they don’t understand what’s going on at first, but gradually they realize that Jesus has reunited them with God, his Father and their Father – Our Father.

When you’ve been separated or estranged from someone, even just briefly, reuniting is difficult – and sometimes it takes some help.

Imagine you and your dad having a fight, and you get really mad and go lock yourself in your room. He tries to talk to you through the door, but you won’t say anything.

After a while, here comes your brother… “Dad says come eat supper.”

“No!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!”

“Can I come in?”

A brother is different than a dad. Your brother can talk to you in a different way than your dad can – and there are things your brother can tell you that you won’t hear from your dad.

That’s kind of the situation between God and his people. There had been a lot of fighting between us and God, and we’d become estranged and weren’t talking to each other. We had locked ourselves in our room, kind of. So Jesus came into the situation from our side. At first, he ferried messages back and forth like a mediator. He would tell us what God said and explain what he meant by it and he would also listen to our grievances and see what we were upset about and then go out to the kitchen and talk to God for us.

So you’re in your room, feeling a bit better and thinking maybe you’ll come out in a while - and your brother says, “Okay, I’m going – it’s time for supper and I’m supposed to set the table; you should talk to Dad.”

And maybe you feel ready for that and maybe you don’t, but he opens the door, and there’s God, standing in the hall. “I told her that you’re not mad and that you just want her to come eat, and she said she believes you and she’ll come out.”

Then he goes down to the table – and God’s there in the hall, and you’re looking at each other for a while, not knowing what to say – and he says, “Why don’t you come eat with us…”

Amen.

Sixth Word

The Sixth Word

“It is finished”

It is finished.    The accounts are satisfied. The debt is covered - Paid in full.

It is finished.    Your ransom has been negotiated. The deal is sealed. Payment made.

It is finished.   The cycle of retribution stops with me.

What is the debt? Why are we held for ransom? What’s the retribution for?

Sin.

Sin is separation, distance, estrangement. It’s emptiness, nothingness – a great blankness from which we can’t escape, like a black hole.

Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us. He became empty, became nothing, became separated, distant, estranged, heavy with the weight of the sins of the world. He became sin for us, like a black hole.

Here’s one description of how a black hole is formed.

“As a body is crushed into a smaller and smaller volume, the gravitational attraction increases…. Eventually a point is reached when even light, which travels at 186 thousand miles a second, is not traveling fast enough to escape. (Cambridge relativity site)

Jesus poured himself out into the world completely, to displace all of its emptiness. And making himself a void, he took in all our emptiness. The weight of it began to crush him, and still he took in more and more, like an imploding star, pulling into himself all the pain and sin of the whole world, drawing it all together like a massive source of gravity until he contained it all within himself and nothing could escape.

NASA describes black hole formation this way:

“The star eventually collapses to the point of zero volume and infinite density, creating what is known as a " singularity ".

It’s that single point; that single moment of death on the cross; that single person of Jesus Christ, who drew in all sin, pain and sorrow, taking all our emptiness into himself.

It is finished.

Fourth Word

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

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 Where are there cries of misery around us in our world today? What do they say?

God, "Let the cry of those in misery and need come to you, that they may find your mercy present with them in their afflictions… and give us the strength to serve them…” (BCP - Good Friday Liturgy, Solemn Collects)

 “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” 

It’s Aramaic. Remember, Jesus didn’t speak English.

In a minute I’m going to act out a modern parallel of what Jesus experienced at the hands of the Roman soldiers. The Roman soldiers utilized the cross as an instrument of shameful death.

Here, on Good Friday, the cross is no beautiful ornament.
It’s a torture device. So, what I’ll show you is a modern image of torture, which may be disturbing to you. It’s disturbing to me.

But what are we talking about here? A man who has been beaten, physically and psychologically degraded and humiliated, and at the time he gives this cry of misery - is undergoing horrific torture, not only at the hands of his enemies, but with the approval and even the insistence of his own people. That’s disturbing.

We’re talking about how a society can justify a means to an end. The religious authorities who had Jesus killed considered it necessary – and people who were squeamish about it were just naïve. That’s disturbing.

Caiaphas told the council “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” That’s disturbing.

Here in our nation today, people argue about the justification of torture in these same terms. If, by torturing and/or killing a bad person, we can protect good people, then it’s okay – it’s worth it – it’s necessary even. That’s disturbing.

Here’s the situation:

A volatile time, an unstable area, a strange culture, a fanatical religion...

An ineffective officer relegated to an undesirable post, with insufficient support and high demands...

Soldiers stationed in a post none of them want, surrounded by religious fanatics they can’t understand, told to keep order...

So what happens?

Where is your God?   Where is your God now?

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison…?

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References and related information

The Rev. George Pitcher (CoE) – blog entry "When we torture terror suspects, we torture Christ"

New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib abuses

Newsweek article– Abu Ghraib: many prisoners common criminals, not terrorists

Second Word

The Second Word

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 “Save us!”

On Sunday, people were saying it with joy and excitement, like they maybe thought it was true. Because that’s what “Hosannah!” means – “Save us!”

On Friday, the tone is much different, both from the people, and the one thief.

Now, it’s bitter sarcasm; it’s despair that becomes mockery.

- amazing how hope can make you so fragile, teetering so precariously over love and hatred, joy and bitterness.

In a way, their hatred and bitter sarcasm shows the hope underneath, the hope that is cracking under the strain of waiting so long and feeling it will never be realized.

What keeps hope alive? What is the food of hope?

It’s memory.

We have hope that God will be merciful to us, because we remember that he has been merciful to us.

How do we remember? We tell the stories – over and over and over. We make monuments, and write books. We act the stories out, we put them into poems and songs and art and liturgy. Every week, we meet together and remind each other.

Like the Seder meal, we have hope God’s promises will be fulfilled, because we remember how they have been fulfilled. And that memory works both ways. We ask Jesus to remember us, and he asks us to remember him.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Do this in remembrance of me.

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

I am with you now in your suffering. You will be with me in paradise.

Remember this.

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

I don't need your cow

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17   Psalm 19    1 Corinthians 1:18-25 

John 2:13-22

Lord, help us to cleanse our hearts so we can prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.

Yelling at people, turning the furniture over, throwing money on the floor, telling people to get out, and chasing cows and sheep with a whip…

Jesus was kind of upset, it seems like.

Why? What’s he so upset about, exactly?

Is it money? Does he not like the idea of people bringing money into the temple? I don’t think so. Remember the story of “the widow’s mite?” When the widow brought her money put in the offering in the temple, he didn’t run over and slap the two little coins out of her hand and yell at her… So, it’s not money he objects to, per se…And not even money in the temple.

Is it the animals? Does he think it’s inappropriate to have animals running around in the temple? We don’t bring animals to church with us, usually (except maybe for the Feast of St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals). But at the temple, the animals were regularly part of the service. They were for sacrifice, to make payment to God for sins – or for thanksgiving. If your worship requires animal sacrifice, you have to have animals there. Jesus’ own parents brought doves to the temple to sacrifice when he was a baby. So, he’s not upset that there are animals around. 

Was it the fact that people were selling the animals maybe?

Or that they were selling them in the temple?

I think that’s more the issue – but why was he upset about that? It seems like it would just be a convenience for people needing to get animals for the offerings and sacrifices.

Let’s imagine a contemporary parallel.

How could we make it more convenient for people to make offerings at church? You know, sometimes I forget my checkbook, and so I’m not prepared when I get here on first Sundays.

Maybe we could put an ATM in the narthex. Just for convenience.

That way, people could easily get money to put in the offering if they forget and come unprepared.

What do you think? Wouldn’t that be helpful?

If the goal of the offering is convenience, then, sure - why not?

Well, it would be tacky, for one thing. And generally, Episcopalians are on board with Jesus 100% on this – we don’t do tacky. (Thanks be to God!)

But the ATM and convenience store of ready-to-order animal sacrifices at the temple was not just tacky. It also showed that people were lazy and not taking the point of the sacrifice seriously. They were coming to offer sacrifice to God, and they were unprepared. It’s not that they didn’t know what was being asked of them; they just figured a way to accomplish it in the easiest way possible. And in that, they were totally missing the point.

“God wants a cow for a sin offering – okay – I’ll buy one when I get there. That way, I don’t have to haul it all the way to Jerusalem. I’ll just pick one up at the gate on the way in – less hassle.”

God gets pretty frustrated with this attitude and we hear this repeatedly in the Psalms and in the prophets. Here’s one example.

“Hear, O my people and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you.

I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. …

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High”

(Ps 50:7-14)

I don’t need your cow! – it’s my cow anyway! I don’t need your money. I don’t buy things. I made everything. Do you seriously think this is about you giving me something I need?

David gets the point of this in Psalm 51.

“O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite  heart, O God, you will not despise.”

(51: 15-17)

Maybe we would never put an ATM in the narthex – but being lazy about what we offer to God, coming to church with our hearts unprepared …

Ever do that?  And it’s not because we don’t know it’s coming – it happens every week at the same time.

Right now, we’re in the season of Lent – which, incidentally, happens every year at the same time. We’re supposed to be preparing for Easter, which also (to be clear) happens every year at the same time. If you are concerned about not knowing the exact date, let me show you something. Take a look the Book of Common Prayer that you have there in your seat. Find page 883. Here, you can see when Easter will be for the next 80 years. There’s absolutely no excuse to be unprepared.

Don’t be lazy and wait to the last minute to try and spiff up that morning –

God is not interested in whether we can take a nice picture wearing clean, new clothes. God is interested in giving us a clean, new life.

How do we prepare for that? We have to give our lives to God to let him clean them up. And how do we do that? By giving up things we are attached to that aren’t God – and trying to put God in place of that other stuff.

It’s really his place to begin with – like the cows people gave him that he already owned – when we bring offerings and make sacrifices, we’re really only giving God what belongs to him in the first place. God doesn’t need your cow – he doesn’t need your money. He doesn’t need the chocolate you’re not eating or whatever. God wants your life. In making your sacrifices, then, bring offerings that represents you – your life. God wants to come with you on the journey – he doesn’t want some souvenir you picked up in the airport.

So, prepare now for Easter. During Lent, give yourself as an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Amen