Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Third Sunday in Lent
Where do you go to be close to God? Perhaps you might find a beautiful, secluded spot, where you can hear the birds sing and you don’t have the distractions of the computer and cell phone. Or perhaps you might come to the church and sit in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and light a candle, and say your prayers. Or perhaps it’s not a particular place at all, but any place where you can have your prayer book and your Bible and a little peace and quiet.
People have probably always found the beauty of nature to be a place where they could contemplate on the meaning of life and pray to their god. And of course people of all religions have had places that are holy, where the presence of God as they understood him could be most keenly encountered.
For the Hebrew people, there was one place on earth where that divine Presence could be encountered in the fullest way possible, and that was the place where Abraham had brought his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, and where God had provided instead another sacrifice. It was the place on which the grand and beautiful temple had been built. If you had had a baby and wanted to thank God for that birth, you would come and make a sacrifice in that temple. In fact, you were supposed to do that. If you could, you were supposed to offer a sheep; but if you were poor, two doves or two pigeons could be substituted. They were much less expensive and could be bought outside the temple for about a day’s wage.
Any offering, however, had to be without blemish, and if you bought your offering outside of the temple, you ran the risk of the inspector finding a blemish, and then you would have to buy your pigeons in the temple anyway. In buying an animal in the temple you couldn’t use your Roman money, which you used in every other aspect of your life, because Roman coins were stamped with the image of the emperor. The emperor was considered to be a god, and so coins stamped with his image could not be used at any point in transactions in the temple. So if you bought something in the temple, like two pigeons, you first had to exchange your Roman coins for Palestinian shekels.
It was big business. Enterprising souls had a bird’s nest on the ground, so to speak. Inspectors could always find a blemish, and what could be sold outside the temple precincts for a day’s wage could be sold for much more within the temple. And you could charge a tidy sum just for changing people’s Roman coins for shekels. Even some of the clergy gave up their love for God in favor of the almighty dollar. As one commentator put it, “Most notably the High Priest whom Jesus was brought before, Annas, along with his five sons who succeeded him to that position,” had reigns “that can best be summed up with the words, ‘The Marketplace of the family of Annas.’”
What was supposed to be a holy place, a place of prayer for all people, had become something that resembled the kind of thing that Bernard Madoff and his like did to people in our own day. It was detestable. It took advantage of everyone, but especially of the poor, who couldn’t afford it and yet who were obligated by God’s law to make sacrifices in the temple.
But it was the way it was done. Most everyone accepted it as the price you had to pay for faithfulness. And the temple was beautiful, and it did cost money to run such an operation. Jesus could have just gone along with it. He would be popular with the people, but he could also curry the favor of the leadership.
But our Lord didn’t see it that way. He loved the temple. It was his Father’s house, and it was intended to be a place of prayer for all people. Instead, it was a den for thieves and robbers dressed in religious garb.
Well, we know the story. According to John, Jesus’ first act, you might say his first official act in his ministry, after he had turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, was a most violent act. He made a “whip of cords” and drove the salesmen and moneychangers, along with all of the animals, out of the temple, pouring out their coins on the ground and turning over the tables. He probably wasn’t going to get an invitation any time soon after that to say the invocation at the local Chamber of Commerce!
John tells us that the people who witnessed this act asked him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” It seems a rather calm question after such a violent act. Perhaps it was more like, “How dare you?!” Jesus responded with the words that make this Gospel so appropriate for Lent: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, he wasn’t talking about the building, but about his own body. He was predicting his crucifixion and resurrection.
It was just this sort of thing that got him crucified. As John Hines, a former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, said, “They did not crucify Jesus for saying, ‘Behold, the lilies of the field, how they grow.’ They crucified him for saying, ‘Consider the thieves of the temple, and how they steal.’”
Even the very things that are meant to bring us closer to God can be twisted to suit the tempter’s ends. The self-centeredness of our human nature can turn the purest of God’s instruments into instruments of the forces of evil. As today’s collect puts it, “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.” But what we do have, that the people in the temple did not have, is the power of the risen Christ within us. For as he predicted, he was put to death, that temple of his body was destroyed, and in three days he was raised. The risen Christ is with us. there is no greater power on earth than that Presence.
You and I have what we need to live in the Presence of God, no matter what is going on around us, and that being the case, there is nothing that can happen to us that can overcome us. That is, if we do not trust in our own power, but put our trust in him.
Where do you go to be close to God? He lives within you, and so wherever you are you can be close to him.