Imagine the scene.
Jesus goes to the Temple in Jerusalem, the big cathedral in that day,
and what does he find there, what does he see,
where does his attention go?
Not to the Holy of Holies,
not to the altars of incense and of sacrifice
necessary for prayers to God,
not to the clergy in procession or the Psalms being sung by the choir,
but to the animals for sale there, animals doomed for sacrifice,
and to the money changing tables
where filthy Roman coins were exchanged for righteous shekels.
And what happens next is dramatic, disruptive and attention getting.
Sometimes the spiritual master has to go to drastic measures
to get our attention.
What was the purpose Jesus wanted to get across?
More than one thing, several actually,
in fact we could spend a lot of time
plumbing the depths of this passage
and still have more to discover.
Put it this way.
Jesus was shifting the attention of the disciples that were with him,
and of the people there at the Temple that day,
and most especially the attention of the clergy and Jewish leaders.
Shifting their attention and their perspective.
How each would respond to his outrageous actions
would reveal where they were coming from in their own thinking.
Their bias would clearly be revealed in how they reacted.
His disciples linked his actions to the Psalms and the Prophets.
Jesus was a new prophet calling the people to an energized zeal
for the purity that was called for within the Temple courts.
His actions affirmed their hopes for a Messiah
who would lead with boldness and strength.
That’s what the disciples were looking for.
The Jewish leaders wanted more signs to spell out clearly who he was.
They had to think about the fragile balance that needed maintaining between themselves and the Romans
so that, at least in name, they could maintain their positions of ruling
without bringing a heavy military response down upon them all.
So it was important that they had more signs
to confirm that Jesus was legit,
or so that they would have grounds to outlaw this wild man
and shut down his growing but suspect influence on the people.
You see, each were looking at Jesus from their own perspective,
from their own mindset, from their own bias.
Recently I had been listening to a podcast
from the Center for Action and Contemplation
with Brian McLaren, a very good writer and spiritual voice
addressing issues for those of us
who are trying to live a Christian life of faith
in a culture that frequently sees Christians
either as right wing fundamentalists
who want to impose strict moral codes on everyone else
or as anachronistic and irrelevant in a secular world.
Everyone has their own perspective,
and currently those different perspectives can get polarized quickly when different viewpoint meet up with each other and clash.
In this podcast Brian McLaren took several episodes to discuss
what he had as the basis for his book,
Why Don’t They Get It?
Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself).
To quote McLaren:
“We all have filters, [such as]
What do I already believe?
Does this … idea or … information confirm what I already think?
Does it fit in the frame I’ve already constructed?
…My brain (without my conscious awareness,
and certainly without my permission)
makes incredibly quick decisions
as it evaluates incoming information or ideas.
Ideas that fit in are easy and convenient to accept,
and they give me pleasure
because they confirm what I already think.
But ideas that don’t fit easily will require me to think,
and think twice,
and maybe even rethink some of my long-held assumptions.
That kind of thinking is hard work.
It requires a lot of time and energy.
… Wanting to save me from that extra reframing work,
my brain presses a “reject” or “delete” button
when a new idea presents itself.
“I’ll stick with my current frame, thank you very much,” it says.
… People can't see what they can’t see.
Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall,
trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion.
No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them,
unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias …”
McLaren’s book contains a list of 13 different types of biases
that are very subtle to awareness, but also very pervasive.
These are not the kinds of bias you would expect, such as
those biases that have to do with race, gender identity, politics.
I will spare you the whole list of 13 hidden biases
(this is not a 13 point sermon!)
but I will share some because when I read the list
I immediately saw a mirror held up in front of me.
And I also know that you too may recognize yourself in this list.
So we can use this as an apt Lenten self-reflection exercise.
1 Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standards we have:
[which are] old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities.
As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm
excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
2 Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community
our tribe, group, cultural identity
doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see. [This is cultural bias.]
3 Competency Bias: How can we know how much (or how little)
we know about any given topic or issue?
And we certainly can’t know how much (or little) others know
on this matter.
[We assume our own knowledge level to be adequate
for whatever we are judging.]
4 Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen
from where I am right now.
But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing,
someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Unless it is raised to the conscious level, we don’t see it.
5 Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I can remember dramatic catastrophes
but not notice gradual decline (or improvement).
[In other words, we will recall negative events in our history,
and tend to overlook the long, slow progress or decline
that had a more lasting effect upon us.]
6 Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,”
my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
And the last one: Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something
when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
[Our financial status colors the way we look at others
in a different financial status – either to the very rich or very poor.]
So here we are with a mirror for examining biases
we didn’t even know we had!
We now have some freedom to look deeper
and ponder how these discoveries of bias
have impacted our own decision making and our relationships.
The mirror that is held up before us here
plays the same role as Jesus purging the Temple.
His actions, as I said earlier, get the attention of everyone around him,
and their reactions all reveal their biases,
and the reader of the Gospel would get this too.
Am I shocked by what Jesus did? Why am I shocked?
What do I now see about myself?
What can I repent of? What can I let go of?
Now back to the Gospel story.
Everyone had their back story and incipient bias
about what Jesus was doing,
but what does Jesus say next?
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
But at that time nobody got what he meant
until after his death and then the big surprise, the Resurrection.
In the action of clearing the temple of the sacrificial animals
necessary for the practice of the religion,
Jesus is making a radical shift,
a radical shift away from the Temple and the whole religious enterprise
to himself, his own body,
as the Temple, the Holy of Holies, the House of God.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, would become both Temple, the House of God,
and the sacrifice.
There was only one sacrifice in that Temple,
offered once and for all,
full, perfect and sufficient,
as it says in the word of Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer
and we all eat of the flesh of that sacrifice
in the Holy Communion.
Now, is that a shock to our sensibilities?
Pay attention to that as we continue this liturgy,
and especially to the Eucharistic Prayer.
What bias might that uncover for you now?
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