Sermon preached 6th Sunday of Easter at Ascension, Seattle

Thank you for sharing Carla with Emmanuel, Mercer Island, this morning,
and thank you for having me here with you today.

Pulpit exchanges are a double benefit:
a good way for a congregation to hear
a different voice and a different perspective on the gospel,
and an opportunity for the clergy
to experience how another congregation worships
plus that little but dangerous enticement of being a new voice
and thus likely to be more appreciated than at home.

Carla and I are each getting to preach on our favorite topics.

Carla is back with a congregation that knows and loves her
to have her take part in Emmanuel’s Rogation celebration.
Emmanuel is blest with expansive grounds
with some garden areas that are particularly beautiful right now
and also a large pea patch for vegetable gardens.
And this year our Kids Green Team
is planting their own section of the pea patch.

And I am honored to be back here at Ascension
where I had held a Prayer of the Lamb seminar
and led a 12 week group.
Today’s pulpit exchange was originally to have happened during Lent
when the topic of prayer and meditation was part of your lenten program,
but those plans had to be changed,
and now here we are, and prayer is always a topic that can be addressed.
The prayer relationship with Jesus is at the heart of our Christian faith.

This is where faith is made real,
where the rubber hits the road,
whenever we bring ourselves into the posture of prayer or meditation.
The prayer relationship with Jesus is foundational to trust and commitment.
It informs all that we subsequently do.
Prayer is the time and place where grace is given freedom to act in our lives.

What we experience in prayer and meditation
shapes our motivation for service and enables us for action.
That is why it is so very important to pray first before engaging in action.

So now, how to talk about prayer and meditation
in this short space of time this morning…
There is so much that can be said,
BUT I always find that a gospel passage gives a good way
to focus in on an aspect of prayer and meditation
that is a gold mine to explore,
and today’s gospel is no exception.

Actually I think that John 15 describes rather well
what is at the heart of prayer and what is realized in meditation.

Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.”

This love of which he speaks is, of course, agaph love,
that is the unitive love of God
which is a dynamic force and action within the heart of God,
within the Holy Trinity,
and this is what Jesus preached, demonstrated, and lived.

This agaph love flowed from Jesus continually,
so that in all the gospels everything recorded about Jesus
indicates this dynamic
and reveals no self-interest, no self-concern,
no self-contraction away from others and their needs.

This is a way of being that has overcome the mindset of the world,
where self-preservation arises
out of concern for having one’s own needs met.
Indeed Jesus so loved that he willingly laid down his life for his friends.

Jesus says, “Remain in my love,”
remain in this agaph, unitive love of God: be here!
Don’t go back to the old mind set.
Don’t get hooked by the pressures of the world.

Then he says, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,”
which can also be said the other way around:
“If you remain in my love, you will be able to keep my commandment,”
because what was that commandment of Jesus?
Love one another – in the same way he has loved us.

Look, this is for the sake of joy – your joy, joy that completely fills you up,
joy that permeates to the depth of your being,
joy that swallows up all grief, all suffering, all sadness, all anxiety,
all fear, all despair, all confusion, all self-constriction,
all that melting away in unbounded, liberating, life-giving joy.

Again, this love talk in today’s gospel is at the heart of prayer
and what is realized in meditation,
AND what can be experienced at every point in life.
I am saying that to sit in meditation
is to put ourselves in the best possible position for being able to
recognize and experience this agaph love, this unitive love.

See! We can’t be loved from afar.
God seeks to have us realize that God’s love is so intimate
that it is unitive.

So Jesus says remain in the love – don’t go back to the old mind set,
don’t get hooked by pressures from the world.
You can take a lot of hits from the world, if you are wakeful to the Love.

Now, a word about being chosen, since it’s right here in the text:
Jesus said, “You did not chose me, but I chose you…”
This is not an issue of being chosen out of the great pool of all living beings
to have an exclusive claim about relationship with Jesus.
Not that at all.
This is about initiative.

We may think we have made the first move by coming to church,
by getting ourselves baptized or confirmed, by offering our prayers,
but the move was initiated by Jesus, his Resurrection Presence
through the Holy Spirit moving us to turn toward him:
Jesus lifted up on the cross drawing all to him.

Ah, so we come to offer prayer, we sit to meditate,
not because we thought it up, but because we cannot help it.
If some of you then begin to think, oops, I’m not a meditator
and I hardly remember to say my prayers each day,
take that self-realization as indication that you are being drawn, being called.

Now the reason for all this love,
and for being the object of Jesus’ initiative, his choosing:
it’s not so we can just sit around in this wonderful love being blissed out,
or just feeling comfortable in the self-satisfaction of knowing we are loved.
It’s not so that we can come to church each Sunday,
hear the beautiful words of the liturgy that pronounce this love,
have a cup of coffee with friends
and go home again to think about other things.
We are being loved and being chosen
so that, frankly, we can be of some good use,
so that we can be fruitful, create some results, bear fruit.
And what happens to fruit grown on a tree or vine?
It gets eaten.
That’s right. If we bear fruit, then expect to get eaten.
Expect to be nourishment for others.
Jesus did this big time.
Look – we come here, up to this table, and eat him,
this literal giving of his life blood for us.

I am speaking very intimately here, at at very fundamental, foundational level
about life in relationship to Jesus.
I speak this way because what I have come to see
through my own meditation practice
is the very solid and immediate reality of this Love that Jesus has for us.

And this has worked in me an action of grace and mercy
that has been liberating and healing.
I began to meditate as a response to huge grief and loss
through the deaths of two young men in our family
followed shortly after by the death of my father,
out of a deep inner need that began shout at me
to sit down, shut up and listen.

And when I did, I came to discover this huge love,
and as I opened my heart to let this love in
much more than the grief was transformed and healed.
There were many ways in which my own self-limitation, doubt, fear,
anger, aggression, and other self-destructive attitudes
were being addressed,
not through any agenda or effort of my own,
but as a result of sitting still and doing nothing,
that is, meditating.

That is why I recommend this spiritual practice to others.
As a spiritual practice meditation is tried and true, accessible,
and bears fruit for those who discern a call to engage the practice.
That is why I have dedicated my time and effort
into providing instruction and forming meditation groups
where establishing a stable and ongoing personal practice
can be supported.

Bearing fruit – let me say one thing more.
It should have been no surprise to me
that eventually my own mediation practice would start making
some use of me in a way that would go beyond
my own comfort level in offering ministry.

It started with a simple pastoral referral
when I was doing some interim work in Monroe.
A prisoner was sent there who was an Episcopalian. Would I visit him?

I don’t like prisons,
and I don’t particularly care for the kinds of people you find in prison.
I can work pastorally in other situations of need.
I have been a hospice director and a chaplain in a trauma hospital.
I’ve been with a lot of people in crisis and difficult situations.
But prison ministry and the personality types there –
well, others would do much better with that than I;
I had never been much good with that or felt comfortable in that setting.

Nevertheless I made the visit to the Monroe Correctional Complex,
and lo and behold, this inmate wanted to learn how to meditate.
So there we sat in the large visitors room
surrounded by everyone else visiting – prisoners and their families –
a veritable din going on around us,
and we mediated together.

This guy was super motivated,
and he went back to his cell and meditated daily between my visits.
This went on for months.
Then he introduced me to the chaplains,
and we talked about my coming as a volunteer to teach meditation to others.

Now I go out there on a weekly basis, and have just recently received
a grant that will help keep this going for the rest of the year.
So far over 30 men have at least sampled the meditation class,
and some have stayed and established a personal meditation practice.

I am learning along with these men about the mercy of God,
mercy for them for an openness to
healing and transformation in their lives,
and mercy for me in bringing me to repentance
about my own judgments about them,
freeing me from another inner prison.

I am learning more and more what it is to do what Jesus commands,
that we love one another.

Sermon preached Good Friday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

In John, chapter 12, when some Greeks came to see Jesus,
he answered them,
"The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
Very truly, I tell you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

The hour of glory has come, the hour of GLORY,
when Jesus is lifted up upon the cross
and draws all to himself
all of humanity, all living beings, all life,
all suffering, all sin, all death.

And this is glory in the true sense of the word,
glory – not splendor,
but in the pure translation of the word
that which has weight of meaning,
that which is highly valued: glory.

But at that time 2,000 years ago
the glory was misunderstood, just as it is today,
in the desperate hope for another King David,
in clinging memories of the glory of King Solomon,
and the cross,
the ignominious death by execution as a criminal undeserving of life,
the cross (!) as a means of glory was incomprehensible.

Now admittedly even knowing what we know about Easter Sunday morning
and all the theology of resurrection, salvation and redemption,
2,000 years later it is still hard to sit here today
with the cross, with crucifixion, with death.
But this too is part of our devotion and response in gratitude
for God’s gracious love expressed so incredibly for us.

So let us be here with the Passion Narrative that we just took part in
as though we are one of the participants
and not just as the crowd who must say all those hard lines
of ignorance, delusion, and rejection.

In reading the Passion Narrative in each of the four Gospels
we see many participants in the scene and in the action,
many involved on the edges
the whole spectrum of the human condition,
so that ech of us can recognize ourselves there.

The general atmosphere in light of the events since Palm Sunday
had been an escalation of tension and confrontation
with the religious hierarchy
gathering energy around the big celebration of Passover.
One little incident could push the whole thing over into riot, uprising,
bringing on a strong Roman action of suppression.

Those in the highest leadership for the Jewish people
- the Sanhedran and clergy at the Temple -
probably were suffering sleepless nights.

Those with Jesus that Thursday evening in the upper room,
said to be near King David’s Tomb,
those closest to Jesus, the twelve,
each one of them had their own individual concerns and agendas for Jesus.

And those in the city of Jerusalem not directly involved
or ignorant or unconscious about what was happening that Friday
and about just who it is
who is passing by in the streets of Jerusalem
on the way to Golgatha.

Come, stand in those streets with me.
I’ve been there before – several times –
in the very same places where Jesus carried his cross.
Whenever I have been in the Holy Land
- a most unholy place with all its violence -
I usually find myself gravitating to the old city.

This is the part of Jerusalem that was the original city,
a city whose history goes back at least 4,000 years,
3,000 years since King David,
a city that has been destroyed and rebuilt 40 times in its history,
a city that has gone by various names
like Aelolia Capitolina after 70 AD by the Romans
and Al Quds as it is known in Arabic.

The Old City is that which is enclosed by the 16th Century wall
built by Suleman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire.
It includes all of what would have been Jerusalem during the time of Christ
plus the area to the west and north
so that now the wall encloses what was once Golgotha and the tomb.

Throughout the Old City bits and pieces of architecture and roadway
poke out from this century or that
all the way back to the time of Christ.

One can see the actual paving stones,
parts of the Antonio Fortress where Pontius Pilate held Jesus
and presented him to the people and said,
“Behold the Man.”

The way from the Antonio Fortress through the city streets
and out the gate to the place of execution, the hill called Golgotha,
can be traced with a fair amount of accuracy,
although now all the route is within the city wall.

Just as 2,000 years ago the Via Dolorosa, the sorrowful way,
went through the busy marketplace,
so it does now today,
through the busy marketplace,


so that all the citizenry of Jerusalem can see and take note
of what happens to those criminals condemned to die,
a harsh object lesson for the people,
but also for the condemned another humiliation
added to what had already been suffered.

It is not easy to walk the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem.
It is more like running a gauntlet of pick pockets and street hawkers,
where every several paces you can duck into a shrine
at one of the stations
for a moment of prayer
before emerging again into the barrage of the market place.

To right and left are endless shops with all sorts of things to buy,
from souvenirs to underwear, spice shops and butcher shops
with entire carcasses of goats and sheep hanging
skinned except for a tuft of fur at the end of the tail,
shops that sell Palestinian embroidery or pottery
or Israeli tee shirts,
candy stores, internet cafes,
and all with men sitting there watching those who pass by,
trying desperately to engage you in conversation
in order to get you to come into their shop.

Over the years I’ve noticed
that it’s not as crowded along the Via Dolorosa as it used to be.

So everyone has a “good price” they say to you.
Come in a haggle over a cup of mint tea.
Buy more than one of an item and reduce the price.
Start your bartering at a price less than half what is quoted you,
and agree on a price somewhere in between.
Expect to spend much time over each purchase.

Doesn’t sound very spiritual, does it?

But this is the reality of the city – then and now.

The Lamb of God struggles by with his execution stake,
and the world is interested in securing an income, avoiding layoffs,
and making a good bargain.

Once when I was leading a group of pilgrims along the Via Dolorosa,
the indifference of the world to the significance of Christ’s crucifixion
was painfully clear.

Carrying a large cross through the street
helped give coherence to the group,
identified us as pilgrims engaged in a religious ritual.
But that was no protection.

There were hawkers pushing postcards in our faces.

There was a professional photographer flashing shots of us
so that he could come and sell us the photos later.

One of his pictures caught four of our pilgrims
following the cross, but all of them looking sideways
into a shop that seemed particularly enticing.

Oh, how this describes us all,
even the faithful and dedicated church goer.

This is what Jesus has to deal with
from us, from his own disciples, as well as everyone else
as he undertook his ultimate work
so huge it would go beyond
what any spiritual master had done before or since.

So huge – this intention not just to heal individuals here and there,
not just to liberate oppressed souls from their inner demons,
not just restore life here and there for the sake of grieving families,
not just feed a few thousand with bread from a boy’s lunch,
not just to say words that would astound listeners.
No – this ultimate work of healing, liberating, feeding,
giving life and salvation
was to take all the suffering, all the human condition of sin,
which is wrapped up in the despair that comes from
believing and living the lie
of separation from the Source of our being.

-- This ultimate work of salvation by taking upon himself all suffering and sin and death for all time --

Other great spiritual masters have demonstrated
the ability to absorb others’ pain, illness and suffering.
But Jesus was taking this incredible spiritual action
to the cosmic, universal level
in one full, sufficient and perfect sacrifice.

And no one recognized this.

In the limitations of their own personal agendas
for those around Jesus,
no one saw this coming in quite this huge scope of action and outcome.

Nor do we.
In the limitations of our own personal life perspective
focused on our immediate issues
we miss the hugeness – it is beyond anything we know how to ask.

Well, this is part two of the Triduum,
a liturgy begun last night and continuing through the Easter Vigil.
What we commemorated yesterday in the Maundy Thursday Eucharist
is intertwined with what we commemorate today
and what will come after sundown tomorrow.

That last night at table Jesus did something
that would connect us all to the cross,
that would forever link us spiritually and physically to the cross,
that would demonstrate a means of oneness in his huge heart.

He did this by taking some bread off the table,
holding it up, tearing it into pieces,
and giving a part of that bread to everyone there.

“Eat this,” he told them,
and then he said, “This is my body.
“Every time you gather and eat, you are eating me.”
one with bread and one with all life,
all that is created in him, the Word, present at Creation, through whom came life.

And then he took a cup of wine from the table
and had them all drink from that,
and then he said, “This is my blood.” MY BLOOD
words that would have chilled those present to the bone,
because of the great prohibition on blood.

All kosher meat is drained thoroughly of the blood
because the life of that animal is in the blood.
Slice it’s neck open and let the blood out and the animal dies.

Only God gives life, the blood is reserved for God alone.

For the animals sacrificed at the Temple,
the blood was collected in bowls and thrown on the altar.
The altar of God dripped with blood that belonged to him.

And the Lamb of God said, “Drink this, all of you.
“This is my blood, shed for you”
like an animal sacrificed at the altar
the life blood – here not splashed on the altar for God’s eyes only
but poured out into an infinite number of chalices.

Drink this in recognition that you gathered here,
you who have drunk this week after week, year after year,
now have flowing in your veins MY very blood.


Jesus says to us today, let me do the big, important work
of taking on your sin and suffering, your death.
You, simply drink my life blood,
and let that work intimately within you.

This is the glory of the cross,
the precious weight that hangs upon it,
precious beyond all counting,
the grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying
producing the fruit of salvation and resurrection
and new life for us all.

Glory.

Sermon preached Holy Monday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

Holy Week each year gives us the opportunity to engage more closely
that which is at the heart of our faith.
When we bring ourselves here to participate in these liturgies this week,
we are opening ourselves in invitation to the Holy Spirit
to enlighten our eyes, to give us deeper experiential knowledge
of just what it is that God has down for us, for all humankind,
for all creation,
in the comprehensive action of the Cross.

Yesterday we participated in the commemoration of the events of Palm Sunday,
and then took part in the reading the whole of Mark’s Passion,
plunging us immediately into the entire story.

Now each day of this Holy Week
we will go into depth in each segment of the story,
beginning today, Holy Monday, with the story of the anointing of Jesus.

Yesterday with the reading of the Passion account according to Mark
we heard the story of a woman anointing Jesus.
Tonight we hear John’s account of this event
with some factual variants, to be sure,
but essentially the same story.
There are also accounts of a woman anointing Jesus in Matthew and Luke.

Interesting …
Apparently what Jesus said in Mark’s version was taken seriously:
“…wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world,
what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

When I was in India I witnessed several times a beautiful act of devotion.

When a holy person, a guru, a great spiritual teacher arrives,
there is a ceremonial washing and anointing of the feet.
The ritual is done with several substances:
milk, honey, oil, perfume, flower petals.

In being granted an audience with this holy person and approaching
you bow down and touch the feet to receive a blessing.
Then you touch your head and your heart in transmission of the blessing.

Or you touch your head to the spiritual master’s feet
to indicate that you are placing yourself under the guru’s lordship,
which means also under the master’s care and protection.

These rituals are very ancient, thousands of years old.
We hear an echo of them in the Gospels
each time they record someone coming up to Jesus
and prostrating themselves.

Today Jesus is reclining at table.
And it is Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus,
the one who would sit at his feet for his teachings
rather than observing the duties of hospitality
that were her proper place and responsibility,
who approaches Jesus with the very best that can be offered
to anoint his feet, an act of great devotion.

But more than that,
she touches her head to his feet
and wipes some of the nard from his feet onto her head.

Her actions go over the top.
Now a reaction comes, and in John’s Gospel telling of this story
it is Judas who expresses the objections.
Now the ritual of devotion is viewed as a waste of resources
that could have been directed elsewhere, ostensibly for the poor –
for the nard has a monetary value equivalent
to what the average worker would earn in an entire year.

That was worth three times more than
the 30 pieces of silver Judas would get for betraying his Teacher.

But Jesus stands up for her.
She was anticipating his burial, he says, his death and burial,
anointing him beforehand,
an act of devotion and love.

And more –
by wiping some of the nard from his feet onto her head with her hair
she is taking on herself his death.
It is a way of expressing her willingness to die with him,
to be included with him in death,
and to receive the benefits of his death.

Mary recognized the situation for what it was, an immanent catastrophe;
she recognized this before all the rest of the disciples.

This is a living parable about agaph love,
agaph love, that which is the highest expression of love
in the Greek language of the New Testament,
Godly love, love which signifies union with God,
the love that represents the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit
within the Holy Trinity,
the love that expresses God’s love for us:
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…
This is the relational aspect of agaph love
that can be expressed as “I in you and you in me.”

Here in this parable of love being expressed
there is giving and receive.
Mary gives to Jesus in this devotional act of anointing
and Jesus receives her loving expression
as what his body will need after the crucifixion.
And Jesus gives to Mary as she wipes his feet with her hair,
he will give her the benefits of his death,
he will give her resurrection life in him.

This takes us into the story on the personal, intimate level.
Now that we are brought into such an intimate and personal relationship,
where are we this week in relationship with Jesus?

Those of us here this evening
are expressing a willingness to be present
to these awful events of Holy Week.
This is an expression of devotion.

And may this transform and flow over into
our relationships with those we love and care about,
and with all those others we encounter as we go through the day.

May that same sensitivity that Mary had
in which she recognized what the other disciples had missed,
may that same sensitivity and care now also be expressed toward others
who, after all, are declared by our Lord to also be himself.

Sermon preached Palm Sunday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

And so begins Holy Week, the most sacred time of the year for us,
who call ourselves by the Name of Christ.
I invite you to participate deeply in the liturgies of this week,
to let your hearts be open to the full scope of meaning
for the events of this week,
to follow Jesus as faithful disciples.

I make this invitation,
and then I realize that I have asked you to open your hearts
to the Passion Account of our Lord’s death,
a story full of intense suffering.

We may not feel at all up for exposure to such suffering.
We may have had about all we can handle of the anxiety of financial instability
on a national and a global scale,
enough of the suffering brought upon entire communities
where massive lay offs occur,
plus the frightening reports that seem to come on a daily basis
about devastation to the environment,
let alone thinking about the ongoing wars and unspeakable violence
that people impose on one another.
To listen to the Passion according to Mark
brings all this suffering before us again.

And if that were not enough,
each of us here has most probably known times
of intense personal suffering.
For many people being consciously present with suffering,
unresolved from the past, is most difficult.

Yet I will still make this invitation to be present with an open heart
to this Gospel and to all the liturgies of Holy Week.

The reason is not to exacerbate
the suffering you may encounter or be experiencing,
but to discover in the midst of it all the most profound love,
love that moves us through the narrow constraints and pressures of pain
and out into an expansive space that is all freedom and joy.

Unless we go through the narrows of facing the suffering
we will forever be stuck there, just sort of holding
our grief or woundedness or sorrow or hopelessness at bay,
never fully free to experience the expansiveness
of healing and transformation which brings us true joy.

But by being willing to look at the hard words of the Passion Account
full in the face,
and as much as lies in us to be conscious of what we see,
then what our eyes will see is love, great love, all love, profoundest love.

Brothers and sisters, this story of Jesus’ death is not a tragic account
of suffering beyond all measure.
Jesus knew what he was doing;
he knew that what he was doing was essential,
all in service for you, for me, for every living being,
the way for all to come into Resurrection Life,
to finally get what he had been talking about all along,
what all his ministry had been about.

I guarantee to you that if you come and take part
in all these liturgies of Holy Week,
or as many of them as you can,
with a willingness and trust to bring all your own suffering with you,
that Love of God, Love which is God, will be at work in you,
transforming the wounds, bringing healing,
revealing to you such beauty.

Holy Week – the most sacred time of the whole year,
focused in our deepest emotions and most profound pain,
the time when we can be together
in holding all our suffering
and all the suffering of the world
in the context of the Love of Jesus played out to its full extent.
Is that not what draws your hearts in deepest devotion?
-- this wonder, love and awe --

Let your participation this week
be nothing less than responding in faith,
trusting wholly in what Jesus did for us,
surrendering to the completeness of what he did
that does not need any additional action on our part
other than to receive.

In our devotional response to Jesus
there is no self aggrandizement,
no need to prove a point or make a statement,
no status attained for having participated in all the worship of the week,
just humble acceptance and the expression of our hearts.

What better use of our time this week
for those who are Christians, who are followers of Jesus,
than to show our devotion to the One who not only died for us
but continues to take care of us, nurture us, feed us with himself,
to show our devotion through our worship
especially at each of the liturgies of the Triduum,
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil Saturday night,
the three most holy days of the whole Church Year.

And this is what we can best do
in response to what the liturgies of this week represent:
to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,
as we say each Sunday in the Eucharistic Prayer,
to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

The Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection
is all done for love of us,
each of us and all of us.

From Jesus’ wounded side flows
compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness and grace.

No love has ever been greater,
this love sufficient to embrace and heal and save
all fears that would paralyze us,
all suffering
and especially suffering inflicted on peoples in the name of religion,
all griefs, all sin.
No greater love than this.

Sermon for 3 Lent at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“The message about the cross is foolishness …
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles …”

What Christians were saying was the center of their faith 2,000 years ago
was hard to take by those around them in that place and culture,
just as much as it is today.
And if we take a closer look at what is in the Gospel for today,
with the talk about Temple sacrifice
and the significance of the death of Jesus,
again this kind of discussion
might seem like a stumbling block and foolishness.

So let’s tackle it!

The setting for this Gospel story is the time of the feast of the Passover,
and the feast of unleavened bread,
the time for purging out all the old leaven from the house,
- that’s the custom: get rid of all the old leaven -
and Jesus comes to the Temple, the House of God, in Jerusalem.

Now the Temple is the place where the sacrifices for sin are offered,
the life of animals exchanged for the life of the humans
for those who recognize that they have not kept the Covenant, or those 10 Commandments we have now read twice,
- and all the other commandments -
they haven’t been able to keep them all,
and are therefore deserving of death.

That is the point of the Law of the Covenant:
Keep the Commandments, and you choose life.
Deviate from the Commandments, and you are on the path to death.
And since humans are so devious, we deviate so much,
well, there we are, in need of the sacrifice to save our lives.

The cattle and sheep and doves at the Temple were there for one purpose,
to be slaughtered, a continuous effusion of blood,
and then to become meat on the table.
And in this gospel lesson Jesus comes and sets them free.

Startled and wide-eyed cattle and sheep
scattering and stampeding out of the Temple courts
into the streets of Jerusalem!
The flurry of wings!
I can almost hear Jesus yelling at them, “Run for your lives!”

Well, the idea of blood sacrifices
as substitutions for people whose lives are under sentence of death may seem strange and remote to us in our 21st Century culture
especially where our view of these animals
comes in sealed packaging arrayed in sanitary rows,
as steaks and standing rib roasts and lamb chops
and de-boned pigeon breast or thigh,
de-personalized bits and pieces of a once whole, live animal,
an animal whose life was sacrificed that you might live
through the nourishment derived from its flesh.

The Temple was the center of the religious practice of Jesus’ day,
the sign of God’s presence with the people,
and of God’s action in the Covenant and Law to save and make people holy.
And by 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.

We can look back just a few verses just prior to this Gospel lesson
into the end of Chapter 1 of John’s Gospel,
and you may recall the conversation Jesus was having with Nathaniel.

Jesus was describing himself for Nathaniel,
as a ladder connecting heaven and earth
with angels ascending and descending,
the very vision Jacob had
as he slept out in the open of a vast deserted place
with a stone for his pillow,
a place he then called Beth-El, the House of God.

Jesus is Beth-El, the House of God,
the vessel conveying the divine presence,
the One, whom to look at, is to see God.
It is his sacrifice, his blood
that will stand in the place of that endless line of creatures
facing their doom in the Temple courts.
Jesus is both Temple, the House of God, and sacrifice.

His disciples observed Jesus and the radical action he was taking
and they remembered the verse from Psalm 69,
“Zeal for your house consumes me.”
Zeal, fire, love, passion consumed him entirely
as is seen in his perfect union with the Father
so that in him one will is being expressed,
and therefore his Presence in the Temple in Jerusalem cleans it out, purifies it.
“Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?”
the Apostle Paul asks in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth.

Just as Jesus is the House of God,
so we in him are temples of God,
built to offer worship and praise to the Creator,
to overflow with the love of God.
This temple of our hearts, our being, is also in need of cleansing.

As Paul so aptly describes in his Epistle to the Romans,
our human struggle to be holy brings us to frustration.

We are not able of our own power and effort
to accomplish a perfect observance of the commandments of God,
the laws of God which demonstrate to us
the way of holiness and harmony with God.
Something else is dwelling in us, in our flesh and bones and spirits,
that frustrates our intention and effort.

Paul identifies this as sin,
defined as that which moves us off target in the path of holiness.
We are a vessel, a temple, of sin,
that which moves us away from harmony with God.

The condition of the temple within us may appear to be hopeless.
We may wonder at times
if this temple is in even worse shape
than the one Jesus found in Jerusalem.

Jesus said that it is what comes out of the heart that defiles a person,
and one look at just the words proceed out of our mouths,
and we can see the defilement
the defilement of words spoken in anger,
words with a sharp edge of sarcasm, criticism,
words meant to cut another down,
words that kill the life in another person.

We are given the gift of language, speech, words,
the very thing God used for creation and life,
and we use it for destruction and death.
Words can be just as deadly as weapons of war,
and words proceed out of the heart,
which is the temple of the Living God.

Well, it IS Lent, a good time for spring house cleaning.
We need Jesus to do some cleansing in our own temples,
cleaning out whatever beasts may be lurking there,
and the moneychangers and livestock dealers comfortably seated there,
to send them startled and wide-eyed stampeding out.

But there is a difference between
Jesus entering uninvited into the Temple in Jerusalem
and Jesus entering our temple hearts.
Here he asks permission, so to speak.
Here we are wooed by the Holy Spirit to open the door and invite him in,
and to continue inviting him in.

There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that Jesus does the work in us to make us holy.
The bad news is that Jesus does the work in us,
and he does it effectively and thoroughly.

So if resistance comes up, we may wonder,
Will he take a whip to us like he did in the Temple in Jerusalem?

John the Baptist had said that the One coming after him
would baptize with fire,
that he had a winnowing fork and fan
to separate the chaff and burn it clean from us.
Violent imagery!
Will we too be consumed in his zeal?

Yes, it may be that what we have identified ourselves so closely with
will be burned away,
and what will remain will be identified as the true self.

And so the need for the old temple sacrifices of blood is gone.

We are not required to manage our own expurgation
for the sins that plague us and frustrate us
and make life miserable for us.

There was one sacrifice in the Temple, the House of God,
offered once and for all,
the full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,
and we all eat of the flesh of that sacrifice week by week.

Does that shock your sensibilities?
Listen for that word sacrifice to come up as we continue with the liturgy.
Notice how often it appears.

But don’t we have to do something?
What is left for us to do?
There is a sacrifice that we can make:
the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,
the offering of our selves, our souls and bodies,
as a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice,
by simply opening the door to receive what’s given.

Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“The message about the cross is foolishness …
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,
and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore let us keep the feast.