As a progressive Christian, I believe there are many names for God and many ways to a loving God; this article reflects one of those ways. Take from here what works for you. Celebrate life with joy and peace!
Many people associate Lent with suffering, “What am I going to give up?” And as a result, suffer!
“Suffer” also means “to allow.” Jesus said, “Suffer the children to come unto me,” that is, allow the children to come to me. During this season of Lent, in preparation for Holy Week and Easter, let’s focus on allowance rather than pain. Let’s allow ourselves to grow spiritually, to learn, to experience more hope and peace in our life during this intentional season of reflection.
Our scripture reading this morning is from the Gospel of John. This Gospel of John is often called the “mystical gospel” where Jesus is shown in many different ways metaphorically, like Living Water, The Bread of Life, The Road or The Way, Light of the World. Biblical scholars tell us that to more fully understand John’s message, it helps to engage it on this metaphorical level, and the deeper we go, the richer the meaning.
The story of Jesus clearing the temple is one that many of us know. We’ve heard sermons about it and we’ve seen dramatic depictions of it in movies; it’s one of the few stories that appear in all four gospels. However, John is unique in the way he handles this story. All of the other gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) have this story near the end of Jesus’ ministry right after Jesus arrives in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. John positions this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Interesting.
Now, the fact that John chronologically re-positions this story and rearranges details is OK because accurate chronology was not the important thing for John. The important thing was the meaning John and his faith community gleaned from this story.
Here we see Jesus mad; he’s expressing this animated anger in the temple. He enters the temple and literally clears out the place! It’s a crazy scene with people, coins and cattle scattered in every direction! It certainly wasn’t subtle!
So what could this be all about? Was it that Jesus was upset because people were selling and buying in the temple? Is that the core message here? Probably not.
This story is not about holding bake sales and fundraising events in the church, as some people have tried to use this Scripture in the past. That interpretation is seeing the story at a very narrow and superficial level. We can almost be sure that’s not John’s purpose in sharing this story because by the time John wrote this gospel the temple had already been destroyed and gone for almost 30 years! So, let’s go deeper!
We are getting to that time of year, where the days are getting nicer and nicer. Where I grew up in Wisconsin, we could feel the intensity of the sun getting stronger and the days getting longer, and it caused an annual event to come to our house – spring cleaning!
I remember when I first had my own place, I had so much “stuff” in it, so much that it got difficult to clean and just felt cluttered and cramped. I knew I had to declutter my place, but didn’t know where to begin! I was paralyzed. So, someone wisely told me, start in one corner, even a 4×4 area, and start de-cluttering. It took me about a month, and I threw so much away and gave so much away, and it felt freeing and there was even a better energy in the house.
For many people this is not an easy task. We have a resistance to letting go of our precious keepsakes. Sometimes it feels like if we let go of our holy and hallowed stuff, it will affect our life on some sort of a sacred level. So we resist.
However, once we can get past our initial irrational resistance and apply decluttering principles we might actually begin to enjoy the process and even find it liberating.
Could it be that this story for John and his faith community is something like this? Jesus saw that religion had become cluttered with so many laws and rigid practices that they even became more important than knowing the heart of the Divine. It became regulation over relationship.
Perhaps this incident in the temple represented decluttering of a religion that was out of touch with the heart of God and had become obsessed and paralyzed with ritualistic processes and practices, legalisms and literalisms, do’s and don’ts, boundaries and prohibitions.
Maybe John tells this story right at the beginning of his gospel to declare that, in Jesus, the readers were being called beyond all of that; into a new way of thinking and being. It was a call to clear out the clutter and let go of rigid legalisms. It was a call to embrace the powerful positive energy of love; that it was not about the temple, but about Jesus.
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan mystic, wrote a book called A Lever and a Place to Stand where he describes stages of spiritual development.
An early stage of the spiritual journey he calls the “Stage of Law or Conformity.” He believes this stage (or box) is most often the beginning place of a spiritual journey, but never meant to be a place where people remain and get entrenched. He goes on to say that for most people, this is a rather rigid stage where the emphasis is placed on trying to feel a sense of certainty and security; this stage is often characterized by literalism and filled with rewards and punishments; either-or thinking.
He also notes that the negative side to this early stage is that people have a tendency to become harshly judgmental and condescending toward those who are perceived to be outside of the box.
Isn’t this what happened with Jesus? All of the gospels show Jesus, over and over, getting in trouble with the religious authorities and the rigid religious system. He did all kinds of unacceptable things according to the people inside this inflexible religious box; like touching lepers, eating with outcasts and partying with sinners, speaking openly with a Samaritan woman, healing on the Sabbath and a whole lot more!
Jesus would’ve loved Graham Moore’s acceptance speech at the Oscar’s where he said, “Stay weird. Stay different. And when it’s your turn to stand on this stage, pass the message along.” He would’ve been cheering with Meryl Streep when Patricia Arquette boldly said, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”
And he would have joined in a standing ovation, saying “Black Lives Matter.” And cried, experiencing the moving song, “Glory!”
Jesus was perceived by people inside the religious box as being a threat and a renegade. For Jesus, it was love, compassion and justice that always won over the spiritual law and it put him at risk.
In the next stages on the spiritual journey, Father Richard Rohr says that as followers of Jesus we are set free from that confining box and that we can move beyond that into an ever evolving and deepening experience of Divine love.
Jesus challenged (invited, called, summoned, urged, drew) his disciples to clear out the clutter of rigidity and move into a deeper experience of God’s grace and inclusive love.
Jesus challenged his disciples to clear out the clutter of viewing life and others from a place of religious superiority but rather from a place of solidarity.
Jesus challenged his disciples to clear out the clutter of using religion to condemn and judge and be used as a weapon and move toward forgiveness and reconciliation.
Jesus challenged his disciples to clear out the clutter of using religion and rules to separate and create boundaries and move on to inclusion of all people.
Jesus challenged his disciples to clear out the clutter of the thinking of what’s in it for me, and move toward self-giving love and creating a community of hope, healing and wholeness.
Perhaps we are all being called this morning to clear out the clutter of anything that would prevent us from a closer relationship with a loving God who calls us to stand with the marginalized and be the hands and feet of God letting our light shine brightly!
For Lent, let’s give up having God neatly in a box. Let God out of the box and throw away the box and let’s be surprised how big God is!
