Sermons and Reflections

Wednesday after III Lent
March 26, 2003
Lutheran Theological Seminary Chapel
Pr. G. Miller

We are creatures of habit. Well, I at least am a creature of habit. The rhythms and routines of life are important to me -- and more so it seems with each passing year. I’ve learned for instance that if something interrupts my normal morning routine -- say, the phone rings and it’s President Krey with yet another new fundraising strategy for the foundation office -- I have trouble picking up where I left off. This sometimes results in getting into the office and discovering that I forgot to shave... Which, studies have shown, may have a detrimental effect on fundraising. Among other things...

Of course, the nature of routines is such that we don’t often really THINK about how much SENSE they actually make... You remember that wonderful line that Tevya speaks in Fiddler on the Roof about tradition: "You may ask, WHY do we practice these traditions... well, I’ll tell you...I don’t know. But they’re TRADITIONS!" The corollary I note, after 17 years in parish ministry, was that, in the Church, if we did something two times in a row, it became a tradition. Three times, and "we had ALWAYS done it that way."

In the past few days, since the beginning of the war on Iraq, the routines and rhythms of our collective lives have, in many respects, been turned upside down. We have had the equivalent of an interruption of our morning routines to the tenth power, and we find ourselves in something of a daze. Every conversation, every meeting, begins at least with some reference to this new horror. We TRY of course to go on with the daily stuff of life. We HAVE to really. But it seems oddly surreal to be doing whatever it is that we do from day to day, knowing what is going on halfway around the world.

Nowhere was this more absurdly evident than in the days leading up to Sunday night’s Oscar telecast. For days, it wasn’t clear whether the show would even go on. And then, when that hurdle was overcome, the next great crisis centered around what was "appropriate" in the context of a war. In several hours that seemed the very definition of surreal, ABC broadcasting the allegedly "toned down" glitz and glamour of Hollywood, with periodic glimpses of bombs dropping on Iraq.

In the Gospel reading from John, Jesus arrives at the Temple Mount, in the midst of what was arguably the "normal" rhythm and routine of the day. Business was going on as usual, including the money-changing tables -- a perfectly normal part of daily Temple life. Such commerce was, after all, necessary. People coming from afar could not be expected to bring their own animals!  And only first-rate, unblemished animals were acceptable for sacrifice.  The necessary sacrifice was... well... NECESSARY. And so, by extension, the money-changers were necessary. It was all perfectly logical. Perfectly routine. In fact, anything less would have been "foolish".

But Jesus seems unmoved by all this routine and logic. Jesus -- the powerless one, standing in the midst of the religious authority of the day -- did not care a WIT about what was convenient or necessary. All HE cared about, apparently, was the WILL of his FATHER!

And what was going on in the Temple Mount was clearly -- at least to him- NOT in harmony with that will. The leaders and the people might have thought this was all perfectly fine and necessary. But NOT JESUS. The rhythm that the temple authorities and the people had fallen into -- and thereby accepted as normative for their lives -- was in fact, according to Jesus, nothing short of an ABOMINATION. In a word, it was WRONG. And no amount of worldly wisdom and logic could make it RIGHT.

You might say that Jesus burst into that scene, and all HEAVEN broke loose. You MIGHT say that Jesus overturned the money-changers' tables, and REPLACED them with the Table of Grace and Mercy and Peace. Just as he would replace the Temple itself with a new one -- one torn down and rebuilt in THREE DAYS... and which STANDS, among US, to THIS DAY!

It is not every day that the Lord Christ fashions a WHIP and uses it to make a point. But he did JUST THAT on that fateful day in the temple. The good folks in the Temple had, perhaps, ALWAYS done it "that way before". But all that meant was that they had always been WRONG. And God, at that frenzied moment, had had ENOUGH of WRONG!

In the midst of the mind-numbing hours of commentary that has been on the radio and TV airwaves in the past days, ONE brief exchange caught my attention like no other. In the midst of a debate on the political ramifications of the war, one commentator said, and I quote, "well, if it all turns out well, the President will be a hero."

That comment may not sound particularly poignant. But what struck me about it was the fact, the SAD, SAD fact that, in all likelihood, this is EXACTLY how it will play out in Peoria... That is to say, that Machiavelli will rule the day... that the ENDS, for vast numbers of our fellow citizens, WILL in fact justify -- or condemn -- the means.

But GOD.... The GOD of Abraham and Issaic and Jacob and JESUS, is NOT Machievellian! For GOD, what’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. And what’s CONVENIENT, or LOGICAL by this world’s definition of logic, or what’s EXPEDIENT, DOES NOT CHANGE GOD’S TRUTH!

Which means, in a peculiar sort of way, that this war, this "interruption" of the rhythm and routine of life, isn’t REALLY that much of an interruption at all. The fact is that what we are doing in Iraq is, in a way, nothing more than an extension -- on a grand scale admittedly -- of what we all-too-often believe and practice ALL THE TIME! We routinely turn our backs on what we know is right when it’s less than convenient. With the same kind of rhythm that we employ for our daily personal routines, we DAILY choose what is most expedient, or most profitable, REGARDLESS of the cost to ourselves or others. We may not launch full-scale military invasions of other countries every day. But we practice the same "human wisdom" every day, none-the-less. Doves and Hawks. Republicans and Democrats. Professed disciples of Christ ALL...

No... the WAR is not really the interruption, thought it may well feel like it. No, the truth is that LENT is the REAL interruption... This HOLY time, when God ONCE AGAIN takes a WHIP to our sinful, Godless routines, is the REAL "interruption!" This season when God once more overturns the tables of our unrepentant lives, upsetting the patterns that we’ve come to think of as acceptable, is the real interruption.

That day in the Temple, Jesus interrupted the routines of religious life, and in so doing issued a challenge to the authorities of his day that literally shook them to their very foundations.  And THIS day, THIS Lent of 2003, he does the VERY SAME THING. And NO less dramatically. NOW, as THEN, Christ is challenging US, in our comfortable, worldly, machiavellian routines. NOW, as THEN, Christ is "interrupting" us with the promise of LIFE in the midst of death; with the assurance of TRUE PEACE in the midst of FEAR. Now, as then, Christ invites us to trade in the "wisdom" of this world for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Pray God that we might have the courage to accept that invitation, to turn over the tables, and LIVE. AMEN