No "Jack" In A Box

No God In A Box (John 2:13-22 with Exodus 20:1-17), Lent 3b, March 8, 2015

MT – In Jesus we are encountered by God (question –where do we see, hear, meet Jesus?)

Malady – we have a strong tendency to construct God and Jesus in our own image.

            Where are you aware of, where do you encounter, see and hear God? Think about that for a moment. Anyone brave enough to share with the rest of us?

            In the first lesson we see the people of Israel on a journey that God has sent them on – a journey from slavery to freedom. It is not an easy journey for them – or for us! Journeys from slavery to freedom are never easy – for they necessarily involve dying, letting go of old familiar ways and being opened to new ways – ways that aren't familiar, that involve risks and incredible change.

            Think about his. Our second journey down the birth canal – or even our birth through a caesarean section. Don't think that any of that is easy. Or -  our journey from childhood to teenagehood. Was that easy? Or, our journey from teenagehood to adolescence into being an adult. Wanting so desperately to be an adult and yet discovering that sometimes we still so much need mom and dad. Then there is the ongoing journey through adulthood. There are many joys including the joy of being "on our own". But there is also the pain of loss – the loss of friends, and later the loss of various capacities, to be able to run and jump, to move without pain. Eventually there may the loss of memory. There may the gut wrenching loss of loved ones at many different parts of all our journeys.

Journeys are not easy. In particular the journey from slavery or obsession to freedom and full awareness of others and God, from the way things were to the way things can be, is extremely difficult.

Yet, who is with the people of Israel on their journey. Who is there delivering them, listening to them, seeking to guide them by giving them the law, not for death or even control but for life? That's right. God is with them and for them!

GOD IS ALSO WITH US ON OUR JOURNEYS, EACH AND EVERONE OF THEM. God wills to bring us through whatever slaveries we may experiencing – guilt, fear, anxiety, addiction, anger, hatred, apathy – to new life. God is God. The one who shoved us through our first birth canal. We can trust God.

Now I want you to see this box. (Hold it up). How would you like to live in this box? It's a ridiculous question really – although some people far and near use boxes a bit larger than this to shelter them from the elements.

So, let me ask you this. What could we fit into this box? (Pause)

Do we ever attempt to fit God into some kind of box – even within the box of our minds?

In today's Gospel we are encountered by Jesus. Here he is anything but meek and mild. All four Gospels record an event of Jesus being upset by what is going on in the Temple. Matthew, Mark and Luke record this event at the very end of Jesus' ministry – only a short time before his death. John records this event at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry. Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus' losing at the temple as a contributing cause to his death. But John pictures Jesus' losing it in the Temple in such a way that he fashions a whip of cords and drives the money changers out of the temple because He doesn't want His Father's house to be a market place.

What are we to make of this? Jesus is angry, overturning tables, brandishing a whip of cords in what had been a very holy place, calling it all into question. Where is God now?

John tells us that the "Jews" that is the people often including the religious leaders who couldn't see that in Jesus God is doing a new thing, then said to him, "what signs can you show us for doing this?" Jesus responds, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."

The religious leaders thought that they had God figured out. According to God's prior revelations to so many of their people, they had placed God in their box. They knew that God promised to work in and through the temple. That was their box for God – as if God could be limited to that place and only that time. In some ways, the Temple was good. God commanded the people to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. The temple was part of that. Sin was taken seriously there – as sin should be. But over time, the letter of the law had gotten in the way of the Spirit of the law. People took advantage of the spirit of the law and created systems that were unjust, inequitable.

Jesus is not being literalistic in his response to the Jewish leaders. To be sure he speaks of destroying the temple. The temple Jesus speaks of is his body. Destroy his body and on the third day he will be raised from death to life.

Through his suffering, death and resurrection Jesus draws us to God. There is no longer a need to purchase and sacrifice any animal to bridge the gap between we who fall short of God`s intention and God. God himself, in the flesh of Jesus gives Himself up for all of us. How we begin to understand this – how we sense our call to follow and obey him is an ongoing, life-long revelation and journey – which defies any and all boxes that we or any other human beings may construct.

GOD ALONE IS GOD. And we, are among God`s creation, special, wonderful, rebellious with grave consequences, often blind and deaf to the wonder and mystery of God, to our ongoing need for God`s presence, guidance and forgiveness.

There is not box big enough to hold or confine God – not our minds, our churches, our doctrine, even our Scripture. Luther say employing a wonderful metaphor, that the Bible is the cradle of Christ, the very Word of God. (Pause)

Where is GodÉ

Open our eyes, our minds, our ears, our hearts O God to see your suffering, dying, rising Son around us and within us. May we follow Him realizing that He is often ahead of us, always with us, seeking to open our hearts and minds, willing to move us from comfort and fear to risk and hope as we are called to love God with all we have and our neighbors as our selves. May all our futile attempts to box in God be blown to smitherines, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, the Lord and sAviour of the world. Amen.

Wanna See?

Lent 5b15 – John 12:20-33 with Jeremiah 31:31-34

Would you like to see Jesus? Really, if you could, would you like to behold Jesus with your own eyes, reach out and touch him, encounter him as he truly is?

            I ask for three reasons. Firstly, in today's Gospel lesson, "Greeks" come to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. They are coming, because they have heard about some of the things Jesus is doing. "We would see Jesus", they say.

            Secondly, one of our Bible schools, a fine institution in many ways has a slogan based on this passage, "We would see Jesus". Yet in that particular culture of Norwegian piety you will not find a crucifix where the suffering Jesus is so clearly portrayed. No, there the cross of Jesus is always "empty" underlining, emphasizing Jesus' resurrection, rather than his suffering.

            Thirdly, we live in a time and culture that looks down its nose upon anything called "faith". If there somehow isn't scientifically verifiable evidence, a logical explanation, coupled with some kind of limited risk on our part regarding our assent, well then we are told not to be interested. Such "claims" are viewed as far less than credible.

            So, do we actually want to "see" Jesus? ...

            Over the years I have been deeply privileged to receive a number of letters or notes from people whose lives have touched my life both in good and trying times. Our experiences of God in the midst of the joy and suffering that comes with life and death have run into and over each other.

            Today I share a poem written by a mother whose young adult son has recently died. Her son's death has torn her heart. She notices that her son's death has caused others to distance themselves from her. They are unwilling and or unable to accompany her in the midst of her deep and abiding pain and the unanswerable questions that irrupt within her.

            She prefaces her poem by saying that she is wailing at the feet of her son. She says, "I understand Mary and Mary understands me, more than I thought possible. I have a small mission to help people understand the grieving". She titles her poem, "A Mother's Lament"

You see me coming and turn away.

I am not a monster.

No weeping sores or fetid breath.

You cast down your gaze as I approach.

You turn away.

My tears well up.

My breath is stole.

For one brief moment I thought I heard a word, a kindness spoken.

You saw me coming and turn away.

I am a mother torn in two, my heart wrenched from my chest as I kiss my child, his cool and waxen cheek unmoving.

My life once joyous with expectation of time together, gone.

You cannot see my pain.

I am not a monster with weeping sores or fetid breath. I AM A MOTHER. DO NOT TURN AWAY! ...

            Life is not easy.   We are born to be loved, cared for and about, to love and to care unconditionally. Such living is rich. At times such living is also deeply PAINFUL. Through all of this runs the power of God and while we occupy this earthen space, also the power of evil. We  hear different voices – including the voice of God. But in addition to God's voice are other voices. Some of these yearn to exercise power over us, seeking to delude us into believing that they are God, that they are the "way".

            Through the middle of our living and dying runs our drive for self-preservation. Many of the voices in our lives tell us to be careful, that we must preserve our lives at all cost. Such voices tell us not to fully trust anyone or anything – except them. Don't show anyone all "your cards".

            Contrasting these voices is the voice God. God invites us to let go of our delusion of control. In letting go we are being called to trust God. Follow Jesus. In showing us God's love for us and all in Jesus, God encourages us to love as God loves us, to forgive as we are being forgiven by God in Jesus. This voice of God tells us to fight against the paralyzing fear of worry about how we may die or be hurt as we love. In such "letting go" is life. We are not created by God to be "calculators". Instead we are created by God to live joyfully, risking often, trusting Jesus to lead us. In this dynamic we are enabled to care for others experiencing the depths of love and joy, loss and pain, fear and trust – whatever may come. In such care our minds may even be opened to imagine and dream not only about ourselves and our feelings but where and how God may be calling us to follow Jesus.

            We make frequent choices about which voices we are listening to. The result of our choices are seen in the ways we spend our time, our money and the investments of our hopes and dreams. Will we, are we actually making the effort to hear each other, pay attention to the other, become willing to journey with them in joy and pain – or will we turn away? ...

            Would we see Jesus? This isn't a question, among so many others on a survey to be ticked off. This is the question that has the power to inform and shape our lives, individually and collectively. The question coming from God has the capacity to take our lives as grains of wheat and plunge them into the ground of human life and death – where we most certainly will undergo a number of deaths. Yet in such dying, through God's grace our lives can bear amazing fruit. This fruit nourishes, nurtures and fills the world with the possibility of new life.

            On the other hand, refusing to see Jesus may leave our lives as a "grain" simply unfulfilled. Then like an empty husk, we are rendered powerless to be and do what we are meant to be and do, paralyzed by fear, running after mirages.

            Would we see Jesus? We desperately need God's help and daily deliverance to see BEYOND OURSELVES. To see Jesus we need God's Spirit working in and among us to trust the One we can never fully understand, to dare to be convinced again and again that this one loves us and this world through thick and thin. To see Jesus we must be enabled to refuse to turn away from the suffering of others including ourselves. Seeing the crucifix we are encountered by our own hearts and minds that are too often violent and hatred. There, too we are encountered by the refusal of God to turn away from us. Truly, Jesus loves us.

            Would you see Jesus? Do we hear him right now. "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies..." And then later, either a lifetime or merely a few seconds later he continues, "And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself."

            Draw us, O Christ, to you. Help us to see, not to turn away. Amen.