Today's Scripture Readings
Exodus 20:1-17 (NRSV)
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (NRSV)
John 2:13-22 (NRSV)
Blog Reflection
In the early Christian Church there was a Bishop in Sinope named Marcion. Marcion was later condemned for having been responsible for a certain heresy that he developed. He believed that the Holy One of Israel of the Hebrew Scriptures could not be the same as the Heavenly Father that Jesus referred to in the New Testament. He presented the notion of a dualism between the two. The Church of his time eventually condemned Marcion, because he attempted to suggest that now that we have Jesus who proclaimed a new way, the Hebrew Scriptures were no longer needed. He was more or less inferring that Jesus invalidated the Hebrew Scriptures and thus, the entire Jewish Religion.
We would like to think that this kind of thing does not exist today. After all Christians and Jews get along so much better. Or do they?
There is a major tendency this time of the Church Year, to be led into some of the worst anti-Semitism as Christians prepare to celebrate the Resurrection at Easter. Whenever Christian pastors and/or people say that the Hebrew Scriptures are based on works, but that the New Testament is based on Grace through Faith, that right there is quite the anti-semitic statement. Any time I hear of the group called Jews for Jesus, I get quite uncomfortable. And when I read and/or hear remarks made that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, I cringe.
The Christian message is not one of condemnation of any other Faith except Christianity. It is not open season towards those who do not worship, think or understand as we do. While I disagree with Marcion, I do not and cannot condone how the Church might have condemned him. Especially since the Church has it's own history of supersessionism.
The Ten Commandments from the Hebrew Scriptures tells us not so much about what not to do. They do tell us about what kind of problem we have. As human beings in any time, place, religion or culture, we all have a tendency to think that we are all there really is to life. We think and act out of a kind of "what can I get out of this or that?" As people of Faith, we who have chosen to believe that there is a Higher Power beyond ourselves, have also chosen something or some One beyond ourselves. We have sought to understand that the sun does to revolve around us. We know that we are just one dot in all of creation that did not get here by ourselves. Nor do we survive here without help from another Being and others around us.
The Ten Commandments remind us Who really should be at our center. Our souls are not just some void with no one else there. The things we care about so deeply, were planted there by that DNA that comes from our parents and the environments that we are subjected to. But that DNA got there by something and some one that is so mysterious, that it cannot be explained. But is experienced. We cannot touch it, but we can definitely feel like someone who loves us very deeply is speaking there. As Christians, we believe that Being is known as God.
The Ten Commandments tell us to put God where God belongs in our life. God is to be understood as the foundation of the love that is in our hearts, and it is God that we are to love with all our being. The love does not stop there. That love sees and knows God's presence in our neighbor, and asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves. So that we would not dream or desire in a thousand years to offend the other person, because we honor God's goodness in them, just as we do within ourselves.
The Gospel narrative of Jesus cleansing the Temple of the money changers seems very odd to us. And well, it should. After all, the Temple was the center of Jewish worship. It was in the Temple that the Holy of Holies existed. It was there that the people came every year to offer the sacrifice that was prescribed by the Jewish Law. They were doing what they were suppose to. Is that why Jesus turns over the tables and chases the money changers out? No!
Jesus was most concerned about what was allowed to be put before the importance of the worship of God. Greed, power and something in it for those who had more than enough, while taking as much as they could from those who often had so very little to begin with. In so doing, God was not the center of worship. Money, prestige and privilege became the center of their worship.
Over these past few weeks and months we have seen how for many Christianists, God is so not the center of their worship. Money, prestige and power have become their center. The whole purpose has become how much they can take away a woman's right to chose what reproductive health measures are best for them. Even to the point of denying a wonderful and knowledgeable woman such as Sandra Fluke the opportunity to testify before the Republican House Committee about the importance of contraception for women. She later becomes the target of a huge smear campaign that is meant to attack her dignity and the dignity of women. Christianists interest in money, positions of power have become focused on denigrating women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people by attacking our rights to marry the person we love through constitutional amendments and protests. For Christianists, it is not about worship God as much as it is idolizing a philosophy and their understanding of God and others who are different from them, and forcing it on the rest of us. Many suggest that the radical Religious right is taking us down a destructive path towards turning our country into a theocracy at the expense of everyone else's democracy.
The challenge for us progressive and mainline Christians is to not get too caught up in what Christianists are doing, to the point that we too move our God off to the side. We do want to speak to the horrible human rights violations of Christianists, but, we do not want to make them and their destruction our god by seeking our own money, prestige and power as an end in and of itself.
If we are truly seeking God, then we must as the Prayer to St. Anselm says, pray that "Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you." (St. Benedict's Prayer Book for Beginners, p. 118). We must seek God's holy will and trust in God, even if or when things do not work out quite the way we want them to. God is not bound by a political win or loss. God is about love, justice and equality. Even if the whole country votes against us, God still loves us, and we are still called to love one another.
God's justice and equality for Christians comes in the Person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who shamed the wisdom of the world by giving of himself on the Cross for the sins of all humankind. The Cross for those who are perishing in the idolatry of money, power and prestige is foolishness. That is why they continue to use horrible insulting rhetoric, and shamefully violent politics to get their way. The Cross to them is just a symbol that they idolize as they place their horrific ideologies at the center of their life and work. But, for those of us who are being saved by the Cross of Christ, it is the power of God. It is the reason and the hope of everything we work to do and the meaning behind everything that we suffer. Through this great truth, we are shaming the wisdom of the wise, and allowing ourselves to be filled with God's foolishness. It is by God's foolishness that we continue the work of Jesus in our world by loving the unlovable. By fasting, praying and through acts of self-denial we are seeking to doing something for the poor, the oppressed, the lonely and the dying. In a world where those who do such things are considered foolish, we are enjoying the opportunities of God's holy and perfect wisdom.
How are we using this Lent to look at what we are placing in the center of our lives?
In what ways could we love God, others and ourselves in ways that show perfect love is more important than perfection?
What are some ways we can replace the idols in our houses of worship, so that God's House can truly be a House of Prayer for all people?
If we are looking for ideas, it might not be a bad idea to look at that person in our lives that we are neglecting or being so passive aggressive with, and seek to heal those relationships.
So continues our journey of Lent.
Prayers
Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work-- you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, 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.
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Blog Reflection
In the early Christian Church there was a Bishop in Sinope named Marcion. Marcion was later condemned for having been responsible for a certain heresy that he developed. He believed that the Holy One of Israel of the Hebrew Scriptures could not be the same as the Heavenly Father that Jesus referred to in the New Testament. He presented the notion of a dualism between the two. The Church of his time eventually condemned Marcion, because he attempted to suggest that now that we have Jesus who proclaimed a new way, the Hebrew Scriptures were no longer needed. He was more or less inferring that Jesus invalidated the Hebrew Scriptures and thus, the entire Jewish Religion.
We would like to think that this kind of thing does not exist today. After all Christians and Jews get along so much better. Or do they?
There is a major tendency this time of the Church Year, to be led into some of the worst anti-Semitism as Christians prepare to celebrate the Resurrection at Easter. Whenever Christian pastors and/or people say that the Hebrew Scriptures are based on works, but that the New Testament is based on Grace through Faith, that right there is quite the anti-semitic statement. Any time I hear of the group called Jews for Jesus, I get quite uncomfortable. And when I read and/or hear remarks made that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, I cringe.
The Christian message is not one of condemnation of any other Faith except Christianity. It is not open season towards those who do not worship, think or understand as we do. While I disagree with Marcion, I do not and cannot condone how the Church might have condemned him. Especially since the Church has it's own history of supersessionism.
Supersessionism is also called fulfillment theology and replacement theology, though the latter term is disputed.[clarification needed] It is a Christian interpretation of New Testament verses, viewing God's relationship with Christians as being the inheritance of the Christian Church of the promises made to the Jews (or Biblical Israelites) and Jewish Proselytes. A major question related to supersessionism is how or to what degree are the teachings of the Mosaic Covenant displaced or even completely abrogated by the New Covenant and the Law of Christ.
The Ten Commandments from the Hebrew Scriptures tells us not so much about what not to do. They do tell us about what kind of problem we have. As human beings in any time, place, religion or culture, we all have a tendency to think that we are all there really is to life. We think and act out of a kind of "what can I get out of this or that?" As people of Faith, we who have chosen to believe that there is a Higher Power beyond ourselves, have also chosen something or some One beyond ourselves. We have sought to understand that the sun does to revolve around us. We know that we are just one dot in all of creation that did not get here by ourselves. Nor do we survive here without help from another Being and others around us.
The Ten Commandments remind us Who really should be at our center. Our souls are not just some void with no one else there. The things we care about so deeply, were planted there by that DNA that comes from our parents and the environments that we are subjected to. But that DNA got there by something and some one that is so mysterious, that it cannot be explained. But is experienced. We cannot touch it, but we can definitely feel like someone who loves us very deeply is speaking there. As Christians, we believe that Being is known as God.
The Ten Commandments tell us to put God where God belongs in our life. God is to be understood as the foundation of the love that is in our hearts, and it is God that we are to love with all our being. The love does not stop there. That love sees and knows God's presence in our neighbor, and asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves. So that we would not dream or desire in a thousand years to offend the other person, because we honor God's goodness in them, just as we do within ourselves.
The Gospel narrative of Jesus cleansing the Temple of the money changers seems very odd to us. And well, it should. After all, the Temple was the center of Jewish worship. It was in the Temple that the Holy of Holies existed. It was there that the people came every year to offer the sacrifice that was prescribed by the Jewish Law. They were doing what they were suppose to. Is that why Jesus turns over the tables and chases the money changers out? No!
Jesus was most concerned about what was allowed to be put before the importance of the worship of God. Greed, power and something in it for those who had more than enough, while taking as much as they could from those who often had so very little to begin with. In so doing, God was not the center of worship. Money, prestige and privilege became the center of their worship.
Over these past few weeks and months we have seen how for many Christianists, God is so not the center of their worship. Money, prestige and power have become their center. The whole purpose has become how much they can take away a woman's right to chose what reproductive health measures are best for them. Even to the point of denying a wonderful and knowledgeable woman such as Sandra Fluke the opportunity to testify before the Republican House Committee about the importance of contraception for women. She later becomes the target of a huge smear campaign that is meant to attack her dignity and the dignity of women. Christianists interest in money, positions of power have become focused on denigrating women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people by attacking our rights to marry the person we love through constitutional amendments and protests. For Christianists, it is not about worship God as much as it is idolizing a philosophy and their understanding of God and others who are different from them, and forcing it on the rest of us. Many suggest that the radical Religious right is taking us down a destructive path towards turning our country into a theocracy at the expense of everyone else's democracy.
The challenge for us progressive and mainline Christians is to not get too caught up in what Christianists are doing, to the point that we too move our God off to the side. We do want to speak to the horrible human rights violations of Christianists, but, we do not want to make them and their destruction our god by seeking our own money, prestige and power as an end in and of itself.
If we are truly seeking God, then we must as the Prayer to St. Anselm says, pray that "Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you." (St. Benedict's Prayer Book for Beginners, p. 118). We must seek God's holy will and trust in God, even if or when things do not work out quite the way we want them to. God is not bound by a political win or loss. God is about love, justice and equality. Even if the whole country votes against us, God still loves us, and we are still called to love one another.
God's justice and equality for Christians comes in the Person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who shamed the wisdom of the world by giving of himself on the Cross for the sins of all humankind. The Cross for those who are perishing in the idolatry of money, power and prestige is foolishness. That is why they continue to use horrible insulting rhetoric, and shamefully violent politics to get their way. The Cross to them is just a symbol that they idolize as they place their horrific ideologies at the center of their life and work. But, for those of us who are being saved by the Cross of Christ, it is the power of God. It is the reason and the hope of everything we work to do and the meaning behind everything that we suffer. Through this great truth, we are shaming the wisdom of the wise, and allowing ourselves to be filled with God's foolishness. It is by God's foolishness that we continue the work of Jesus in our world by loving the unlovable. By fasting, praying and through acts of self-denial we are seeking to doing something for the poor, the oppressed, the lonely and the dying. In a world where those who do such things are considered foolish, we are enjoying the opportunities of God's holy and perfect wisdom.
How are we using this Lent to look at what we are placing in the center of our lives?
In what ways could we love God, others and ourselves in ways that show perfect love is more important than perfection?
What are some ways we can replace the idols in our houses of worship, so that God's House can truly be a House of Prayer for all people?
If we are looking for ideas, it might not be a bad idea to look at that person in our lives that we are neglecting or being so passive aggressive with, and seek to heal those relationships.
So continues our journey of Lent.
Prayers
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves
to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and
inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all
adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil
thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent, Book of Common Prayer, p. 218)
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have
made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and
make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily
lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission
and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen. (Prayer for Ash Wednesday, Book of Common Prayer, p. 217).
Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so
move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the
people of this land], that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our
divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for Social Justice, Book of Common Prayer, p. 823).
Look with pity, O heavenly Father, upon the people in this
land who live with injustice, terror, disease, and death as
their constant companions. Have mercy upon us. Help us to
eliminate our cruelty to these our neighbors. Strengthen those
who spend their lives establishing equal protection of the law
and equal opportunities for all. And grant that every one of
us may enjoy a fair portion of the riches of this land; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for the Oppressed, Book of Common Prayer, p. 826).
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