Henrietta United Church of Christ

15Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
But you have made it a den of robbers.”

18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.

Sermon:

The Bible is a treasure trove of stories about human beings like us struggling to understand God and be in a healing, redeeming relationship with God, and about God working in human lives and human history to help humans do that. Some of the stories go back thousands of years, to times and places where human civilization and human consciousness were in their early stages.

Let’s try to imagine what it must have been like to live thousands of years ago. What would it have been like to have been pregnant or for your wife to be pregnant? Would you be painting the nursery and buying a crib and car seat and looking at all the cute baby clothes? Or would you be living in anxiety that you or your wife would die an agonizing death if there were any complications? ...or that the child would die in infancy? ...or that there wouldn’t be enough food to feed a growing child if both survived?

You could wake up any morning and find your life threatened by disease, injury, flood, famine, earthquake, war, rape, or enslavement.

How would you see God when you felt fearful and powerless so much of the time? You’d probably look to God as your protector from danger and harm. And yet you would also see God as sometimes unpredictable, vengeful, judgmental, and quick to anger. How else would you explain all the bad things that happen to people? You’d be scared to death of doing anything to offend God, and would do whatever the priests said you had to do to appease Him.

One thing that the priests said to do, in early Judaism and in many different religions, was to sacrifice something to God. What kind of sacrifice would be good enough? In many primitive religions, sacrificing your eldest son or virgin daughter was required to prove your sincerity to God.

We see the ancient memory of human sacrifice in the book of Genesis, where Abraham heard God tell him to sacrifice his own beloved son Isaac. Abraham and Isaac are obedient, and Abraham is ready to plunge the knife into Isaac, who is lying on the altar, when Abraham sees a ram whose horns are caught in the thicket. God has provided an animal to sacrifice in place of his son, because Abraham held nothing back from God.

The Jewish people interpreted this story to mean that God wanted animal sacrifices to demonstrate their devotion to God. An elaborate system of religious laws was developed that specified animal, bird and grain sacrifices for almost every special occasion and every infraction of the law.

Now let’s fast forward to Jesus’ time. Fear and powerless were at a high level for the Jews 2000 years ago. They were an occupied people whose simmering resentment of being oppressed by a pagan ruler (who called himself a god) constantly kept Rome’s sword at their throat. How would you have coped with this situation, on top of the threat of disease, famine, poverty, and enslavement of people who couldn’t pay their bills? You might have joined the throngs who streamed into the temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices of every sort to gain the favor and protection of the Almighty God who controlled the world–even though you had to pay very high prices to the priests to buy animals and birds without blemish that would be acceptable to God, and you had to pay a price to exchange your common money into the accepted Hebrew currency to do it.

The temple leaders, priests and money changers made out quite well from this system. In fact, religious writer Richard Rohr says,

By the time of Jesus, 90 percent of the economy of the city of Jerusalem was tied up in the hauling, penning, feeding and killing of [burnt offering] victims, and then hauling the dead carcasses back out of the temple. On the great feast days, tens of thousands of goats and bullocks and heifers were killed in the temple (see, for example, 1 Kings 8:63).¹

This may sound kind of strange to us. But aren’t you familiar with this human impulse to make a sacrifice of some kind to appease God or gain God’s favor? Many of us were brought up with the tradition of sacrificing sweets for Lent. Or what if you’re late for a job interview and can’t find a parking space? Have you ever prayed, “God, if you give me a parking space and help me get this job, I promise I’ll go to church every week and keep up my pledge....Oh, never mind, I just found a place to park.” That’s slightly tongue in cheek. But if your child or grandchild was diagnosed with cancer, what sacrifice might you offer to try to bargain with God? You might even say, “Please God, take me instead this precious child.” We know something about this basic human compulsion to sacrifice to a rather frightening all-powerful God when we’re feeling powerless and afraid.

Well, when Jesus came into Jerusalem for the Passover, he found the Temple bustling with a very brisk sacrifice business. Where he should have seen people coming to God in gratitude or humility or repentance or need, he saw nothing but exploitation and greed in the name of God. So he drove out those who were selling and buying, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he wouldn’t even permit anyone to carry anything through the temple–the sacrificial vessels and religious paraphernalia associated with the rituals of sacrifice.

This wasn’t just a condemnation of the economic exploitation going on, though that was certainly part of it. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple was a deliberate public exposure of the spiritual bankruptcy of the whole sacrificial system that is based on the belief that God is a dangerous, capricious, vengeful deity who is likely to punish us or make our life miserable unless we go through certain religious rituals and sacrifices to appease Him. Only by eliminating that whole misguided system of trying to appease a dangerous vengeful God, could the temple truly become a house of prayer, where people would come in trust of their heavenly Father/Mother without the need for intermediaries.

The religious leaders recognized Jesus as a real threat to their power, influence and wealth. From that point on they sought a way to kill him. And so by the end of that same week, Jesus showed us in an extraordinary personal way an insight into the heart of God. That Friday, Jesus offered up his life for us on the cross, crying out words of forgiveness as his hands and feet were nailed onto it. It was the ultimate sacrifice.

So how do we understand what this sacrifice means for us? If you look at the crucifixion through the belief in a judging, vengeful God who needs to be appeased, then you see Jesus’ death on the cross as most of Christianity has seen it and still sees it. According to this interpretation, we humans have sinned and deeply offended God’s righteousness. Justice requires divine punishment. Our sin is so grievous and we have fallen so far short of God’s righteous that the only just punishment is death and condemnation to the eternal fires of hell. In order to satisfy this justice, Jesus, who was without sin, took our sins upon himself and took our place on the cross, where we rightfully belong. And God accepted this blood sacrifice of a perfect man as a substitute for the punishment of our sins. If we believe that Jesus did this for us and we penitently accept this gift, we are forgiven and saved from eternal punishment.

Because we all know we have sinned, and because we fear death and fear God’s punishment, this explanation of Jesus’ sacrifice has a compelling power. And many people have been brought into a grateful, healing, saving relationship with God through this belief. I will not argue with anyone for whom it holds power and meaning.

But I personally do not believe that this judging, vengeful God who demands blood is payment for sin, is the God that Jesus reveals to us. As Jesus is hanging on the cross, I don’t see him showing us how we sinful humans have to sacrifice in order to get to God. I see him showing us that God is willing to sacrifice in order to get to us. When I dare to look at this humiliated, suffering, innocent man willingly dying on the cross, I don’t see a man trying to appease an angry God. I see a man who is willing to do everything and give everything to awaken the hearts and souls of us humans. We humans get so caught up in our stories of fear and vengeance, power and greed, violence and death, that we lose touch with the truth of who God is–the eternal force of life, hope, creativity, truth and love–and who we are–eternal spirits created to discover this divine energy and bring it into the world.

Jesus died for us, who were lost in sin. Yes. And Jesus’ death can open the gates of heaven and heaven on earth to us. Yes. But I see Jesus dying, not to make God love us after all, but to show us how much God loves us in spite of it all.

If we gaze at the cross and let Jesus’ sacrifice enter our souls, we will see the “man of sorrows” suffering because of the same kinds of fears and jealousies that we carry, the same urges to dominate and control that we impose on each other, the same judgements and calls for revenge that we inflict on others. If Jesus’ agonizing death is what it takes for us to see where our fears and self-centeredness lead, Jesus is willing to pay the price. He doesn’t condemn us for it. He forgives us, because we know not what we do. But he calls us to awaken to it, and to awaken to the merciful love that he embodies as he suffers because of our sins.

But here’s the hardest part, and perhaps the most important part. Not only does Jesus want us to believe in him and receive the gift of this redeeming love. He calls us to “take up our cross and follow him” in offering this redeeming love to the world.

Now before you all run for the door, let me say that in today’s world, Jesus seldom calls us to sacrifice our life--and certainly not on a Roman cross. In fact, Jesus told his followers, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” But in order to have life in all its abundance and fullness and eternalness, we do have to sacrifice something. That something is our human ego--that part of us that gets so caught up in our own fears, selfishness, separation, pride, shame, and hostility that our spirit gets choked off. We have to take that small ego-bound self to the cross, so we can be reborn into our bigger self.

I suspect you know for yourself what happens when you let go of a fear and open into trust. Or when you get released from shame and open to acceptance of who you are. Or when you finally let go of resentment and can breathe the fresh air of forgiveness. Or when you realize that your life isn’t really about you, and you offer your gifts to the world. Your spirit is freer, fuller, lighter, more open, and more connected to God, to others, and to the mysterious dance of life. Once you have taken your ego to the cross, it doesn’t feel like sacrifice at all. It feels like letting go of something heavy, so you can receive the gift of abundant life that dances with eternity.

So as we begin this Lenten season, I invite you to think of something in you that is holding you back, holding you down, holding you to your smaller self, and that needs to go the cross for forgiveness, healing, or release. Jesus is there waiting for you with outstretched arms.

And as we journey through this Lenten season, I challenge you to take on a discipline or practice that helps you embody the love of Christ more fully and bring it into the world. Maybe it’s being more present to the people in your life. Maybe it’s approaching your work with your eyes open to opportunities for ministry. Maybe it’s visiting or calling or sending cards to people who need to know they’re not forgotten. You might forego desserts and give the money to the food cupboard or to another worthy project. You might go on the Lenten Retreat and increase your appreciation for God’s creation and take on new ways to care for it. These are all ways of partaking in the creative power of life and love of God that Jesus lived and died to help us receive and give.

If we do this, we will live out the mystery of communion with God and with each other that poet Richard Wehrman put into words: