THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B

March 3 / 4, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19

I Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

 

Several years ago, after attending a family funeral, I got involved in a lengthy after-dinner conversation with some relatives whom I hadn’t seen in years. Despite the sad occasion, it was rollicking good time, with fond reminiscences, funny stories, and gales of laughter as the evening wore on and the drinks flowed freely.

 

Eventually, the conversation turned to church and religion. My relatives wanted my professional opinion of the funeral service and the sermon—some aspects of which puzzled them—and I obliged by trying to interpret it as clearly and positively as I could.

 

Eventually, one of these relatives made the pronouncement: “Well, I’m not religious at all, no believer; but I went to a church school.  We began every day in chapel, and I’m very grateful for the moral principles I learned there. My religious training made me a morally upright person, with a clear knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.”

 

For once, the perfect answer occurred to me right there and then, rather than the next morning in the shower. I replied: “I’m sure that’s all true, but it’s not the point of Church. The Christian Gospel really only becomes intelligible, really only gains traction, when we realize that no matter how high our moral standards may be, we always fall short of them.” 

 

They all looked stunned; it was obviously a new thought to them that the purpose of going to church might be something other than just being a good person. As I went on to explain, Christianity isn’t as much about being good as it is about being forgiven; not as much about pulling ourselves up by the moral bootstraps as about relying on God’s grace to accomplish in us what we could never accomplish on our own. As the opening words of today’s Collect acknowledge: “we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves …”

 

Today’s Old Testament reading from Exodus recounts God’s delivery of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. Along with the rest of the Law, the Ten Commandments are God’s good gift to his people Israel. Some philosophers see them as a distillation of natural moral law: rules to live by that are valid for all people in all times and places. There’s some truth to that, but the Ten Commandments are so much more. They stand at the heart of God’s Covenant with his people Israel, which as Christians we know as the “Old Covenant.”

 

A Covenant is an agreement in which both parties make certain reciprocal promises. In the Old Covenant, given through Moses at Mount Sinai, God promises the twelve tribes of Israel that he shall be their God, and they shall be his people. In return, they must promise to keep all the Laws and Commandments that he’s given them. Observance of this Law thus sets the Children of Israel apart as God’s own People, uniquely chosen from among the nations of the earth. The Law thus represents not merely a set of rules to live by, but a corporate identity. A short time previously, the Hebrews had been nobodies, oppressed slaves in Egypt, but now they’ve become more than somebodies: a people for God’s own possession. So, Psalm 19 rejoices in the great gift of God’s law to God’s people: “The Law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, and gives wisdom to the innocent.”

 

The temptation of any law or moral code, however, is to become legalistic: to focus on the minute details rather than to embrace the animating principles. For this reason, much of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, aims at a radical reinterpretation of the Law. His goal is not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it: showing forth and embodying the Spirit that stands behind the letter. The point of observing the Jewish Law is not to keep a detailed set of rules for the sake of the rules themselves, but rather to learn to love the Lord God with all one’s heart, mind, and strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives the moneychangers and merchants from the Jerusalem Temple. Down through the centuries, biblical commentators have debated what exactly his problem was with this selling of sacrificial animals—oxen, sheep, and pigeons—within the Temple precincts. After all, the sacrifice of these animals was part and parcel of the Temple’s religious practice, itself specified in detail in the Law of Moses, especially in the Book of Leviticus. And to purchase such animals for sacrifice worshippers needed Temple currency, rather than Roman coins bearing idolatrous pagan images.

 

One explanation that I find compelling is that Jesus is objecting to the reduction of worship to a series of commercial transactions. In Saint John’s account, Jesus commands: “Take these things out of here! Stop making my father’s house a marketplace.” The implication is that people are attempting to buy God’s favor by paying the money to have the priests offer the sacrifices on their behalf. But the fullness of worship and prayer must engage our whole selves: our hearts, minds, and wills. The rote performance of ritual cannot substitute for the living relationship that God seeks with each of us. Religious observances are meant to be a vehicle of that relationship, not a substitute for it.

 

The religious authorities challenge Jesus: “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” In other words, anyone who dares to disrupt the Temple’s established practices in this way had better have some sign that he’s acting on God’s authority, such as perhaps a miracle, or the fulfillment of a prophecy—or else he’s in real trouble. Jesus responds enigmatically: “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But, John adds, “he spoke of the temple of his body.” In other words, the definitive sign of Jesus’ authority for doing this, the definitive sign of his authority as the Son of God, will be his death and resurrection.

 

The important point is that both the moral system of the Ten Commandments and the sacrificial system of the Jerusalem Temple were God’s good gifts to his People Israel. We need to avoid the trap of an anti-Judaism suggesting anything less. But we run into trouble whenever God’s gifts become more important to us than our relationship with the Giver. Today’s readings remind us that true progress in the Christian life goes beyond fulfilling moral codes such as the Ten Commandments, or getting the ritual details of worship right, and comes instead through an ever-deepening relationship with the God who gives us his very self in Jesus Christ.