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Just Stop Stopping God
Reflections on the
lessons
for the Third Sunday in Lent
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Exodus
20:1-17
Psalm 19:7-14
Romans 7:13-25
John
2:13-22
I noticed something about Lent this year, for the first time. I noticed that, even though the people who sit down on the pews tend to be church people, I am nevertheless -- Sunday by Sunday -- preaching to the whole world. When I'm writing, and preparing for Sunday, I think of you all, by name, by face, by the stories of your lives. But underlying all that, one assumption I make is that some day I might arrive here to find all of you gone and a roomful of rank strangers.
More realistically, I imagine you talking with people who have no connection with the church. I imagine you explaining things the way you see them. And I want to try to nudge you into seeing some more things, maybe even some new things. Most realistically (if megalomania can be realistic), there is a form of each week's sermon on the internet. That's a bigger world for sure. Who knows who might run across something I want the world to know?
But in Lent -- this is the new part for me -- in Lent I find myself trying to preach the gospel no less to strangers, but yet even more than usual to us. I noticed this when I read an article this week by a colleague of mine, Peter D'Angio, the former rector of Christ Church, Harrison, New Jersey. He put it this way:
"During Lent the church does well to step back from its usual focus and preach the gospel to itself."
A good idea, but only good just for a moment. Above all, the church does not exist for itself. We exist for the world. Someone once said that the Christian Church is the only institution in the history of the world that is organized and maintained entirely for the benefit of people who are not members of it. Our work is ultimately not to be sure that we feed ourselves, but to see that the world outside these walls isn't left alone in ignorance of God's love.
We exist to show God to the world, and to give the world back to God. No less than that. And to take even a step toward that great goal, we have to plunge into the real world without squeamishness, live in the world fully, appreciate it, get our hands dirty in it, and then -- finally -- to serve it. What's missing in this sequence? Any notion of holding back, hedging bets, protecting ourselves, trying to make the church into a museum where safe old things are kept nice, and new things are let in only after we 're sure they'll make us feel more comfortable.
In Lent, more than any other time, I work with a sense of rigor when I try to speak of God. Not a rigorous accounting of our shortcomings, but -- I hope -- a more than usually exacting call to clear out any Temples I can and make them better places for God to operate. I am speaking about the temples of each heart, and of this community of people who gather here week by week, a much more public Temple in Secaucus -- but no more important than the invisible temples within us.
When Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the Temple at Jerusalem, he was not just lashing out against the way that religion and commerce had been confused in his day. He was doing something bigger. He was overturning the most respectable tradition of his people, spurning the centerpiece of public religion that no one would ever even think of questioning.
"Get rid of the whole concept of animal sacrifices", he shouted. "They're standing in the way of everything. Stop fooling yourselves. Stop trying to butter up God. Stop apologizing for who you are."
He was acting out a lesson from God. And the lesson has never lost its up-to-the-minute urgency: Every old order passes away. A new day is coming all the time. Don't hang back. Travel light and be ready to throw over anything -- anything at all -- to make a clear and straight path where God's power can move in the world where you are.
That "make straight the way of the Lord" talk might be more familiar in Advent. But I hope it has a stronger impact out of context, here in Lent. Because I really do think that "clear out a path for God" might be the basic marching orders Jesus has for any of us who would find the reality of God's love and then assay to share it with others.
The Bible says:
- Throw out the junk.
Open the windows.
Break the rules.
When you stop doing that, for even a moment, you're bowing down before false idols and squandering this little bit of time you've been lent to find a life for yourself and then start passing out life to people and things that really matter.
As I very often say,
- it's much easier to let God
sweep through churches
-
and hearts
and minds
and homes
and offices
than you might think.
Really, you have to do very
little.
You certainly don't have to strategize much.
-
Just stop stopping God.
- Stop clinging.
Stop worrying.
Stop being embarrassed.
Stop poormouthing.
Stop trying to impress people.- And God will start happening, through you.
You don't even have to understand what's going on all that well.
Well, that's enough of me preaching to the choir. Here's something better -- a little scrap from a book by Anne Lamott that bears quoting. Maybe I should have started and stopped with this -- great advice for church folks in Lent -- a sermon in its own right on the ten commandments and the Kingdom of God that never stops breaking into the Kingdom of this world.
-
"It's funny, I always imagined when
I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox,
full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer
of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I
grew up I found that life handed you these rusty, bent
old tools -- friendships, conscience, honesty -- and
said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to
do. And mostly, against all odds, they're enough."
--Anne Lamott, "Why
I Make Sam Go to Church,"
from Traveling
Mercies
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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