Foolish Wisdom

Scriptures:     Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19,   I Corinthians 1:18-25,   John 2:13-22

If you’re on Facebook and look at our church’s Facebook group, you may see a Youtube video that our member Jim W shared, featuring All Saints Roman Catholic Church, which somebody posted under the title “Beautiful Abandoned Gothic Church With Giant Organ”.  Not being a member of All Saints, I didn’t recognize the church until Jim pointed it out on another group.  The narrator, who by his own admission “wasn’t supposed to be there”..i.e. had broken into the place…..more than once spoke of “the architecture that you’re never ever going to see again.” The camera takes in the architectural details, the soaring arches of the ceiling, the cherubs along the wall, the pipes of the huge organ in the back, the rope leading to the bell, frayed by many hands over many years pulling on it to ring the bell, and to which the narrator gave a tentative tug, letting the bell ring quietly.  When I heard that, I remembered reading in one of the Bridesburg FB groups some time ago that someone thought they heard the bell from All Saints ringing after it had closed.   (And of course, on seeing the bell pull at All Saints, I couldn’t help being reminded of the rope for our bell.)  As I heard the narrator go on about the beauty of this former worship space “that you’re never ever going to see again”, as if he had been narrating an archeological exploration of a long-dead culture, I couldn’t help thinking to myself….”What if you’d stepped into All Saints while the church was still open?  Rather than just look at the beautiful organ, you could have heard it play for yourself!  What if you’d experienced the life of that faith community, rather than just the architecture left behind that bore witness to their faith after the Archdiocese had deconsecrated the building?”  The sense of separation between the narrator’s perspective and the building he was filming really got to me…I felt real grief that the faith that had filled that building for so long, up to just a few years ago, seemed like some obscure, decaying relic of an ancient and alien culture.  These buildings were intended to be “sermons set in stone” for an illiterate populace…compared to which recently constructed churches looks like post offices with crosses on top.  And, of course, I couldn’t help thinking of our church.  Will some random person with a video camera someday be prowling the abandoned, crumbling sanctuary of Emanuel Church, focusing on the details of the stained glass, tugging on the rope and giving our old bell a ring, crawling up the stairs behind the organ to see the pipes, going on about “architecture that you’ll never ever see again.”

Beginning with this Sunday and continuing for the next two Sundays, the lectionary takes us on a detour through John’s gospel.   John’s gospel follows a somewhat different track from the other three Gospels, though it describes some of the same events.   In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple takes place near the end of his ministry, in effect becoming the final straw that provoked the religious authorities into having him arrested.   John’s gospel places this action near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, right after the wedding at Cana in which Jesus turned water into wine.  Thus, for John, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple sets up a conflict with the authorities that continues throughout John’s gospel.  In the other Gospels, the tension between Jesus and the authorities builds gradually.  In John’s gospel, that tension is there almost from the get-go.

After the wedding at Cana, we’re told that Jesus went from Cana to Capernaum, stayed a few days, and then made the journey to Jerusalem for the Passover.  We’re told that “In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.”  The language is interesting….In the other gospels, it sounds as though Jesus was very intentional about targeting the cattle sellers and moneychangers, but in John’s gospel, the Greek wording has the sense that Jesus went to the Temple and just happened to come across all this unintentionally….and so his reaction is spontaneous, unplanned.

So why was there a marketplace in the Temple in the first place?  Jewish pilgrims from all over the Roman empire would come to the Temple at Jerusalem to perform the prescribed offerings and sacrifices.  They’d bring the coinage of the Roman empire, with pictures of the emperor on it, stamped with the words “Caesar is Lord”.  But the Temple only accepted Hebrew coinage, which had no such graven image or blasphemous inscription.  The Roman coinage had to be exchanged for Hebrew coinage, and somebody had to be there to perform the transaction.  And if in their exchange rates they could raise a bit more money for the Temple, so much the better.  Animal sacrifice was also part of the ritual, and the Temple would accept only the best, unblemished animals for sacrifice.  Ordinary pilgrims might not have an unblemished animal available for sacrifice – someone at the Temple was bound to find a blemish if they looked hard enough – and someone coming from very far likely couldn’t drag their animals with them all that distance.  So, for the right price – far above market rates for ordinary animals – pilgrims could purchase Temple-certified unblemished animals.   While providing for the prescribed rituals, the animal sellers and money changers also functioned to squeeze money out of pilgrims who probably had very little money in the first place.  The musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” captured the sense of the place well:  “Roll on up, for the price is down/ Come on in for the best in town/ Take your pick of the finest wine / Lay your bets on this bird of mine / Name your price, I’ve got everything / Come on buy, it’s going fast / Borrow cash on the finest terms / Hurry now, it’s going fast….”  And, if this is the prescribed way to approach God, having to deal with this Temple marketplace scam before entering the holy place would leave one approaching God with a heart burning with resentment rather than devotion. 

So, we’re told, Jesus made a whip and drove out the sellers with their cattle, overturned the money boxes, and told those selling doves, “Take those things out of here. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 

The religious authorities, understandably, were……perturbed.  “What sign can you show us for doing this?”  Jesus responded, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I’ll raise it up.”  The authorities said, “This temple has been under construction for 46 years” – and so it had, one of Herod’s massive building projects – “and will you raise it up in three days?”  But John gives us a clue to Jesus’ meaning: He’s talking about the temple of his body, not the temple in Jerusalem.  And, John tells us, Jesus’ disciples remembered this saying of Jesus and came to understand his meaning after the resurrection.

This is a very rich text, overflowing with meaning, from which we can draw great comfort and great challenge.  In cleansing the Temple, Jesus took on the religious establishment.  From their perspective, they were taking actions needed to maintain and perpetuate an institution, under the adverse conditions of the Roman occupation of Judea.  But from the perspective of Jesus, those same actions detracted from the sacredness of the Temple, turning holy space into a marketplace, creating a sense of separation from God in the very space that was supposed to foster connection, defeating the very purpose for which the Temple had been constructed.  At the same time, Jesus referred to his own body as a temple, as a sanctuary in which God was present.

I think we can all relate to some extent to Jesus’ anger at the commercialization and institutionalization of religion.  The cradle Protestants among us are likely to think instinctively about the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic church at the time of the Reformation.  But there’s plenty of commercialized Protestant religion.  If  you watch the religious channels, you’ll see lots of folks hawking lots of merchandise, saying that if  you make a donation of so much, you’ll get this blessed prayer cloth or that jeweled cross or books or CD’s or any number of other doo-dads and gee-gaws.  And churches exist as institutions – in our country, as 501c3 tax exempt nonprofit entities.  Like other institutions, churches hold and administer property, have boards of directors – we call them consistories – and set policies.   Many churches, ours included, belong to larger bodies called denominations, which also hold and administer property, have boards of directors with names such as synods and presbyteries and such – and set policies for the churches under their care.  These institutions exist in order to spread the Christian faith, to instruct children in the Christian faith, to create Christ-centered communities, to serve the community in the name of Jesus.  Each year, in order to maintain our tax-exempt status as part of the United Church of Christ, I have to report our revenue and expense to the denomination.  Effectively, institutions are containers for the purpose of preserving and perpetuating faith.  But institutions can easily be diverted and perverted from their purposes, and engage in self-protective behavior that ends up undermining the very values they were intended to promote and hurting the very people they were intended to help.  Whether it’s the Temple marketplace of Jesus’ day or the sexual abuse scandals in faith communities across the board in our day, the natural impulse of an institution is to protect itself, often at the cost of those it was intended to serve.  And it is this self-protective behavior that Jesus opposed.  

This leads me to ask what we hold as sacred, and what we hold as commonplace.  We tend to locate holiness in certain institutions – for us, Emanuel Church – in certain locations – for us, 2628 Fillmore Street – and at certain times – for us , Sunday at 10 a.m.  But again, Jesus spoke of his body as a temple, and the Apostle Paul spoke of the bodies of the followers of Jesus as temples, as locations in which holiness dwelled.  Ultimately, the sacredness of a worship space is the sacredness that the worshippers themselves bring to it.  All Saints was consecrated in the 1860’s, and deconsecrated several years ago….and sad to say, desecrated by vandals in the years since. It’s a story that has taken place at many church buildings in many locations.  In fact, there’s an organization in Philadelphia, called Partners for Sacred Places – the website is sacredplaces.org – that exists to help struggling churches find ways to maintain their property to continue to serve the community…..because this organization recognizes that churches and other faith communities have value to their communities, what they call “economic halo effects” - far beyond themselves.  That is to say, full and functioning churches strengthen communities;  empty, crumbling churches drag them down.  I would love if a few of our members could reach out to them – I’ve tried, and they have some good programs and ideas, but I’m just pulled in too many directions to stay in sustained contact or to follow through on their recommendations.   But even so, the sacredness of sacred places is only what worshipers bring to it.  So the bricks and mortar, stained glass, organ, and other architectural details of All Saints or Emanuel or any other church have no intrinsic holiness in and of themselves – sacredness is attributed to them only because of the use to which they are dedicated.

We attribute holiness to buildings and other sacred spaces – but God attributes holiness to humans – to human beings created in his image, created with something of the divine in us.  I Peter 2:9 says, of the church, that we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”  In I Corinthians 3:16, Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you.”   Here in Bridesburg, we deplore the intrusion and vandalism that taken place in the “Beautiful Abandoned Gothic Church With Giant Organ” in which the congregation of All Saints Roman Catholic Church once worshiped until just a few short years ago…..and rightly so.  The building was not only the worship space of a congregation but an anchor for the community, an anchor now rusting, unused and separated from a community now set adrift.  But how about the vandalism and desecration that humans practice every day on one another, temples in which God dwells? If we bomb someone in another country, or shoot someone here at home, are we not vandalizing and desecrating, even destroying a temple of the Lord?  If we abuse our own bodies through drugs or alcohol, sexual addiction, gluttony (my besetting sin) or other means, are we not vandalizing and desecrating and destroying a temple of the Lord?   Are those who engage in human trafficking not vandalizing and desecrating and destroying the temples of the Lord that are the bodies of those from whom they profit?

At this point I’d remind us of our other readings.  Our Psalm reading, Psalm 19, begins, “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the skies proclaim God’s handiwork.”  So even the creation, the natural environment, reveals the glory of God.  The sky, the sun, moon, stars, trees, rocks, all have stories to tell, if we have ears to listen.  But if we pollute the skies, are we not turning a deaf ear to that proclamation?  If we rip open the rocks in search of oil or natural gas, are we not silencing those stories?  Are we not rebelling against that revelation?

Our other Old Testament reading, Exodus 20:1-17, is commonly known as the Ten Commandments.  I think we tend to look on them and the other laws of the Old Testament as an arbitrary list of do’s and don’ts, created by a killjoy God who lives in terror that somebody, somewhere, somehow, may be enjoying themselves.   But that’s not the intent at all.  Rather, the intent is to create a community, centered on God, mutually life-giving among the members of the community.  The intent is not to limit life, but to protect and promote it.

The testimony of nature, the value of community life, all of this seems like nonsense to a culture that has commodified absolutely everything, a culture in which anything and everything exists only as raw materials to be processed into products to be bought and sold.  Our culture commercializes everything, turns absolutely everything into a transaction…..and to commercialize something is to desecrate it.  Paul wrote that “Jews demand signs, and Greeks desire wisdom”….I don’t think that as Americans, we have much use for either signs or wisdom….the phrase that summarizes our outlook is “Show me the money”.   In America, money talks, and BS walks.  It has been said that the only truly American form of art is advertising.  Even a wonderful worthwhile organization such as Partners for Sacred Places casts the value of churches in terms of “economic halo effects”.  Economic.  In order to garner support for churches, Partners for Sacred Places appeals for community support in economic terms.  In America, if we can’t put a dollar sign in front of it, if somebody can’t profit financially from it, it may as well not exist. 

And yet, for Jesus, value in God’s eyes was not with money, but with people.  Jesus taught that you are sacred, that I am sacred…..and that our neighbors are sacred, even the ones that scare us and push our buttons.  You are of sacred worth, and I am of sacred worth and the homeless encamped along Lehigh Avenue are of sacred worth.  And what does that mean, in terms of the way we treat each other and them.  Do we leave a temple of our Lord starve and freeze in the cold.

Earlier I said that the sacredness of a sacred space is only what we bring to it.  But such sacredness isn’t limited to church buildings.  Our daily work – be it paid work or the unpaid but infinitely valuable work of raising children – can be holy work, if dedicated to Jesus and done with his values in mind.  And of course, there are some kinds of work that can’t be done that way – I’m not sure how one can be a loan shark for Jesus, for example, though surely there are payday lenders who call themselves Christians.  But work that benefits others and strengthens communities, done in Christ’s name and done in the self-giving spirit of Jesus, is holy work, God’s work, as much so or more so than anything I may do as pastor here at church.

Paul wrote that “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom” – and I’ll add that Americans demand money – “but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” – and all too often, nonsense to us as well.  The self-giving, self-sacrificing love of Jesus runs against the self-promoting and self-protecting values of our culture.  And yet, as Christians, we claim to believe that it is self-emptying and mutual support that will the day.  As we sang in our opening hymn, ‘In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.’

Paul wrote, “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.”  Let us proclaim and let us live according to this foolish wisdom of God, this foolish wisdom that perpetually seems to teeter on the precipice, and yet outlasted the Roman empire and, we believe, will continue to give new life when today’s institutions have crumbled.  May we proclaim this foolish wisdom of God, the foolish wisdom of the cross, in our words and actions, today and every day. Amen.