Christ Episcopal Church
March 8, 2015
3 Lent B
My Lenten discipline this year is a practice called "40 bags in 40 days." The discipline is to collect one bag of clutter every day during Lent and donate the bag to a charity. Thus far, on average, I have managed to collect at least one bag of clutter each day. The information on the practice neglected to mention the option of returning some of the clutter to the children who generated the mess in the first place, which is one option I have employed, much to their dismay. While I was cleaning out one of the closets in our son Slocomb's old room, I found a copy of the Oxford College Student Honor Code. Why Slocomb saved that, I have no idea. The code is a trifold 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper in a font that truly requires a magnifying glass, or, I suppose, 18 year old eyes rather than middle aged eyes. The preamble to the Honor Code states "The Honor Code is based on the fundamental expectations that every person in Oxford College will conduct his or her life according to the dictate of the Honor Code and will refuse to tolerate actions in others which would violate the honor code." The following 5 columns of seriously small print define what constitutes an infraction of the Honor Code and how those infractions are handled. In detail. On the one hand, reading through the fine print feels almost oppressive, as if the expectation is that someone will cheat and the Honor Code spells out the consequences. But the reality is quite different. The Honor Code actually describes how people are to live in community with one another. Because the students, faculty and staff agree to live by this code, people are free to be themselves, to offer their best work knowing that everyone else is offering only their own best work, and to trust each other. Rather than living in a state of Marshall law, the campus is quite relaxed and trust is created by the Honor Code.
This morning, we hear about a different sort of Honor Code in the reading from Exodus. The reading begins by setting the 10 commandments in the context of liberation. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." If God went to all that trouble to deliver the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, God is probably not going to lay down laws to create a new form of slavery. While in Egypt, the people were forced to work until their lives were bitter. Moses could not know his own mother except through her cunning and deceit. Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave. The 10 commandments did not order the Hebrew people's lives while they were in slavery. Only once they were free did God give them the 10 commandments. The people are now free to honor their parents, to keep the Sabbath, and not to murder or commit adultery. And most importantly, they are free to worship only God.
In the gospel reading, we hear that Jesus has gone to the temple for the Passover. The Passover is the festival that marks the Hebrew's miraculous escape from Egypt. Clearly the creators of the lectionary want us to connect the 10 commandments with the story of Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple. But what is the connection?
I am convinced that the money changers believed they were doing what the Hebrew Scriptures required. Based on their understanding of the law as received by Moses, the first century Jews and generations before them had a complicated system of sacrifices that they were to make at the temple. Sacrifices were a way to worship God, to give thanks to God, or to ask God's forgiveness for a wrongdoing. All of these are very worthy actions. People would come for miles, usually on foot, to worship and to offer their sacrifices as required by Scripture. In order for those sacrifices to be worthy of God, the animals had to be perfect, which was next to impossible for worshipers who had to walk for miles in the dusty heat to get to Jerusalem. So, appropriate animals were sold at the Temple and people could buy them when they arrived. So far, so good. But....the coins of the realm had the emperors image on them and could not be used at the temple, which was the realm of God. So the secular coins had to be exchanged for temple currency. That exchange was the job of the money changers. And since we all have to make a living, there was a certain mark up, both for the money changers and for the sale of the animals. But the honest and faithful intent was to provide a way for those who traveled miles to get to the temple to offer the most appropriate sacrifices to God as the law of God required.
But Jesus is not impressed, to put it mildly. What is Jesus so worked up about? The prophets had long told the people that what God desired was the sacrifice of the heart, not burnt offerings. In a few weeks, we will hear Jeremiah say "But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they will be my people." On Ash Wednesday, we prayed Psalm 51 together, which includes the words "The sacrifice of God is a troubled heart; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." The prophet Joel says to the people, in a passage we also hear on Ash Wednesday "Rend your hearts and not your garments." I wonder if Jesus was so worked up about the money changers because, according to the story, those sacrifices had become a financial transaction and not a transaction of the heart. But, according to the prophets, God desires the hearts of the people God has set free.
In the psalm this morning, we hear the Psalmist's gratitude for the law. "The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul. The testimony of the law is sure and gives wisdom to the innocent. The statutes of the law are just and rejoice the heart. The commandment of the law is clear and gives light to the eyes." The commandments of God are not a burden. Rather, those commandments rejoice the heart. During Lent, Jesus barges into our lives as Jesus barged into the Temple, and challenges us to live with the hearts of people who have been set free. Our Lenten disciplines are meant to form our hearts in freedom and gratitude. When I grumble to my husband that I could more easily give up chocolate than deal with the clutter in the house, I am failing to let my heart be formed by letting go of stuff. In Lent, and always, Jesus calls us to live as people whose lives are ordered by gratitude for our freedom in Christ. If all of our actions, both as individuals and as a community, are ordered by the gratitude of people who have been set free, we will keep the commandments of God naturally. We will live as individuals and a community that loves God with all our hearts and loves our neighbor as ourselves. Our hearts will belong to God and God's heart will rejoice.
Amen
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