I was cleaning out the fridge this week, and found all sorts of moldy and rotten stuff that had been neglected for too long, and I thought, we really have to pay attention to things or everything goes to hell in a hand basket. That’s why spring cleaning is so necessary - to get rid of all that ‘stuff’ that has accumulated over the year, or sometimes over the years plural.
I’m reading a fluff of a book called “The Junkyard Man” and it centers around a hoarder who has collected so much stuff that you can’t even find a pathway through his house or his yard. It sounds sad, but there are people who are like that. I look around at our stuff and wonder if we are becoming hoarders. I mean, I have 4 trumpets and multiple containers in 3 different locations for all of the crafts I have started or want to start. It’s such a pain to go through all that stuff and decide what to keep and what needs to be thrown away.
And then you read today’s gospel lesson and there is Jesus, clearing out the temple from those who have turned it into a market place. Oh, and maybe I need to clean house, too! I believe more than anything Jesus is calling us to spiritual housecleaning. That’s a lot of what Lent is all about - spiritual housecleaning.
When Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt, they were in need of spiritual cleansing also. Moses almost wore himself out trying to be judge for the people who came to him for help. So God made a way - rules to live by - rules to govern behavior - a covenant with the people of God. “I am the Lord your God. You will be my people.” It is a covenant relationship based on mutual trust and respect. God sets out in this covenant what he expects of his people based on his own standards of holiness.
In the first part of our service, we/I recited the summary of the Law. When he was asked what the most important law was, Jesus replied, “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and all the prophets.” (Mark 12:29-31)
And the lawyer asked him, “well, who is my neighbor?” I learned a long time ago that communications depends on understanding and defining terms in the same way. Two people can say the same thing, but if they define the terms differently, there is no communication. The lawyer wanted to restrict who he could treat as himself, but Jesus busted it wide open when he indicated all people - even your hated enemy.
Jesus brings the law down to two greatest commandments – this is the lens through which all interpretation is to be understood. All 630 laws are to be interpreted in light of loving God and loving your neighbor and the 10 commandments.
The 10 commandments boiled down to two – love God – love your neighbor. The first four commandments help you understand how to go about loving God – don’t have any other gods, don’t make idols out of anything, don’t misuse God's name, and remember to spend time with God especially on that 7th day when you rest from your labors.
The last 6 commandments help you understand a little bit about how to love your neighbor. Honor your mother and father – don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet anything that belongs to another… Jesus is saying that we should always treat others in such a way that we demonstrate our love of God through our actions toward others. He even defined that elsewhere in scripture when he said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As selfish human beings, we sometimes have a hard time with that. Our human nature wants to look toward our own creature comforts first.
Too often, we see Jesus as this gentle person – soft-spoken and meek – and then we get today’s gospel reading and see him making a whip of cords, and overturning tables and yelling at people – and it shocks our sensibilities. Jesus sees his father’s house being turned into a market place - the people have taken several of the laws regarding temple worship and figured out how to make a profit from it - changing the Roman coin for the temple coin for the temple tax, - providing animals for sell for the sacrifice, etc.
But Jesus is getting ready to totally overturn the system and offer himself as a sacrifice for all time. Jesus, in reducing his commandments down to two, in rebelling at the temple system, is not doing anything new – not really. Other prophets have said before that this system of sacrifice is not what God wants. We read in Micah 6:8
`He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
If we consider that Jesus is prefiguring the end of the sacrificial system, and we look at the timeline, it was another 40 years before the destruction of the temple and the end of the sacrifices. Jesus’ tirade didn’t really make any difference in the system at that time. All it really did was irritate the authorities and flag Jesus as being someone to watch – as someone who could be a trouble maker. And so the countdown began - to Good Friday and the ultimate sacrifice.
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Ever since Ash Wednesday, Danny has been threatening to put up on the signboard outside, in place of the sermon title, a sign that says, “It’s Lent. Give it up!” I know he’s only half joking, but its catchy so I put it up on Facebook today just to see what kind of response it gets. Quite often in Lent, rather than specifically giving something up, God gives me something personal to deal with. One year it was to walk with a cousin through his emotional turmoil and to wrestle with my own beliefs. Another year I had a broken arm, but it ended up being fun because my temporary cast was a deep purple for Lent. Then I got the real cast on Good Friday. I had that one done in white and on Easter Sunday all the kids in the church got to sign my cast with brightly colored markers. Sam and I left on vacation the next day so I got to show off that cast all the way to Virginia and back. We still have that cast.
The reason I’m telling you this, is that God has once again given me something to wrestle with during Lent. Some of you know that I have been going through a series of medical tests for the last month. I was just notified on Friday that I do have breast cancer, but the good news is that it is stage zero - meaning that it has not spread beyond the duct it started in.
And I want you to know that through this whole process, God has been so very gracious. (And ladies, this was picked up on a routine mammogram in a very early stage, so I would encourage you all to keep current on your mammograms.) It had been 3 years since my last mammogram but when the time had come, God spurred me on to get the mammogram so that it was caught early. At this stage it is both treatable and curable. He has placed me in a church family here at Grace who have been very supportive and caring. I know that God is walking with me every step of this journey and that He is as close to me as the air I breathe.
🎶You are the air I breathe, You are the air I breathe,
Your very presence, living in me.🎵
I am in the very palm of God’s hand and pray that I may continue to be his witness in and to the world.
Obviously, we are early in this process, so hopefully we will be able to meet with the oncologist this coming week and look at a plan of action. I am told that treatment should begin within 6 weeks and will probably entail surgery and possibly radiation. I guess you could say that God is in the process of cleaning my physical house/ my body. So I am asking you to keep Sam and I in your prayers as we walk down this path, and I will keep all of you in my prayers.
Amen.
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