Risking Everything

Below is my text from this morning's sermon:

Psalm 19: 1-14

John 2: 13-22

Risking Everything

Pisgah 3-22-15

Each of the four gospels provides a unique glimpse into the life,

death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are not identical and each have their own flavor, but they at least agree on the major points of the story.

The Gospel of John is completely different.

Things happen out of order from what we are used to hearing.

Even the things that happen in order,

don’t happen in the way that the other gospels present it.

John is an odd-ball.

It is hard to imagine Christianity if the Gospel of John was the only account of Jesus’ life that we had to go on.

We would have no birth story, because John doesn’t include one.

The first time we meet Jesus is as an adult when he is Baptized.

We would have no Lord’s prayer.

We would probably have no concept of Communion unless we really read between the lines to come up with it.

At the Last Supper in the Gospel of John,

Jesus doesn’t break break and drink wine and say do this in remembrance of me.

Instead, Jesus washes the disciples feet, and tell them to go and do likewise.

All of this is for the purpose of presenting Jesus in a way that the writer of the Gospel of John found to be important,

and not just present Jesus himself, but also Jesus’ ministry.

One of the most interesting texts to look at for this purpose is today’s text with Jesus driving out the money changers in the Temple.

The other three gospels place this event on Palm Sunday,

in the last week of Jesus’ ministry.

John places it in chapter two…almost immediately.

In fact, this story is really Jesus’ introduction to the world…

and so John uses it to proclaim a main portion of Jesus’ ministry…

not to come and battle the gentles as the people were hoping the Messiah would do,

but rather to point out the horrible hypocrisy that existed within the life of the Temple.

In other words, God’s own people had strayed so far that one of the very first things that Jesus does in the Gospel of John is cleanse the Temple.

For the writer of the Gospel of John it is imperative that the audience hear right from the beginning that there are no righteous people inside or outside of the Temple…

that all have sinned and are guilty…

and perhaps even that those who are within the Temple sinning have sinned greater because they should have known better.

The story goes that the Passover was approaching and so people would have been streaming to the Temple for the purpose of making sacrifice.

And the temple square had turned into a marketplace where people could buy and sell animals for the purpose of sacrifice…

and so Jesus without so much as a word makes a ropes out of chords and begins chasing people around.

He turned over their tables and poured out their coins.

He was angry…righteously so.

And when they challenged him, he said,

“Tear down this Temple and I will raise it again in three days.”

Well, that made no sense to them, since it would be impossible to build a Temple in three days, but of course,

Jesus wasn’t talking about the building,

Jesus was talking about himself.

And so we arrive at the thrust of this morning’s message.

The people present in the Temple that day.

The people who had turned the Temple worship into a business.

The people who were just going through the motions of the religion that they had created…

had strayed so far from the God’s purpose that the couldn’t recognize the true Temple right before their eyes.

The building had become their God.

The money had become their God.

The religion had become their God.

The laws had become their God.

The rules had become their God.

The priests had become their God.

The system…the blessed system…had become their God.

God had given them a covenant of faith,

but they had turned it into a religious contract.

And we have done the same thing to Jesus.

The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr once said of the straying church:

“We worshipped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of belonging and believing” instead of a religion of transformation.”

Jesus was not a man who came and started a religion.

He was not a man who came and built a church.

He was the religion. He was the church. He was the Temple.

He is the path today, not just to be worshipped, but to be walked…

to be followed.

On the Lenten journey…the one where we are told to take up our cross and follow, it is not enough to simply be religious!

Religious is about rules and buildings and books and tradition and history…

and all of that is important stuff to help us on the journey.

But, none of that stuff is the journey.

Christ is the journey.

Faith is the journey.

Living is the journey.

The religion simply gives us a context in which we walk.

In order for this all to work,

The Church of Jesus, the Church Universal,

the Presbyterian Church (USA),

Transylvania Presbytery,

Pisgah Presbyterian Church,

and each individual disciple must be willing to risk everything for the sake of following Jesus.

For this all to work,

for the journey of Lent to be meaningful,

we all must be willing to risk our religion for the sake of following Jesus.

For this all to work,

for the journey of Lent to be meaningful,

we all must be willing to risk family and tradition and history for the sake of following Jesus.

For this all to work,

for the journey of Lent to be meaningful,

we must all be willing to risk country for the sake of following Jesus.

If not, if the religion…or the country…or the politics…

have trumped that calling, then we’re all just money-changers…

selling cattle for sacrifice…

Jesus can not be set aside as an inconvenient character in the story,

whose radical words of peace and justice and equality and grace and love are relegated to a few books at the beginning of the New Testament….

just one portion of our religion.

Jesus is the Testament.

We must be willing to risk everything for the sake of the Gospel.

This past Wednesday was the 150th anniversary of one of the greatest speeches in American history: Lincoln’s second inaugural.

Several years into the Civil War,

Lincoln was looking a nation divided in war,

and a nation healing from the sin of slavery.

As the President of that nation, fully invested in its future, he nonetheless said,

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Lincoln’s last full measure of devotion was to completely submit himself and the fate of the nation to the will of God.

Not God and Country.

But, God above everything else.

For just over a month later, he attended a play at Ford’s theater.

President Lincoln ended the Second Inaugural this way:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

With malice toward none.

There ws another anniversary this week. This the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day wen men and women, young and old, marched on Selma for the right to vote. They gave of their entire selves, risking everything, for the cause of justice...and they paid dearly.

For all this to work…

for our religion to be meaningful…

for the journey of Lent to make a difference…

there can be nothing more important than following where our savior trod.

We must be willing to lift high the cross for the sake of justice...for the sake of equality...for the sake of love...and for the sake of peace for each and everyone one of God's children.

Amen.