The Great Vigil of Easter, Year B

Genesis 1:1 – 2:2; Exodus 14:10 – 15:1; Romans 6:3–11; Matthew 28:1–10

This is the homily given at given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Saturday, March 31, 2018.

“STANDING AT THE BORDER BETWEEN EVIL AND GOOD”

The celebration we are observing on this very holy night of the Great Vigil of Easter places us in a wonderful and very unique place: We are standing at the border, the dividing line, between evil and good, between the works of the devil and the victory of God.

Behind us - on that first Good Friday - lie the awful deeds of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jewish people 2,000 years ago, and their attempts to stir up the emotions of the crowds who had gathered in Jerusalem for the observance of the feast of Passover, and the collusion of Pontius Pilate, who, rather than see justice served where Jesus was concerned, gave in to the demands of the crowd in order to preserve some semblance of peace and order.

In front of us - on that first Easter Sunday morning - lies the rising of our Lord Jesus Christ from the grave, God’s victory over every form of evil, and God’s victory over our greatest and final enemy, death.

At each observance of Good Friday, and in every celebration of Easter, year-by-year, Christians remember the power of evil that was displayed on that first Good Friday. But we also remember God’s victory over such evil on that first Easter Sunday morning.

God’s power is magnified when it is compared to the attempts of evil to overtake God’s goodness. We see God’s power more clearly when we look behind ourselves to see the lengths to which the forces of evil will go to claim yet another victim in its reign of death and destruction.

God’s victory in raising Jesus from death assures us that He, alone, possesses the power to guarantee His presence with us whenever we encounter or experience any form of evil. We are assured, therefore, that as we make our way through this present life, God will accompany us every step of the way. St. Paul will affirm this truth as he says in Romans chapter eight: “…in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, now powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37 – 39)

So we may live confidently, knowing that God’s power exceeds the power of every form of evil.

And when this life is over, then we may be assured that God will save us from that eternal death which is separation from Him in eternity. That, dear friends, is the great Christian hope, a hope that is based on the reality that our Lord Jesus really and truly rose from the grave on that first Easter morning.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.       

Good Friday, Year B (2018)

Isaiah 52: 13–53: 12; Psalm 22: 1–21; Hebrews 10: 1–25; John 18: 1 – 19: 37

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Friday, March 30, 2018.

“DO YOU REALLY DARE?”

(Homily text: John 18: 1 – 19: 37)

The very familiar account of the events of Good Friday can be viewed from a number of perspectives.

One way to look at what happened with Jesus’ trial and execution is to see it as a collision between two opposing forces, one daring the other to enter into conflict.

For example, the powerful leaders of the Jewish people dared anyone to oppose their authority. Such opposition was most often dealt with by a body known as the Sanhedrin, which was composed of the chief priests, the elders of the people, and others. Jesus’ trial took place in front of this group, as we have just heard in the reading of the passion narrative from John’s Gospel account. The Sanhedrin’s concerns often surrounded religious issues. In Jesus’ trial, such concerns were foremost in the thinking of the members of the Sanhedrin. They ask Jesus about His disciples and about His teaching (John 18: 19). At one point in the proceedings, Jesus is ordered by the high priest to tell them if He is the Messiah (Matthew 26: 63b).

Likewise, the Roman authorities, personified in the person of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, dared anyone who thought of stepping out-of-line to challenge Roman law and Roman power. In Jesus’ trial, Pilate dares Jesus to oppose this power, saying, “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” (John 19: 10) Pilate’s main concern in governing the restless Jewish people was to maintain order, to keep the lid on things. (In fact, Pilate’s job security probably rested on his ability to do so.) Ruthless application of power was one of the main tools in the Roman arsenal in order to prevent daring challenges to Roman rule. The Gospels record some of the ways that the oppressed Jews dared to challenge this authority.

Often, the response to daring opposition by the Romans was incremental. For example, as Jesus is on trial, Pilate seems to seek to pacify the crowd by having Jesus scourged. After this horrific beating (historical records tells us that many victims of scourging didn’t live to tell about it afterward), Pilate brings Jesus out for the crowds to see. Perhaps his motive was to try to show them that he had met the challenge that this daring individual posed, and had successfully convinced this upstart Jew named Jesus not to dare to oppose Roman power again.

The Jewish leadership and the Roman governor were uneasy allies. Often they tried to stay in their own respective orbits. But when anyone dared to oppose their power, they were capable of working together quite well. We see this in Jesus’ trial. We must give credit to the members of the Sanhedrin, for they know just how to get Pilate’s attention with regard to Jesus, for they inform Pilate that Jesus is claiming to be some sort of a king. Pilate would not have understood the religious concerns of the Sanhedrin (and, in fact, at one point he tells them to take Jesus away an judge Him according to Jewish law), but he would understand full well the threat that any claim to political power and position would pose to the Roman scheme of things.

Against these powerful groups, most challengers, and their daring opposition, simply crumbled. If they didn’t crumble when the threat of violence was presented, then their movements were crushed, only to be a footnote in history.

But where Jesus is concerned, He meets these two allied groups in a daring fashion. Jesus tells the members of the Sanhedrin that the time will come when they will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds. (Matthew 26: 64) When told by Pilate, for example, that Pilate would have no power over Him unless it had been given to him from above, such a response is probably one Pilate had never heard from anyone who’d been in the threatening position of the very real prospect of crucifixion. (John 19: 11)

As the events of Good Friday come to a close, it appears from all outward appearances that the Sanhedrin and Pilate have won the dare. They have managed to deal with the threat that Jesus posed to their power and authority.

But the Easter event tells us something else, for in Jesus’ rising from the grave, we see that God’s dare to the Sanhedrin, to Pilate, and – for that matter, all evil in all times to come – has been met by God’s dare.

It is God who has confronted in daring fashion the powers of evil. It is God who, at first, looked like the loser in this cosmic battle, but who has emerged the winner.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.

Maundy Thursday, Year B (2018)

Exodus 12: 1–14a; Psalm 78: 14–20, 23–25; I Corinthians 11: 23–32 ; John 13: 1-15

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Thursday, March 29, 2018.

“SERVANT-LEADERSHIP”

(Homily text: John 13: 1–15)

With our observance of the events that took place on Maundy Thursday evening, we enter into what is known as the Triduum, a Latin word denoting “three days”, or – in the Church’s parlance – the Three Holy Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. (The Easter celebration begins on Saturday evening with the Great Vigil of Easter, so although that celebration takes place on Saturday, it is that earlier observance during the day on Saturday which is observed in honor of the time that our Lord was entombed.)

This night places before us two very different (and seemingly conflicting) events:  Our Lord’s washing the feet of His disciples, and His institution of the holy meal which, He said, was to be in remembrance of Him.

The first event has everything to do with being a servant or a slave. The second event has everything to do with leadership.

We would do well to unpack all of this just a little, for the Lord Jesus’ model, exhibited on this holy night, is the model that He instructs us to emulate.

Let’s begin with the business of washing of people’s feet.

In the ancient world, it was customary for a host to make arrangements for his guest’s feet to be washed once they came into the home. The reason is obvious: The roads in that era were dusty (very few were paved at all), and people wore open sandals. The job of doing the foot washing, a task that involved getting down on the floor, kneeling, was the task that was almost exclusively the work of a servant or a slave. It was a demeaning task, in other words.

No wonder Peter raises such a fuss when Jesus takes off His outer cloak, dons a towel, and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. Peter’s sensibilities are deeply offended by this action, for the one that Peter had been following, the one he had been looking up to since the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, is now the one who is kneeling before him, demanding to wash his feet.

“How can this be?”, Peter may have wondered.

Jesus tells Peter that he won’t understand what He, the Lord, has just done for him, but, the Lord said, Peter will understand in due course.

Now, we turn to the other major event that took place on Maundy Thursday evening, the institution of the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus transforms the traditional Seder meal, the Passover celebration, into a lasting remembrance of His presence among the faithful believers of that first generation, and of every generation that will follow as the years go along, until the Lord comes again.

Notice that I used the word “remembrance”. It is the word that is part of the blessing of the bread and the blessing of the cup that takes place during the eucharistic celebration. But the word is used in a particular way: It is used not to denote a mental recalling of the event that began this ongoing gift to all believers, No, it is much more than that: It is the “remembering” in the sense of “putting it all together again, like the first time” sense of the word.

And so the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass (the various ways that this holy meal is known in the various parts of the Church) is the “putting it all together again” for us, so that we may be fed with the Lord’s very body and very blood under the forms of bread and wine.

By this action, the Lord exerts His power to create, a power that the Fourth Gospel affirms in its opening verses, where we read that, by the Word (Jesus Christ) all things were created.

So the Lord Jesus Christ creates out of the basic elements of bread and wine an ongoing means of assuring us of his continued presence. This holy meal is the indicator of God’s goodness and favor towards us. It is the means by which we are sustained and are given power to carry out God’s work in the world. By our reception of this Sacrament, we become one with (the word we use to denote “being one with” comes to us from the Latin: commune) the Lord.

Jesus’ lordship is seen in this divine act.

Jesus makes it clear that all who will follow Him must emulate His way of being and acting, In chapter thirteen of John’s gospel account, at verse sixteen, the Lord says to His disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, now is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” We are called, therefore, to serve one another and to serve the world in the Lord’s name, for He is Lord of all.

AMEN.

         

The Sunday of the Passion (Palm Sunday) (2018)

Psalm 118:1–2, 19–29; Mark 11:1–11; Isaiah 50:4–9a; Psalm 31: 9–16; Philippians 2: 5–11; Mark 14:1 – 15:47

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, March 25, 2018.

“THE SHAPE OF HOLY WEEK, THE SHAPE OF OUR FAITH LIFE”

Holy Week has a distinctive shape as the events of this last week of our Lord’s earthly life unfold:

It begins on a high note, as the Lord makes His triumphal entry into the Holy City, Jerusalem. Crowds greet His entry, spreading their garments and palm branches along the road, and crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”.

Then, perhaps early in Holy Week, things begin to head downhill as the Lord confronts the corruption of the Temple by driving out the moneychangers who were exchanging Roman currency into acceptable, Temple currency. (The corruption stemmed from the rate-of-exchange that was offered to worshipers between the two currencies, which the Temple priests controlled, enabling themselves to get rich in the process.) With this confrontation, the stage is now set for the High Priests and Jesus’ other enemies to seek to get rid of Him.

On Maundy Thursday, events again move toward higher ground as the Lord institutes the legacy He will leave with His disciples, a legacy which will continue to remind them of His presence, a legacy which will continue to uphold them in their faith walk as the centuries unfold. That legacy is, of course, known by many names. It is the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, the Holy Eucharist, and the Mass.

But then, on that same night, events move sharply downward as Judas comes to the Garden of Gethsemane, accompanied by a band of soldiers. Jesus is arrested and is taken to Caiaphas, the High Priest. After questioning, Jesus is led away to Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea.

We reach the lowest ebb of Holy Week in the events of Good Friday, as Jesus is led away to the hill of Calvary, where He is crucified. He is buried, and for His disciples, there seems to be no hope for the future, none whatsoever. For them, the Lord and their leader had been killed, and now His lifeless body lies in a tomb. They fear for their own lives, lest they, too, find themselves on crosses of their own.

But on Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and the other women go to the tomb, expecting to be able to anoint Jesus’ body. Instead, they find the stone that had been rolled against the door had been rolled back. They are greeted by angels who say that the Lord is not there. An angel tells the women to go and tell the disciples that the Lord has risen from the dead.

The shape of Holy Week is somewhat like a tent. The structure is supported by the high points of this holy week: The triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the giving of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, and the marvelous rising from the tomb on Easter Sunday morning.

The low points of this week are framed by the uplifting, high points with which this week begins and ends. In between, there is the high point of the institution of the Lord’s memorial of the Holy Communion. Were it not for these three aspects of the week, the low points would have threatened to engulf those first disciples in despair and hopelessness.

The shape and structure of this week might offer us an opportunity for reflection on our own faith walk with God.

It is likely that most, if not all, of us experience high points and low points as we make our way on the journey of life. We might even call the high points “mountaintop experiences”. We might characterize the low points as being “in a valley”, or “in a wilderness”. And, like those first disciples, perhaps the highs and the lows take place in short succession to one another. We might feel as though we’re riding a spiritual and emotional rollercoaster.

The events of this Holy Week remind us that, as we experience the joys of life, we will also experience the disappointments that life can put in our path. But we are sustained by the knowledge that nothing can separate us from the love of God, made known in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate us from that love, just as no power of death and destruction could not separate our Lord from His enduring life.

Along the way, the Lord gives us fuel for our journey in the form of the Holy Eucharist. We are gathered at the holy table to be united to the Lord in the Sacrament, for it is the reminder and the guarantee of the Lord’s continuing presence among us until He comes again.

And we are sustained by the record of the Lord Jesus Christ’s intervention in human affairs, that written record we call the Bible. The Word of God exists to pass along to us the mighty deeds and the victory of our Lord over sin, death, disease and evil. That record is received by faith, and as it is received, unmistakable signs of the Lord’s power to renew and reshape human life take place in the believer. This transformation then becomes an encouraging and uplifting sign of God’s continuing actions in human affairs. The believer becomes, in the words of St. Paul, a “living sacrifice to the Lord”.

AMEN.

Lent 5, Year B (2018)

Jeremiah 31: 31–34; Psalm 51: 1–13; Hebrews 5: 5–10; John 12: 20–33

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 18, 2018, by Fr. Gene Tucker.

“OF IDOLS AND IDOLATRY”

(Homily texts:  Jeremiah 31: 31 - 34 & John 12: 20 - 33)

A stark reality of our walk with God is that there will be the temptation to put something in between ourselves and God. That thing might be sin (and particularly, a very serious and besetting sin). That thing might also be an object that we possess (or which possesses us). That thing might also a relationship with someone or something.

Defined another way, what we are talking about in naming those things that we possess and those things (or persons) that we have relationships with is: Idolatry.

Down through much of their history, God’s ancient peoples in Old Testament times wrestled with the temptation to follow idols. Remember the incident at the foot of Mt. Sinai as Moses is on the mountaintop receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments? Down at the base of the mountain, Moses’ brother, Aaron, is leading the people in the creation of and worship of a golden calf. Idolatry.

As the people of Israel enter the Promised Land, they fall prey to the temptation to adopt the worship of the Canaanite gods of the people who had inhabited the land. The Asherah poles, the Canaanite god Molech, and the god Phoenician Baal, were all objects of the people’s attention, worship and affection. Sometimes, such worship even took place in the Temple in Jerusalem, and sometimes, the worship of these pagan idols was mingled with the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.[1]

Into this situation, the prophet Jeremiah comes. God sent this prophet, who is often known by the title “The Weeping Prophet” to warn God’s people that their fascination with idols will end calamitously. In our Old Testament reading appointed for this morning, Jeremiah looks forward through the years which lay ahead to see a time when God’s people will be cured of their idolatrous ways. Indeed, the exile of God’s people into Babylon[2] took care of their problem with idols.

Now, let’s turn our attention to this morning’s Gospel text. We hear that some Greeks have come to see Jesus. The request to see the Lord confirms Jesus’ growing popularity among the people. Earlier in John’s Gospel account, we are told that there was a movement beginning to make Jesus king.(see John 6:15).

Jesus had been healing people. He had fed the multitudes. His teaching was with an authority not possessed by the scribes and the Pharisees. Perhaps it would have been easy for Him to fall in love with all that popularity. Perhaps it might have been tempting for Him to claim an earthly throne as king over the Jews.

Prior to the beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus had been tempted, tempted with invitations to claim worldly power. Matthew’s Gospel account records the words of the devil, who said, “All these (the kingdoms of the world) I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4: 9.)

Temptations to put something or someone in between God’s will and our relationship to Him constitute idolatry.

If Jesus had succumbed to the temptation to build on His popularity with the people, rising to be the king of the Jews in an earthly sense, He would have placed that relationship between Himself and God’s will for His life.

Fortunately for all Christian believers, the Lord did not allow anything to come between His will and God the Father’s will.

He knew the Father’s will was for Him to die, to become that grain of wheat which falls into the ground, where it will give new growth and new life.

We live in a world which is filled with temptations to idolatry.

Objects, many of them very appealing and very attractive, call us to focus our attention on these things. We are surrounded (immersed) in a world of physical objects. Relationships with others might also take first place in our lives.

Key to understanding the true nature of idolatry is to increase our awareness of idolatry as being – at its root – all about our relationships with the things that inhabit our lives, and to the relationships that shape our existence. Having objects and relationships with others in our lives is necessary, even beneficial, provided we remember that our relationship to God must take first place.

May we pray that the Holy Spirit will enlighten us to see clearly our relationship to the various objects and relationships which are part of our lives, that we may discern in that assessment the nature of our relationship to God.

AMEN.

           

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[1]   The technical term which is applied to this mixture of the worship with the one, true God and idols is called syncretism.

[2]   The people of God were exiled to Babylon in 586 BC. They began their return to the Promised Land in 538 BC.

Lent 4, Year B (2018)

Numbers 21: 4–9; Psalm 107: 1–3, 17–22; Ephesians 2: 1–10; John 3: 14–21

This is the homily that was given at Grace & St. Peter’s in Baltimore, Maryland on Sunday, March 11, 2018 by Fr. Gene Tucker.

“DARKNESS INTO LIGHT”

(Homily texts:  Numbers 21: 4-9 & John 3: 14–21)

Our Old Testament reading from the Book of Numbers and our Gospel text from John’s Gospel account, chapter three, are well matched. Jesus makes mention of the incident we hear this morning from Numbers in His discourse with the Pharisee, Nicodemus.

Two themes bind these two readings together:  The first theme is the creation of the bronze serpent[1] in the wilderness and Jesus’ mention of that incident, and the other theme is God’s action to save His people. God’s goodness and mercy are seen in the wilderness, and in Jesus’ saving act, made known to us on Good Friday.

God’s acting to save His people, which demonstrates God’s goodness and mercy, brings hope in the midst of despair. God’s goodness and mercy create light in the midst of darkness.

Let’s explore these aspects of each reading a little further.

As we make our way through the Book of Numbers, we read of the rebelliousness of God’s people: They grumble as they make their way through the wilderness, saying that there is no water, and there is nothing to eat, and what they do have to eat, they are tired of. So God, in His mercy and out of His goodness, provides water from the rock, and then God provides manna from heaven and quail to eat. Still, many in Israel long to return to Egypt. They say, in effect, “we had it so good there, we had plenty to eat.”

God’s people’s wilderness journey is marked by alternating periods of good times and bad times: bad times that are marked with the grumbling and rebelliousness of God’s people, who create for themselves a veil of separation from God, a veil which darkens their relationship with Him. God must intervene to tear apart the veil, to show to His people that He still loves and cares for them, and is willing to save them, in spite of their wayward ways.

Now, let’s fast-forward to Jesus’ discussion with the Pharisee Nicodemus. Our Gospel text picks up at the end of the back-and-forth conversation between Jesus and his nighttime visitor, and – in the fashion that we often find in John’s Gospel account – the discussion between the two takes up the first part of chapter three.. But then, the discussion ends and a teaching by our Lord continues. Nicodemus simply drops out of the narrative. Our Gospel text picks up at the end of the conversation.

Nicodemus was a member of the Pharisees, who were part of the ruling elite in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees, like the priests in the Temple and the puppet King Herod who had been installed by the Romans, cared little for the welfare of the people who were in their charge. All of these, the priests, the Pharisees and the king were consumed with serving themselves, and in guaranteeing their place in society. Moreover, the Romans, who carried out a brutal occupation of the Holy Land, cared not at all for the welfare of the people.

No wonder that Jesus will lament the situation God’s people find themselves in, saying that they are “like sheep without a shepherd”.

The net effect of all this self-serving leadership was to create a very dark time for God’s people. Life was difficult, the leadership of the people was corrupt (as we heard in our Gospel reading from last week, which put before us Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple),  Roman taxes were high (one estimate states that the effective tax rate was about 66%!), and the Romans ruled with threats of violence.

God’s people, on their way to the Promised Land, found themselves in a wilderness, and God’s people in Jesus’ day found themselves in another sort of wilderness. The wilderness is a place where life is threatened, and human existence is in jeopardy.

It is in the wilderness that God often comes to save His people. God established His covenant with Moses and the people in the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, in the wilderness. God showed His love for His people by giving them water to drink, manna from heaven and quail to eat.

In the fullness of time, God entered the wilderness of the first century to save His people. God sent His only Son to show us how much He loves us. (John 3:16, perhaps the most well-known verse in the New Testament) affirms this truth. The cross, to which Jesus alludes in His teaching to Nicodemus, is the object to which our eyes are drawn.

We are about to approach the celebration of the Holy Table, the Mass. The Sacrament of the altar is a commemoration of our Lord’s sacrifice on Good Friday. We recall that it is to the cross that we are drawn whenever we gather to commune with the Lord under the elements of bread and wine. The fair linen which covers the altar is marked with five crosses, recalling for us the five wounds that our Lord bore for our sins and for our salvation.

The holy sacrifice of the Mass is a guarantee of God’s love, God’s goodness, and God’s mercy toward all who come to Him in faith.

As we come to this holy table, we come not for solace only, but for strength to do God’s will. We come not for pardon only, but for a renewing of our hearts and our minds. We are united with Christ in a death like His, in order that we may be raised to a new life in a resurrection like His. (See Romans 6: 3 – 9.)

A Collect for Mission for the Daily Office, Morning Prayer, summarizes our mission quite well:[2]

“Lord Jesus Christ, who didst stretch out thine arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, that everyone might come within thy saving embrace: So clothe us in thy spirit, that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do know thee to the knowledge and love of thee; for the honor of thy Name.”

AMEN.

           

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[1]   It is worth noting that the bronze serpent is a part of the symbol that is associated with the healing arts. Look, for example, at an ambulance, or in a doctor’s office, and you will see the bronze serpent on a pole in the middle of the symbol.

[2]   Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 58.

Lent 3, Year B (2018)

Exodus 20: 1–17; Psalm 19; I Corinthians 1: 18–25; John 2: 13–22  

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 4, 2018, by Fr. Gene Tucker.

“HOLINESS BEFORE GOD”

(Homily texts:  Exodus 20: 1–17 & John 2: 13–22)

At first glance, our Old Testament reading, which places before us the Ten Commandments, and our Gospel text about Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple, don’t have much to do with one another.

But a deeper look reveals to us, I think, a link: The giving of the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ actions in the Temple both have to do with holiness.

Holiness. It is a word that gets used by Christian believers with some frequency. But what does the word imply?

Holiness has to do with being a holy people, God’s holy people. Holiness has to do with reflecting God’s holy nature in what we say and in what we do. Holiness has to do with God’s process, working through the Holy Spirit, of doing away with our old, corrupted nature, a process that’s known as sanctification. Even the word sacrament has to do with holiness, for in its most basic meaning, sanctification means to “make holy”.

In giving the Ten Commandments, God outlines for the people He has claimed for His own the ways in which those who have come into relationship with Him are to live. If we look at the Ten Commandments more closely, we can see that the first four have to do with how we relate to God, while the remaining six have to do with the ways in which we relate to one another.[1]

Jesus will summarize the Ten Commandments by saying that the first and greatest commandment is to “love God will all our hearts, our souls and our minds”. Then, He will add that the second greatest commandment is to “love our neighbors as ourselves”.[2] (See Matthew 22: 37 – 39.)

Now, let’s turn our attention to Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple.

This event in Jesus’ earthly ministry must have figured very prominently in the recollections of the very early Christians, for all four Gospel accounts carry a mention of it. Matthew, Mark and Luke each place Jesus’ action in Holy Week, the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, while John places the event early in his account.[3] Some biblical scholars have advanced the idea, therefore, that Jesus drove out the moneychangers twice in his ministry. That may be so (and I will leave you to reflect on that mystery), but it would be good for us to remember that John’s Gospel account isn’t so much a chronological account of Jesus’ ministry as the first three Gospels seem to be. It is possible, therefore, that Jesus did what He did only once in his ministry, but John may have placed his recording of the event early in his account for theological reasons.

Whether or not Jesus cleansed the Temple once or twice, the same motivation exists for His action, and we would do well to dig below the surface to see why He did what He did.

The Temple in Jerusalem, which King Herod the Great[4] began building in the year 19 or 20 BC,[5] meant many things to the Jews:  For one thing, it was a symbol of Jewish identity, an identity that was under threat from the Roman occupation of the Holy Land. Its construction was, in a sense, an act of defiance in the face of the Roman occupation. For another, it was the place where God dwelt, and it was only the place where the sacrifices which the Law of Moses required were carried out.[6]

This last comment brings us to the presence of the moneychangers, and to the animals that were being bought and sold within the Temple’s precincts.

Pilgrims coming to the Temple could bring their own animals with them for sacrifice. But they could also buy animals at the Temple, which for many who had come a long way, was an easier option to take. But in order to buy an animal, these pilgrims had to pay for the animal with the currency they carried, which was Roman coinage. However, since the Roman emperor’s image appeared on the coinage, it could not be used within the Temple itself. Some sort of a currency exchange was required to convert the Roman coinage into a special Temple currency.

Guess who controlled the rate of exchange? The Temple’s priestly caste.

What was going on was a religious monopoly, whereby the Temple’s priests were getting rich, subverting the worship of God with their own greed.

On the surface, the practices within the Temple looked holy, for the outward observances of the things that were done there seemed to comply with the requirements of the Law. But in truth, greed and corruption constituted the ugly, hidden reality of the Temple’s existence.

No wonder Jesus got angry at the disconnect between the Temple’s outward appearance and its inward and more truthful reality which lay below the surface.

There are lessons for us to take away from today’s readings.

As we hear the admonitions the Ten Commandments place before us, we would do well to remember that they are commandments, not suggestions. Though it is difficult to put our old, corrupted nature behind us, in order that we might live holy lives before God and before the world, spiritual maturity calls us to attain -with the Holy Spirit’s help – the high calling the Ten Commandments lay before us. Ours is a calling to live integrated lives, ones in which our outward and visible selves are matched by our inward and unseen selves. To live such an integrated life is to live a sacramental life, for the definition of a sacrament is that it is an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace”. To this high standard, each of us is called.

God’s holy people are called to be a light to the world. That light shines brightest when it possesses the truth of an integrated and holy life. It is this sort of authenticity that the world craves, an authenticity that God alone can create within us, that we might bear testimony to God’s ability to create for Himself a holy people.

AMEN.

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[1]   We began our worship this morning with a recitation of the Ten Commandments, which carry the formal title of “Decalogue”. See the Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 317 in traditional language, and page 350 in contemporary language.

[2]   Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6: 5 in citing what is the greatest commandment. The Matthean passage appears in our traditional language (Rite I) rite for the Holy Eucharist, where it is known as the Summary of the Law.  See the Book of Common Prayer, page 324.

[3]   See Matthew 21: 12–13, Mark 11: 15–19 and Luke 19: 45–46.

[4]   The Jewish people weren’t especially fond of King Herod, for he was a puppet king who had been installed by the Romans. Moreover, Herod was only half Jewish. But the Jewish people were happy with the construction of the Temple, despite the actions of the king that brought it into being.

[5]   If John’s record of the statement made by the Jews is, in fact, a chronological statement, then that would seem to indicate that Jesus’ action took place sometime around the year 26 or 27 AD. That might be significant, for Pontius Pilate, who condemned Jesus to death, was Governor of Judea from 26 to 36 AD.

[6]   Synagogues weren’t places of sacrifice. They were places where people came together to meet, to hear the sacred Scriptures read, to hear instruction, and so forth.