On Friday I decided to go surfing. I hadn’t had a day off in a couple of weeks and I needed some play time, to cleanse my mind and renew my sense of well-being. I got up before 6:00 to work a little on this sermon, and I wrote a couple of emails. Then I made breakfast for the family, did some stretches, and put the board on the car, before dropping my daughter off at school, and heading out to Dillon Beach. I was out in the water before I remembered that I’d meant to call the church office and leave a message for the volunteer receptionist saying I wasn’t coming in.
So, a couple of hours later, the first thing I did once I’d changed out of my wetsuit was to telephone the office to check in. It turned out that Frances Frazier, who was on duty, was having quite a morning. Someone had jammed the handle on one of the women’s toilets on Thursday night so it never stopped flushing. The constant flow proved to be more than the sewer drain could handle and the water had started running out onto the floor. The floor drain backed up too, so Frances arrived that morning to find water pooling in the little entryway outside the bathroom and soaking the carpet.
So she’d called Clif Hill, the Junior Warden, and he was on the scene, as were the Dolcini family, father and sons, plumbers. But I felt badly that I’d been out of touch. I had an extra half hour or so before I was due to pick Risa up from school, so I said I’d stop by on my way back into town. But I really needn’t have. Clif gave me a full report, and it was clear that he was giving the plumbers all the direction they needed. He’d also contacted a water cleanup and restoration service they were on their way to try to salvage the carpet. I helped Frances find the number for our insurance agent, so I guess that was helpful, but she made the call and filed the claim. And after that there was really no reason for me to be there. Still it was hard for me to leave.
One of the occupational hazards of being a minister is to think that you’re indispensible. You care about everything that happens to everyone, and you want to be there when you’re needed. If something bad happens, it’s your responsibility to do something, even if it is only to be there to listen and say some encouraging words or maybe pray. And in a small church like this one, when you’re the only paid person on the staff, it’s hard not to feel like that responsibility applies even to the plumbing.
And the truth is, most of the time, I don’t mind. It feels good to be helpful. I like to feel like I’m someone people can count on when the chips are down. I like feeling like the work I do matters. I like to feel like a good person, and if I’m going to be completely honest, I have to say I like it when other people think I’m a good person too.
But sometimes I can’t be there. Sometimes I’m not needed. Sometimes I’m going to disappoint people. I don’t know that Frances and Clif were disappointed with me on Friday, so the fact that I was worried that they were is a pretty good indication that I’d fallen into a trap. It is a common enough trap to fall into. I think most of us do it from time to time in one way or another, but those of us who are drawn to work in what is sometimes called the “helping professions” may be more prone to it than most. It is the trap of being overly identified with our image of ourselves as the helper, the good person, the one you can count on. I’m not saying isn’t rewarding to serve others. I’m not saying “don’t call me if you need something.” What I’m saying is that we all have our limitations, and when we start to forget that, we’re in trouble.
Will that in mind, I’m finding the reading from the gospel of John this morning kind of comforting. Because Jesus in this story is not being helpful, at least not in the usual sense of the word. He is a rebel, a trouble-maker, a public nuisance. He walks into the holiest place in the world, at one of the holiest times of the year, when it’s full of thousands of pious pilgrims, and starts wreaking havoc. He starts a stampede of cows and sheep. He turns over tables and dumps out jars of money. He tells the helpful people, the ones who furnishes the pilgrims with the things they need to please God, to get their things out of there, to stop what they’re doing. This is behavior that is more than disappointing. It’s shocking. It’s outrageous. This is not how a religious leader is supposed to behave.
But for just this reason Jesus’ action is supremely helpful. Because its purpose is to remind us that only God is God. The temple is not God. The sacrifices are not God. The church is not God, not the liturgy, not the priest, not even the bible. Our good deeds, and good reputations, our selfless service, and noble intentions, none of this is God either. It is not that any of these things are bad, but that we need to hold them lightly, and keep them in their right place.
The first of the Ten Commandments says “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt…you shall have no other Gods before me.” And the second says not to make an idol in the image of any created thing and worship that. Now we might be tempted to skip over these to get on to the more practical items, but there’s a reason why the list starts there.
We might think that those commandments apply to other people, people who are not of our religion, for instance. But if we are really sincere about a relationship with the living God, those commandments are for us. What they are saying is that God is passionately committed to having a relationship with us. And the kind of relationship that God wants to have is one that sets us free. Which sounds kind of nice, but the truth is that that kind of freedom is not always easy to accept. Walking purely in faith, not clinging to surrogates and substitutes, depending on nothing but the living God, the real God, the only God who is actually God, is a very vulnerable place to be.
It is no coincidence that Jesus’ demonstration in the temple involves setting the sacrificial animals free. The basic idea of sacrifice is that a debt of life must be paid in order to receive life-giving blessings. But I think Jesus in the temple is saying that the God who must be bargained with in this way is not really God. The real God is not for sale. Neither is he collecting on his debts. The real God only has one purpose, which is of his very nature—to give life. For us to receive that gift in its fullness, we have to give up trying to buy what is being offered for free.
Which is another way of thinking about Lent. The real purpose of Lenten discipline is not to give up certain things so we will get other things in return. The real purpose is to relax our grip on the things that stand in for God in our lives. These might not be things we usually think of as vices. In human hands anything can become a bargaining-chip, even our virtues. There is a lot about us that is good. There is a lot we can do on this earth to help each other. But anything you or I can do by ourselves is paltry compared to what we can do together. And only God, the real God, the only god who is God, is completely dependable. Only God is the source of life.
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