The Rev. Kit Carlson
Church of the Ascension
Gaithersburg, Maryland
March 23, 2003Lent III b
John 2:12-22“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
Never has a verse from the psalm spoken to me so powerfully. On this day -- as bombs fall on Baghdad, as tanks push through the desert, as protestors gather again in the streets -- never has it been more important for the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart to be acceptable to God.
Whether they are acceptable to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, we will see. Because I know before I start that in this church this morning there are as many different opinions, as many different emotions, as many different contexts, as there are people present. Each one of us has our own unique set of circumstances that we bring to the question of war with Iraq.
Some have lived through World War II. You remember the sacrifices made by soldiers, by families, by an entire nation, to help end the evils of that conflict. Others have lived through Vietnam, some serving as draftees, others resisting as draft-dodgers, all agonizing over the internal division that war created. Some have personal experience with the civil wars of West Africa. You have come to the United States fleeing war, knowing in your heart how bloody and terrifying it can be. And some have lived most, if not all, of our lives in peace. The idea of living in wartime is completely foreign.
And each of us, living in our individual lives, coming out of our individual contexts, have our own opinion on this conflict, whether we think Saddam Hussein should be removed by military force, or whether we believe the war should be protested with all the energy we can muster.
So we should not be surprised, that each of us, with our different opinions, our different contexts, can read this story of Jesus in the Temple in a different way. For some, it can be a metaphor for this invasion, with the United States as Jesus, driving out the Iraqi regime in righteous indignation. Or we could read it as Jesus engaging in an act of civil disobedience, much like the folks who carried baby dolls splattered with fake blood around Washington on Friday, then dumped them at the corner of 16th and H Streets. Or we can point to it and say, “See, Jesus sanctioned violence sometimes.” Or we can just get cranky and say it means the church should stop asking for money.
This morning, I would like to suggest another direction for reading this story. It is a direction that I hope will help us think about the war in a more helpful manner, and it is a direction that I hope will give us some insight into what kind of people Jesus is calling us to be in this very difficult time.
Because I see this scene in the Temple as a futile gesture. Jesus makes this enormous spectacle, but it changes nothing. The business of the Temple goes on as usual, and it would do so for another 40 years, until the Romans destroyed it. And in John’s gospel, it doesn’t even get Jesus in trouble … it’s just the opening act in his three-year ministry. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, this incident comes after Palm Sunday. And it irritates the authorities so much, they decide to put Jesus to death. But in John, Jesus goes back to Galilee without a stir.
So what was the point? Why did Jesus make this big scene, if nothing changed?
Because it was precisely the futile gesture that was called for. Because when Jesus arrived on the scene, it meant that Temple worship was over forever. Jesus came into the world to reveal to the world that God loved the whole world. And that meant that God’s love didn’t need to be bought with ritual sacrifices. God didn’t want blood … anybody’s blood. Not the blood of sheep and cattle and doves, nor the blood of human beings … which is what the animals represented. God didn’t even want Jesus’ blood … that’s what the resurrection means. God just wanted us to love God, and to love each other. Period.
So Jesus’ action, as obscure as it was, as pointless as it seemed, proclaimed a new reality. It told the religious powers of his world that God was doing something new. The reality hadn’t happened yet, but it had already begun. Jesus’ action didn’t make the reality come to life, but it announced that it was just around the corner. Even though it didn’t change a single person’s behavior on that day. The dove-sellers went on selling doves, the money-changers went on exchanging money, and the religious authorities shook their heads and walked away. Nonetheless, the change was coming, even if they could not see it.
I would submit to you, my brothers and sisters, on this day when the business of war continues as usual in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and Palestine and all over the world, that we are also called to the ministry of the futile gesture. We also are called to proclaim a new reality … the reality that God shows no partiality, that every person, every soldier, every sailor, every Iraqi citizen, every American citizen, every journalist, and every protestor is infinitely beloved by God. We are called to proclaim that although we live in a broken world, a world where we do end up resorting to war instead of striving for peace, even so, God calls us to live in harmony with each other, to care for each other, and to bind up each others’ wounds.
And the way we proclaim this new reality is by using a gesture that can seem as futile as Jesus’ fury in the Temple. We proclaim this new reality by praying. Now, prayer can seem a puny exercise when we are faced with geo-politics, falling bombs, and round-the-clock war coverage. Although last Sunday night, when more than 100 people gathered here to stand on the corner with candles and pray for peace, prayer seemed quite potent. But when I opened the paper Monday and saw that Bush had decided to give Iraq a 24-hour deadline, and that war was certain, prayer seemed absolutely futile.
And yet prayer is the one thing that can create the new reality promised to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Biblical scholar Walter Wink describes prayer as “spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. It infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present. When we pray,” Wink says, “we are not sending a letter to a celestial White House where it is sorted among piles of others. We are engaged in an act of co-creation with God.”
Prayer is not something we do on our own either. As St. Paul reminds us, it is the Spirit that prays in us, with sighs too deep for words. So when we pray, we do not mobilize God. Instead we give speech to God’s own longings. We articulate the dream of God for the world and then we invite God to make it so.
So I urge you, my brothers and sisters, in this hour when it seems that we can do nothing but flick the remote from CBS to NBC to ABC to CNN to Fox to MSNBC and back around again, I urge you to make this seemingly most futile gesture. I urge you to pray. Pray however the Spirit moves and groans within you. Pray for our soldiers, risking their lives. Pray for our President, the vice-president, for the Cabinet and Congress. Pray for the citizens of Iraq. Pray for the protestors in the street. Pray for the embedded journalists. Pray for the human shields. Pray for the person in your office who thinks exactly the opposite way from you about this war. Pray for the future of this world.
Above all, pray for peace. Pray for peace in the world, but also pray for peace right here at home, in our schools, our offices, our neighborhoods. Pray for peace in our families and among our friends. Pray for peace in our own hearts, because if there is ever to be peace in this world, it will only come when peace has made her home inside each one of us.