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Lent III B: March 23, 2003
H O M I L
Y G R I T S
The
Third Sunday in Lent
Year B - March 23, 2003
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help
ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our
souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to
the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
Exodus 20:1-17 "You shall not make for yourself an idol."
Psalm 19:7-14 Doctrina Dominu m integra est, restituene animam. - The law
of God is perfect and revives the soul
Romans 7:13-25 The law of God is spiritual, but I am of the flesh
John 2:13-22 In the Temple Jesus found people selling, and the money
changers seated at their tables
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
Exodus 20:1-17 as above
Psalm 19 Coeli enarrant The heavens declare the glory of God
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom
John 2:13-22 as above
Every time a church has a bake sale or a bazaar, or a rummage or a
jumbles sale, or any money changes hands inside its hallowed walls,
someone will cite today's gospel as prooftext that it shouldn't be
happening. Somenow, Jesus is set against
ecclesiastical entrepreneurs, as if they were the money-changers at their
tables, close by the seats of those who sell doves for a bloody
sacrifice. On this view, the Lord forbids ladies to sell each other
their carrot cakes for the benefit of Namibian relief, and that they are
in peril of their immortal souls by offering for one tenth of their price
tag that sleazy pair of polyester plaid bell-bottoms that has hung in the
back of the closet since the sixties. "My house shall be called a house
of prayer for all peoples,"Jesus declares, "But you have made it a den of
thieves." Zeal for God's house has consumed them, abolishing forever
the chance to get a bargain at the parish fair.
The fact is that such piddling petit bourgeois bargaining has nothing
whatsoever to do with what this gospel is about. Nevertheless, John
Connor, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. some time
ago, gave us the immortal words: "It will be a great day when our schools
get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to
buy a bomb." Now that is closer to what the gospel message is about.
The fact is that Church investment--that is, where we put our real
money-changing, our investment, even our discretionary funds, where the
diocese puts its millions or where the denominations all around the
world, put their money into banks and money markets and
portfolios--that's where the money changing in the Temple really takes
place, and it's there that the Church''s tables of commerce and seats of
profit come now under the whip of small cords with which Jesus will flail
your tail today.
The gospel story begins with the fact that the Roman Empire's coins, with
the image of divine Caesar minted onto them, were forbidden to be carried
into the Temple precincts. That is, because of the Word from God which
we heard in the first reading,
"You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything
that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth: you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the
Lord your God am a jealous God."
Yahweh's jealous attitude meant he was camera-shy, "NO PICTURES PLEASE"
and indeed NO image of anything or anybody that might have the
possibility of being revered as a god. To this day, the coins of the
Jewish State of Israel bear "no graven images" of anything that draws
breath. Only trees and plants may be represented, but no images of
breathing beasts,
celebrities or other animals. Islam became more fundamentalist on this
than Judism or Calvinism, but at least it gave us the wondrous
sublimation of artistry in its alphabet, and in the Arabesques of its
architecture.
So we have a collection plate in the Temple, but we can't put in it any
coins with imperial idolatry on them. So some smart business-minded
cleric thought up the idea of setting up tables just outside, in the
Temple porch, beyond the official precincts of the Holy Place, where you
could for a small fee change your Roman coins for the special money with
no images on the coins, the old Jewish shekels, no longer legal tender.
The denarius of the Romans must be used, but for so many denarii you
could buy so many shekels, and with the shekels you could buy your
sacrificial animals. So there were other tables that sold doves, the
blood offering that poor people could afford in place of lambs and
goats. A great trade ensued in the Temple, and it was busier than a bake
sale. But quite different. What was going on here? Number one,
religion had deteriorated into a business deal. God could be bribed by a
magical approach that the clerics assured us was working well. So Paul
wrote, "The law is spiritual" and now it had been reduced to a free
market commodity. True, much of the trade was on the level of slipping
the precinct captain a buck or two for fixing a handful of parking
tickets. Only a few bucks, what the hell. What happened however is
that the whole structure of religion came to bargaining away the honor of
God, as it did in Europe when God raised up Luther to challenge the sale
of the sacraments. If you have seen on television the film about
Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury slain by an English King
centuries ago, you may remember that he is made to say in the film that
his task is to fight for the Kingdom of God, which needs defending like
any human kingdom, and that he dies for the honor of God. He loved the
honor of God, he says.
Where that glutton for power over human life, the State, whether it be
Empre or Republic, Washington or Baghdad, wherever it makes claims that
conflict with the honor of God, God raises up a Jesus with a whip of
small cords. Becket was such a one, and Janani Luwum, the Anglican
Archbishop of Uganda, in the time of Idi Amin, who had him slaughtered
because he insisted that God be honored, that God's law be obeyed for the
protection and enhancement of human life and welfare.
Idi Amin now hides in the U.S. client despotism of Saudi Arabia, his
millions a guarantee of short-term security. Former Attorney General
Ramsey Clark has now stood up and called for the impeachment of another
tyrant, George W. Bush.
Pray for Ramsey Clark's safety and the prospering of his cause.
The other aspect of the "cleansing of the Temple" is the overturning of
the tables of the money-changers, which bids us take a long look at the
way the Church invests. Does our bank invest its dollars into projects
illicit for believers? Are the profits
usurious, the interest impossible to justify under the broadest
hermeneutic of "You shall not steal," made possible for us by
John Calvin and his disciples? When Trinity Church Wall Street
discovered some years ago that some of its holdings in real estate were
being leased to housing for prostitution, it took action to disinvest.
The trollops were sent back to walk the streets.
But supposing we discovered that church investments helpled the building
of bombers by Boeing, or nuclear submarines by General Electric? Or
were going to funds managed by the IMF, to reduce more poor nations to
penury and starvation?
Or financed the manufacture of foods harmful to infants in Two Thirds
World countries, or hybrid products that would put
farmers out of business with their patented seeds? Here we legitimately
ask the hackneyed question WJJD? What would
Jesus do? What has Jesus said? What did Moses say? Or do you choose to
ignore the moral implications of your money, and where you bank it. Do
you really think, as ancient custom precedes you, that you can cover
disobedience with a "Just
Theft" doctrine, as the fundamentalist now think they can cover murder as
national policy by a "Just War" doctrine? Can we find a way to exegete
"Thou shalt do no murder" so that it does not cover the deaths of twenty
one panicky night-clubbers at the illegal Epitome upstairs bar in
Chicago on 17 February? Can you find a way to claim a "Just Adultery"
hermeneutic to your own special case because your spouse is away at a
military assignment, in hospital, or is infertile or uncooperative, or
grown old ? It's no great challenge to manipulate the text, is it? What
about the support you give to your government by paying taxes which may
be used to finance bombing the people of Baghdad, Teheran, Pyongyang to
dispose of the imagined "Axis of Evil"?
Will disaster come because the planets may all line up on one side of the
earth? Or because the U.S. with its money lines up
a dozen puppet states to swing a vote for international mayhem? Jesus
calls us to remember that "the kingdom of heaven
suffers violence, and the violent bear it awa^?" but his violence is just
the opposite of the Empire's violence. Jesus broke up the furniture in
the Temple porch, but laid no hand on those who had done violence to the
Law of God. The neutron bomb does just the opposite--it kills all the
humans it can reach, but leaves the real estate and the furniture
alone. The U.S. has the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass
destruction, and wants to bomb the little countries that have provided
themselves with the means of self defense against the Bully Bush.
It is you who have forgotten that the Church, the denomination, the
diocese, the parish, is a House of Prayer, and it has been made a den
of thieves. You thought you could enter the Kingdom by cooking the
books, juggling the accounts, overlooking injustice with your eyes closed
in prayer. The first reading reminds us of the Ten Words of God, the
decalogue. Not the whole Law, and no Jew ever thought it was. No one
who has ever looked into the Pentateuch has thought this was the whole
code.
The Ten Commadments here are all the simple ones, absolute, they are not
the relative ones which we find in most of the Torah, or in the Civil or
Criminal Code of any of the States. These few are all attached to the
majesty of Yahweh, the honor of God. The first four, in our listing of
them, all have to do with the naming and honoring of God. You are not
allowed to use the name of this God foolishly, or co-opt it in any way.
The careless use of God's name in an epithet is hardly what exhausts the
meaning of the commandment. The potty mouth will use the Holy Name like
a slur, like a cerote flung away in an inodoro. That's not nice, not
very classy, and is repulsive to decent people. But the real taking of
God's name in vain is done by the Moral Majority, by Pat Robertson, by
the Religious Rightists, by mad mullahs and zany Zionists, and their
ilk, and by the capitalists whose fingers run rapidly through mountains
of "In God We Trust", while it is their Property they serve. All these
commandments are claims to exclusivity. God's truth is restricted;
God's worship hedged about; and these laws are unique to Scripture, for
no other ancient source has them. The last six commandments are
universal--every human society has had some reflection, in some way, of
these Words of God. The setting apart of sacred time, as rest for the
laborers, the honoring of natural human relations (gay, strait, TG and
bi-) and the sanctity of human life and health, the honor and privilege
of covenanted sexuality, the respect due to the land and its tenants, as
an extension of life, and time, and labor. The holiness of reputation
and a good name: all the respect due the neighbor in the whole domain of
life, goods, repute, and memory.
Jesus promises not only to continually cleanse the Temple and the Church,
the Ummah, and the communities of believers.
He promises also Judgment, and destruction. The destruction of old
falsehoods -- the falsehood that you can buy up God's favor like a
bargain investment, destruction of the system in which the parish must be
financed by bake sales and the War is paid for by taxes taken by force
and Jesus promises destruction of the Proud Tower of marketing militarism
to prop up a stolen democracy. Jesus emphatically promises no new
abattoir on Temple Mount, a Frankenstein monster of the religion of
death, but a glorious Temple, the place of prayer for all people, the
Temple of his Body, cleansed, purified, renewed and resurrected. He
doesn't differentiate between his own resurrection and the renewal of
humankind, the Temple worthy of God's dwelling there. The Church shall
be cleansed of its compromises, restored to covenant with all of
humankind. On this third Sunday in ent let us especially pray then for
the Church, that the Spirit of Jesus may cleanse it, beginning with us
and our purses, bank books, and checking accounts.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 2nd series now on-line:
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