Sermon for Sunday,  March 26, 2006

TENSION IN THE TEMPLE

2^nd in a series on If Anyone Wants To Come After Me…….

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture:  Mark 11:15-19

¹⁵ Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; ¹⁶ and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ He was teaching and saying, "Is it not written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." ¹⁸ And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. ¹⁹ And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

I don’t know if you have noticed but Jesus had a way of getting himself into hot water with the people in power.

Had you noticed that?

He even started out his ministry that way. In the gospel of Luke he has just been baptized and has returned from his time of discernment in the wilderness, and the first place he goes to preach his first sermon is to his hometown of Nazareth. He goes to the synagogue there and reads from the prophet he quotes from the most, the prophet Isaiah. The passage says, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me for God has anointed me to announce freedom to those who are captives, recovery of sight to the blind, liberty for those who are oppressed, good news to the poor.”

He reads those verses, sits down and says that even as he was reading the words, the words were coming true. And the people talk among themselves and compliment him on his fine speaking voice and preaching style and remind themselves that they knew him when he was just a boy.

And then….he gets himself in trouble when he tells them that God is bigger than they think and that God is choosing to work outside the chosen people and they should not be so arrogant to think that they have a monopoly on God or on God’s truth or on God’s vision for life. 

Do you remember what they do next? They rush him and take him out to the edge of the town and try to kill him by throwing him off a cliff!! It is not a very positive beginning for your first sermon!

When we were in Nazareth three weeks ago the guide took us to that place at the edge of town and there really is a cliff there and here is a picture of us standing there—Mike Ratliff is standing about where Jesus would have been!

Jesus was willing to say what needed to be said and do what needed to be done even when it was risky and hard and when it would put his safety in jeopardy. 

That is also what he does in this story this morning when he goes to the temple and sees people selling sacrificial animals at an exorbitant profit and changing money and gouging people. Jesus is outraged that this holiest of places has become a place to steal from pilgrims and to abuse the power of the priests and to enrich their bloated bureaucracy. So he drives out the criminals with a whip in the gospel of John.

Here is how that is pictured in the film based on John’s story.

Jesus had all the passion of the prophets in the Bible. He lived by the words from the prophet Micah that are on the cornerstone of our building out front: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to practice kindness, and to walk humbly with God.”

Jesus was a prophet—that is how he refers to himself when he goes to Nazareth on another occasion and says a prophet is without honor in his own town.

Jesus spoke and acted as a prophet—he did what prophets did, he called people back to God, to a deeper relationship with God, to put God at the center of our hearts and lives and to live by the ethics and teachings of God. Jesus was passionate about that and he was not shy about standing up to anyone who did not, and so he got himself into trouble, into hot water. 

What is even more important is he asks us to be like him, to do the same, to stand up to evil even when it will cost us something, even when it will be risky for us. He asks us to follow him and be like him.

I have been following the trial of the two Enron executives the past few days. It looks like to me that some of the Enron leadership either acted illegally or they were totally incompetent, and, as a result, many people, middle class people lost almost all their pensions and their investments and were misled by statements from those business leaders. 

One of the people who helped some of this come to light was testifying at the trial a week ago—Sherron Watkins. I have mentioned her before. She had a meeting with Ken Lay and told him that the company was a house of cards ready to fall. She had written him, saying: “I am incredibly nervous we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals and that the business world will, in retrospect, consider Enron’s successes as nothing more than an accounting hoax.” (Washington Post March 16, 2006) 

For taking that risk and expressing her honest, ethical concerns, she learned that her job was being threatened.

We first heard from Sherron Watkins about a year or so ago when she was offering this same testimony at a congressional inquiry into the Enron debacle and as she was testifying before congress, sitting in the row behind her was her pastor from the mainline Presbyterian church in Houston where she is an active member and where, I believe, she found not only support for what she did but motivation for her willingness to stand for what is right and ethical and legal even though it would be very costly.

I imagine that the example of Jesus’ willingness to confront evil and take a risk would have been part of Sherron Watkins reasoning because unlike so many people around her she had not lost her ethical compass! 

Jesus is willing to stand for God’s ways and God’s truth and for that he has to face a cross. He so enrages the temple bureaucracy that they plot to get him arrested during “Holy Week” and get him executed on a cross. 

That cross is the central symbol of our faith and we have forgotten that it stands for a very costly faith, a sacrificial faith, a faith in God that asks us to move way out of our comfort zones and to do, in Jesus’ words in Gethsemane, not what we want to do but what God needs us to do—what is faithful to God.  

Too many of us miss that or ignore that and want to be disciples of Christ if it will be convenient and comfortable for us. When we remember this season of Lent and the sacrificial faithfulness of Christ, we become a little embarrassed because for many of us it is still difficult to find an hour or two every week for worship and for a class or a service project and if we feel a little embarrassed it is appropriate because we have settled for a comfortable faith and we are cheating ourselves because when we find the time and energy to be in worship regularly and to serve in a ministry role, we find many more rewards than we do inconveniences. We find that life of service and selfless generosity much more fulfilling. 

But we have to try it for ourselves and it is a challenge when the concepts of sacrifice and selflessness are so contrary to our me first—me first—me first culture. 

Let me test this with something very simple. Do you want to do something extra for these last few weeks of Lent that will be just a little sacrificial and will be a very powerful symbol? Then for the next four weeks do not park in the church parking lot on Sunday morning. Those of you who need to handicapped slots, you are exempt—this is for the rest of us! 

If you are able to walk for a minute or two, try parking off the church property or try using the shuttle. Don’t park in the lot. Leave those spaces for new people who are just finding us. Join me and Mark and Mike and Melanie and park on the street west of the building and walk briskly for 90 seconds up the driveway into the building. It will be good for your heart, it will help us practice hospitality, it will be a very small sacrifice and you can feel smug about it for the next four weeks. Or join Judy Martz and most of our choir members and park in our shuttle lot and meet some other people in the five minute ride from there to the building.

Or if none of those sound appealing, help us raise the additional $800,000 it will take for the next 100 parking spaces! 

We say that we are a high commitment church that asks people to follow through on those promises that Christ is Lord and that we are dedicating our prayers, presence, gifts and service for God’s work and in many ways we are a high commitment congregation compared with most other mainline churches but some congregations put us to shame. Our Mormon friends are in a really high commitment culture where every church member is required to tithe and young adults are expected to give two years full time in inviting new people to consider their expression of faith. 

And I heard of one church that really encourages people to follow Christ in a sacrificial manner. They are a smaller denomination and they are very committed to reaching out to more people and involving new people, so one Sunday morning the leaders announced to a congregation in Dallas that they wanted to plant a new congregation in Kansas City and they needed people who would be willing to quit their jobs in Dallas and sell their homes and move to Kansas city so they could be the nucleus of a new congregation. And many people in the worship service raised their hands and said they would go— “Here I am; send me.”

And we, still worshiping the gods of comfort and convenience, we say, “Harvey it is really hard to get to church more than once a month or so and it is just impossible to serve anywhere or to get into a class or Bible study or anything else that might help my spiritual growth or fill a need”. And that might be the case for you. Or it might just be a matter of changing your priorities.

Jesus goes to Jerusalem and immediately gets himself into very bad trouble with the temple leaders—and he seals his path toward the cross, the cross that points to obedience and sacrifice and selflessness and doing what God needs us to do instead of what is most comfortable for us. And we who are Christ’s followers and hear God calling us to a new role or new task or a new challenge—what will we do? 

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