Sermon for March 4, 2018. Third Sunday in Lent
Texts: Exodus 20:1-6 and John 2:13-22, at bottom.
Why do we usually begin our worship with a psalm?
The answer is that it is an ancient custom in Christian worship. The psalms are the oldest worship language we have. Many psalms are attributed, probably correctly, to King David. The psalms in general and each psalm individually go from the heights of joy and praise to the depths of despair and, almost always, back up to joy. Thus they teach us how to pray. They teach us to share everything with God, the good times, the bad times and all the in betweens. As the old worship sentences go:
Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.
Today’s Psalm 6 is no exception. The psalmist – perhaps King David himself – begins
I am in deep distress.
How long will it be?
Turn and come to my rescue.
Show your wonderful love and save me, LORD.
It takes only a few verses for the mood to change and him to declare:
You have answered my prayer and my plea for mercy.
My enemies will be ashamed and terrified,
as they quickly run away in complete disgrace.
So this Psalm runs the gamut, in the words of ABC’s Wide World of Sports – remember? - from “the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat,” almost always concluding with victory or a note of confidence in and affirmation of the power of God.
Speaking of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the Olympics have just concluded. It is always a thrill to watch them. I love the opening ceremonies, the colorful outfits, the fireworks and the fair competition under rules; at the end of which it may truly be said that everyone who competes at that level is a champion, and a little bit of that championship aura rubs off on us ordinary folks who watch.
This year, especially thrilling for us Americans was the victory, in an overtime shootout, of the women’s hockey team.
I remember my first hockey game. It was sometime in 1959 or 1960 at the old Chicago Stadium and featured the Chicago Blackhawks, of course, playing, it just so happened, the Boston Bruins. The Blackhawks won. While the Bruins were terrible in those years, the Blackhawks had the immortal Bobby Hull streaking down the ice with his blonde hair flying. There were no helmets. No tooth guards either. None of the players had their front teeth. It seemed that everyone there was smoking, except my dad, who did not smoke and my brother and I, who, being 9 and 7, did not smoke either. A cloud, if not a curtain of blue gray smoke hung over the rink. The smoke hurt the eyes. I don’t know how the players managed to get enough oxygen. The crowd consisted of men and their buddies and their sons. There were no female creatures in the arena, except perhaps a mouse lurking under the seats.
Well, a lot has changed since then and our women’s Olympic hockey team played inspired hockey and somehow prevailed against a team that had already beaten them in these same games and had beaten them three or four times previously in the Olympic finals. I have heard that there is no fiercer rivalry in all of sports. Giants/Dodgers, Yankees/Red Sox, Jets/Patriots – nothing compares to the American and Canadian women when they step onto the ice. They duke it out every four years at the Olympics with no other team really to distract them from the fight.
Especially moving this year was the last moment of the game when our twenty year-old goalie stopped the final Canadian scoring attempt by a four-time Olympic champion.
The celebration afterwards was tumultuous, yet eventually the teams lined up and did what all hockey teams do: they shook hands with every member of the opposing team.
Baseball at the professional level does not do this. The victors celebrate and the losers head for the dugout. In football this handshaking is informal but it usually happens and I find it rather inspiring. It happens at the youth level of almost all sports, for parents and officials know how important it is to leave any hard feelings on the field.
One Canadian hockey player went through the line to shake hands - or bump fists - but then did not wear the silver medal at the ceremony. She was promptly criticized and promptly apologized.
The shaking hands afterward, the standing on the Olympic platforms and listening to the different anthems all convey an important message: that the fairness of the competition and the comportment of the players is more important than the outcome. When we watch this and watch players at this level maintain their composure, their professionalism, their civility – it does inspire us and it should.
Now, how does what I have said relate to our readings today, the Bible in general and our life as a congregation?
Every week we as a congregation we do a number of things that help to bind us together. We sing, we read, we pray. Once a month we do a little something extra. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This is our equivalent of the medal ceremony at the Olympics, a special ceremony whereby we celebrate many, many years of life together as a Christian community.
Our spiritual ancestors were called into covenant with God and with each other by Moses. We heard about that call in our lesson from Exodus this morning.
That call begins with the words:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
The Gospel of John today tells us that God is working a new saving act in which God says, in effect:
I am the Lord your God who raised Jesus from the dead so that you might have eternal life.
Because Jesus overturned the tables of the moneylenders, symbolizing the end of the old temple and the old order, because the temple of his body was destroyed and in three days raised again, we celebrate his life and death and ultimate victory.
The aura of that victory rubs off on us, all of us here, all these two thousand years later. Every week we celebrate that victory, but in the service of the Lord’s Supper we make it a little more explicit.
The Apostle Paul wrote towards the end of his life:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.
- 2 Timothy 4:7-8
He also wrote
. . . in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us.
- Romans 8:37
Whatever our differences, whatever has irritated us in the past week or month, we are one in Christ whom God raised from the dead. Individual effort does not matter. In all things we – all of us - are victors through the Lord Jesus. We all get a gold medal.
Exodus 20:1-6
And God spoke all these words, saying,
"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is 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, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
John 2:13-22
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; you shall not make my Father's house a house of trade."
His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for thy house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign have you to show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?"
But he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.