In each of our lessons today, we encounter God’s people starting over and finding their way into new communities of faith and life. Whether it is the Hebrew people receiving the Law in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt, the church in Corinth discovering what it means to live by Christ’s example rather than the wisdom of the surrounding culture, or Johannine Christians seeking reassurance and reorientation after being expelled from the synagogue, each of our lessons touches on stories of God’s people starting over again in new circumstances with new understandings of God at work in their lives.
Exodus 20:1-17
The Ten Commandments, as we most often call them, hold a unique place in Christian life. While Christian theology generally holds that we have been released from following Jewish religious law (see, for example, chapters 21-30 of Exodus immediately following today’s reading), no Christian theologian of note has mounted an argument against these pronouncements on life with God and in community. We hold fast, as best we can, to these foundational principles. Certainly some, like keeping sabbath, honoring marriage, and not taking God’s name in vain, can be strained at times by modern life. But faithful people still do their best to live in accord with these ways.
The Ten Commandments loom large in Christian life, and for some they contribute to a sense of personal failure, guilt, or fear of a harsh and judgmental God. Certainly the text of Exodus 20:5 about God being a jealous God can inspire fear, not love. But it is worth recalling the context in which these commandments were given. God has led the people out of slavery in Egypt into the wilderness, where God is preparing them to enter the Promised Land. Slaves are not encouraged to think for themselves; God is working to build a new community of free and responsible people and offers foundational principles for how to conduct themselves so that they may live well together. All good, loving parents give rules to their children, to help keep them safe and to help them grow into strong and responsible adults. All human societies have rules at their foundation that order the lives of their members. In the wilderness, with these former slaves, God is making a new creation. Rules help tremendously; they are not given so that we or others can break them and be punished, but so that we can all live peaceably together. The fruit of following the commandments is joyful and holy life in community.
It is interesting to note that the term “commandment” is a relative latecomer in the history of hearing and interpreting these principles for life. Wikipedia offers: “In biblical Hebrew, the Ten Commandments are transliterated Asereth ha-D’bharîm and in Rabbinical Hebrew transliterated Asereth ha-Dibroth, both translatable as ‘the ten words,’ ‘the ten sayings,’ or ‘the ten matters.’ The Tyndale and Coverdale English translations used ‘ten verses.’ The Geneva Bible appears to be the first to use ‘tenne commandements,’ which was followed by the Bishops’ Bible and the Authorized Version (the “King James” version) as ‘ten commandments.’ Most major English versions follow the Authorized Version.”
In contrast to conventional English usage, the Godly Play children’s curriculum calls these instructions “Ten Best Ways to Live” and nests them together in a heart-shaped box for the teacher to unpack and place before the children. A book by Leonard Felder on spiritual lessons from the Ten Commandments is titled The Ten Challenges. While individual preachers may wish to highlight particular commandments given the contexts of their particular community, a challenge in hearing today’s lesson in its entirety is in inviting hearers to let God “write the law on their hearts,” as Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10 promise will happen in the New Covenant. In our anti-authoritarian age, many people instinctively resist laws laid down from on high. We are encouraged to think for ourselves. But when we do truly think for ourselves, rather than react against authority, we may discover that the commandments of God become a gift for ordering our lives. What would a world look like in which people did not live by these principles? What would it look like if we all truly did? Breaking the commandments brings its own punishment, in the destruction of relationships, love, and even life itself, sometimes for us, sometimes for others. God cares for all human people and all creation. We are called to embrace and interpret God’s laws for our time and place. Psalm 19 (verses 7-8), appointed for many churches this day, offers a stirring song of praise:
The law of the LORD is perfect
and revives the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is sure
and gives wisdom to the innocent.
The statutes of the LORD are just
and rejoice the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is clear
and gives light to the eyes.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Corinth was a prosperous city in Greece linking ports on either side of an isthmus between the Ionian and Aegean seas. It was a cosmopolitan place of commerce, and with the influx of so many travelers, a meeting place of ideas. Paul likely founded the church in Corinth during a visit c. 50 AD, but other teachers such as Apollos followed with their own teachings of the gospel, which, combined with the diverse cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds of the members of the Corinthian church, led to conflicts over interpretation and practice among the followers of Christ.
Both Greek and Roman culture would have been well represented in Corinth, and their veneration of wisdom as a virtue embodied in the goddesses Athena and Minerva would have had influenced local culture, thought, and practice. Paul writes to address conflicts around the notion of special wisdom or knowledge within the Christian community in Corinth, later claiming “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Clearly some members of the church were claiming superior wisdom over other members, and love was lacking in consequence. In his opening remarks to 1 Corinthians, which we read today, Paul does not seek to arbitrate this dispute, but to upend it. Wisdom is not the goal or end of Christian life -- self-sacrifice and emptying is. And to those who revere wisdom, this teaching is utter folly. In verse 19, Paul quotes from a prophecy of a siege and rescue of Jerusalem in Isaiah 29:14: “The wisdom of their wise will perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.” In verse 20, as Paul questions “this age” and “the wisdom of the world” he speaks to the end times that early Christians anticipated. The end of the present world and the coming of Christ in glory were eagerly awaited. The entire social order, all knowledge, indeed the entire cosmos would be transformed by the return of the crucified and risen Jesus. In Christ, God has begun the work of a new creation, and its fulfillment is near.
John 2:13-22
This week we leave the gospel of Mark, which we have been reading through the season of Epiphany and the beginning of Lent, and begin hearing lessons from the gospel of John, which we will read for all but two of the coming twelve Sundays -- all the way through Trinity Sunday. It is worth noting in this transition to John that the story of Jesus clearing the Temple in John’s gospel is one of the very first acts of Jesus’ ministry, coming immediately after the calling of the disciples and Jesus’ first public miracle at the wedding at Cana. In all the synoptic gospels, this action in the Temple follows immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week -- it is one of Jesus’ last public acts, and is one of the actions that contributes to his arrest and crucifixion just a couple of days later.
Why did John move this story from the end to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry? No doubt there were multiple reasons, but it is worth recalling the context of John’s gospel, the last of the four gospels to be written. Scholars tell us that John’s gospel was written in the midst of conflict in local synagogues between Jewish followers of Jesus and the rest of the Jewish community. Apparently the followers of Jesus who ardently proclaimed Jesus as the fulfillment of messianic prophecies became a bit too much for the leaders of the synagogues, and they were expelled from the worshiping community. According to the HarperCollins Study Bible, the expulsion from the synagogues (which only happened in some places) likely did not begin until the 80s, so this would have come after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. Hearers of John’s gospel would have faced the double loss of worship in the Jerusalem Temple and in local synagogues. It is no wonder then that this story of Jesus cleansing the Temple comes early in John, for in his telling Jesus not only cleanses the Temple but proclaims his body as the new Temple. The Jewish Christians hearing John’s gospel were seeking to create new worshiping communities after losing their spiritual homes. No longer Temple, no longer synagogue, but Jesus’ very body was becoming the locus of their worship. While the synoptic writers place the Temple cleansing story in the context of explaining the crucifixion, John places the story in the context of describing the new creation that began with Jesus’ resurrection. The Jesus of John’s gospel knows who he is and what he is about far more profoundly than the Jesus portrayed in the other three gospels. For Jewish Christians who had lost so much because of their faith, this portrayal of Jesus who knows who he is and what he is about would have been deeply reassuring.
Application
Starting over again. We all have to do it, multiple times, in our lives as individuals and as Christian communities. Sometimes, like the people of Israel leaving Egypt, we have been freed from oppression or violence or stultifying circumstances and have to figure out what form our new, free life will take. Other times, like the Johannine community, we have been kicked out because who we are and what we believe don’t fit in. We may be kicked out of a school, a team, a job, a neighborhood, a church, a friendship, or a marriage. Getting rejected hurts deeply, and in some circumstances may threaten our very survival. How will we live, and who will we trust after losing so much? In both cases, trusting in God becomes so much more important once the familiar trappings of life (good, bad, or indifferent) have been stripped away.
Other times, we actively choose a new creation, as the Christians in Corinth did as they gathered across class, cultural, and religious lines to become a new community of faith. When our faith draws us into new circumstances with new people we would otherwise not associate with, we are challenged too, to trust in God and the wisdom of the community above the individual knowledge that we bring from our former lives.
There are so many stories that could be told tying the experiences of the faith communities in today’s lessons with our own lives in faith and experiences of becoming new creations/communities of God. What will speak to your particular community of faith? Here are some ideas:
* Stories of addiction and recovery, highlighting the first three of the twelve steps:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
* Jimmy Carter’s loss of a second term of office as president, followed by his founding of the Carter Center, extensive work with Habitat for Humanity, and award of the Nobel Peace Prize. I still remember a sermon I heard years ago in which the preacher told Carter’s story of losing the presidency but, through listening to God’s call, became the “best ex-president there ever was.”
* Stories of immigrants coming to this country and starting new lives in a new society.
* Stories of freed slaves.
* Stories of starting or joining a new organization, committee, job, or endeavor with a common purpose but new and diverse people who need to figure out how to work together for the greater good.
* Family stories of marriage or adoption that bridge cultural, class, or religious differences.
* Stories of church foundings, mergers, or transformations as new people join. Stories of church conflicts or splits and reforming out of difficult times. A church I once served lost its treasured historic building after a wall collapsed and the entire church building and parish hall were declared to be structurally unsound. While worshiping in rented space, they went on to found a community garden that gives all its harvest to local food pantries and community meal programs. More details of this story may be found at www.graceberkshires.org, at www.ecfvp.org/vestrypapers/vision-planning/becoming-grace/, and in Dwight J. Zscheile’s book People of the Way.
In some contexts, a dialogue sermon inviting parish members to name times that they or their communities have experienced becoming a new creation may be especially effective. Asking how and where God was present in that time can help guide such conversations too.
In the season of Lent, we are called to prepare for the new creation that Jesus becomes at Easter, and we are called to become part of Jesus’ new creation as we prepare for the feast of Pentecost. Being part of this becoming can be scary, exciting, bewildering, and inspiring -- sometimes all at once. Today can be a day to acknowledge and celebrate these truths and the promise that through it all, God is with us.
