Ex 20:1-7

19 March 2006

3rd Sunday in Lent

“The First Word”

            Last Sunday, I reminded everyone that the coming Friday would be St. Patrick’s Day.  That’s the day when people who really aren’t Irish can pretend that they are:  by wearing green and being blessed with…the luck o’ the Irish!

            This Friday marks the twenty-sixth anniversary of the death of Oscar Romero.  That’s his picture on our worship bulletin.  He was killed at the age of 62, but he’s mainly remembered for what he did during the final three years of his life.  That’s when he served as the archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

            During a time of military dictatorship, Romero was seen as a “safe” choice to become archbishop.  He was more or less a legalist, marching in lockstep with decrees from the Vatican.  He had always been known as a bookworm, somewhat unapproachable, someone who was unlikely to make any waves.  The conservative church hierarchy felt that Romero wouldn’t cause them any problems with the Salvadoran government.

            However, three weeks after his installation as archbishop, something happened that seemed to change him.  His friend, Father Rutilio Grande, and two of Grande’s parishioners, were assassinated.  As Patricia McCarthy says in her book, The Scent of Jasmine, Romero “held their wake in the cathedral and broadcast their funeral over the radio, urging all the people to resist such bloody force and intimidation.”[1]

            That was the beginning of his weekly radio addresses, heard all over El Salvador.  He became the so-called “voice of the poor.”  He called for justice and for respect of human rights.  But Romero didn’t turn away from the rich and mighty.  He continued to make appeals to them.  The archbishop reached out to both the left wing and to the right wing.

            On the 24th of March, in 1980, Oscar Romero was murdered by an assassin’s bullet.  He was sharing the Lord’s Supper in a chapel next to the cathedral.  Two weeks earlier, he had said, “You can tell them, if they succeed in killing me, that I pardon and bless those who do it.  But I wish that they would realize that they are wasting their time.  A bishop may die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never die.”[2]

            Many people wondered how this quiet man, at home among books as much as anything else, became the courageous advocate who spoke truth to power.  One quick answer is that he wasn’t full of himself; he was full of God.

He was sustained daily by the Eucharist and meditation, frequent confession of sin, and other practices, like regularly scheduled retreats.  “By being faithful to God through a spirituality rooted in prayer and surrender, he was led beyond legalism to freedom.”[3]  Romero recognized his own need for inner purification, inner cleansing.  Is it necessary for me to add at this point that we need the same thing?

In the book The Violence of Love, “He asks for forgiveness and prayer:  ‘I beg pardon for not having shown all the fortitude the gospel asks…’  ‘I ask your prayers to be faithful—that I will not abandon my people, but that together with them, I will run all the risks that my ministry demands.’”[4]

His life and death has been compared to Thomas Becket, the archbishop in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.[5]  In that book we hear these lines:

“Unbar the doors!  throw open the doors!

I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ,

The sanctuary, turned into a fortress.

The Church shall protect her own, in her own way, not

As oak and stone; stone and oak decay,

Give no stay, but the Church shall endure.

The church shall be open, even to our enemies.  Open the door!”

The protest of Oscar Romero is not unlike a protest we see in today’s gospel reading in John 2.  Jesus has gotten tired of the corrupt use of the temple, so he starts cracking a whip and kicking over tables!  This incident is often called the “cleansing” of the temple.

Jesus is striking at the economic heart of the religious system.  Roman coins are inscribed with images of pagan gods, so they are ritually impure.  (Our Old Testament lesson explains all that!)  As a result, they have to be exchanged for Jewish coins.  That way, people can purchase animals to be offered for sacrifice in the temple.

No doubt, Jesus has several reasons for this protest.  Certainly, one would be how the worshipers, most of whom are poor, get ripped off by both unfair exchange rates and by inflated prices of the animals.  Those who run the system are mad at Jesus—and he’s mad at how the system has invaded the holy place.

Jesus’ cleansing of the temple serves as an object lesson for us.  It reminds us that the temple which we are must also be cleansed; it too must be cleared out.  Our friend Oscar Romero is a classic example of one who realized his own need of cleansing—and who also ran afoul of the system.

That seems to be an inevitable side effect of allowing God to purify us.  Eventually, one will have a clash with the powers that be.  And in reality, it’s something that happens every day.  A hundred times a day, we’re given the choice:  God or the system.  And that leads me to my sermon text, which is the Old Testament reading in Exodus 20.

We’re looking at the first three of the Ten Commandments, the ones that deal specifically with God.  I’m especially focusing on the first one:  “you shall have no other gods before me” (v. 3).

Actually, the word “commandment” is an unfortunate translation.  The original Hebrew calls them “the ten words” (Ex 34:28).  The term “commandment” has reinforced the idea of legalism, as opposed to a way of life.  So, with that in mind, the first word, about “no other gods,” really is an all-inclusive approach to life.

Here’s Martin Luther’s take on the first word:  “What does this mean, and how is it to be understood?  What is it to have a god?  What is God?  Answer:  A god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need.  To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart.”[6]

Notice that Luther says we believe God, not just believe in God.  That sounds familiar!  Some of the women have been studying with Beth Moore.  Doesn’t she say something like that?

Luther continues, “The trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.  If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true God.  On the other hand, if your trust is false and wrong, then you have not the true God.  For these two belong together:  faith and God.  That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is really your God.”[7]

What does it mean to believe in God?  What does it mean to believe God?  It means to trust God.  We like to say that we trust God, but the truth is often far from what we claim.  Again, Martin Luther weighs in on this:

“Many a person thinks he has God and everything he needs when he has money and property; in them he trusts and of them he boasts so stubbornly and securely that he cares for no one.  Surely such a man also has a god—mammon by name, that is, money and possessions—on which he fixes ‘his whole heart.’  It is the most common idol on earth.”[8]

These quotes of Martin Luther are set within the context of an article published this year by my old buddy, Jürgen Moltmann.  He’s speaking about this very thing:  trust.  He begins with a principle of Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Soviet Union:  “Trust is good, but control is better.”[9]  I fear we’re closer to that than we care to admit.

Even in our own lives, trusting God seems to be a risky choice.  We want control.  Putting our trust in money and possessions—turning them into gods—seems to give us control.  But it’s a false control, because these gods can’t deliver on the promise.  They can’t give us what we need.  Pay attention to commercials.  Notice how often promises are made, be they overt or covert, about how your life will be improved…if you buy what we’re selling!

The North American church has been following a similar path.  We have domesticated the good news and have sold a message that, if you trust the way we believe in God, your life will be greatly improved.  We have created Jesus in our own image, so that we can use him for our own purposes.  However, Jesus rejects such self-serving plans.

The cleansing of the temple apparently describes the only violent act of Jesus in all four of the gospels.  It is a sobering story, reminding us that there is no such thing as business as usual with Jesus.

The cleansing of the temple is a warning against any false sense of security.  To believe Jesus means to turn away from “other gods.”  To believe Jesus means to be cleansed from inside out!  Jesus will overturn our gods—he will liberate us—if we trust him.

Church is more than a place to enjoy a fellowship dinner or to reinforce our many prejudices and illusions.  Church, as Oscar Romero said, is the people.  It is the mystical body of Christ, his living temple.  And this temple must be continually cleansed from inside out.

One more quote from Martin Luther:  “If you are a preacher of grace, then preach true grace and not a fictitious grace.  If grace is true, then you must bear a true and not fictitious sin.  God does not save people who are merely fictitious sinners.”[10]

How appropriate then is today’s psalm reading, Psalm 19.  Let Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of its last verses serve as a prayer of inner cleansing for this Lenten season:

“God's Word warns us of danger / and directs us to hidden treasure.  Otherwise how will we find our way?  Or know when we play the fool?  Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!  Keep me from stupid sins, from thinking I can take over your work; then I can start this day sun-washed, scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.  These are the words in my mouth; these are what I chew on and pray.  Accept them when I place them on the morning altar, O God, my Altar-Rock, God, Priest-of-My-Altar” (vv. 11-14).

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