What God Wants for Us

Lent 3B (Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22)

“God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Each Sunday’s readings during Lent this year have told us about another step in God’s action to save human beings from ourselves and to bring us into the life for which God created us.  Two weeks ago we read how God nearly gave up on creation and tried to wipe it out in the flood, but then promised to Noah, in the sign of the bow hanging up in the clouds, that God would never again respond to human violence with divine violence.  Last week we read how God began to call one particular people, the people of Israel, who would come to know God and how God works in the world, starting with the very senior citizens Abraham and Sarah.

Well, you know the story – Jacob, the grandson of Abraham and Sarah, and his twelve sons end up traveling to Egypt to find food during a famine.  Eventually their descendants become slaves in Egypt, forced to make bricks to build the Pharoah’s cities and pyramids and vanity projects.  Then Moses went to Pharoah and asked if the people could have a three-day weekend to go out into the wilderness and worship the God of their ancestors.  And Pharoah said No!  Three days off?  We’ve got bricks to be made.  We have to keep the economy open!

And then, after a lot of drama, God frees the people from Egypt completely.  Now the people are in the wilderness, on their way to the land God had promised to their ancestors Abraham and Sarah long before.  Now the people are free to worship the God who set them free – but they discover that they don’t know how.  God has set us free, but what are we supposed to do now?  What can we do for this God who has done so much for us?

So Moses goes up the mountain to ask God:  What do you want from us?

And God says:  Now you are a free people.  I know that until now your whole life experience has been forced labor, a culture of oppression, disregard for human life, and being subject to the power of a people who thought they were better than you.  But that is not the life that the Creator of the Universe ever wanted for you.  Let me tell you about the life I have always hoped that you would have.  Write this down, Moses, I want everybody to know about this.

So first, God says, you are free to worship me, the Creator of the Universe who rescued you from oppression, because I am faithful to the promise I made to your ancestors.  You are mine.  And you don’t have to make an image of me, because I’ve already done that – it’s you.  That’s what it means to be human.

So you don’t have to worship all those gods that your oppressors told you to fear and to obey.  I’ll let you in on a secret – those gods don’t actually exist.  They never did.

And now that you don’t have to worry about all those false gods that used to tyrannize you, you can rest!  You are free to relax and enjoy life, take a day off, in the rhythm of work and rest with which I created the universe.  And you’re free to honor your ancestors, and the traditions they held dear.  Your captors were wrong, your heritage is valuable, you can witness to your ancestors’ truth about who I am for you.

And Moses, get another tablet and keep writing, because I’m on a roll here. In your life as a free people, everybody belongs.  Everyone’s life is valued and precious.  Everyone’s.  Everyone’s relationships and loves will be respected.  Without exception.  And your boundaries will always be honored, your reputation will always be protected.

And finally, when you live with trust in me, there will be enough for everyone.  So you don’t have to covet your neighbor’s stuff, you don’t have to take more, you don’t need to worry about your status or who’s got what – you are going to have enough.  And by living in this way, you are going to give worship and honor to me – by living together the way I always intended.  This is why I set you free.

What Moses wrote that day on two stone tablets, our tradition calls the Ten Commandments.  But when we say that the Ten Commandments are God’s law, that doesn’t mean that these are ten rules that you have to follow – or else!  We are talking about a vision for a way of life.  A way of life that God gives to God’s people after setting them free so they can live it.  The Ten Commandments are not things we have to do, they are things that we get to do – practices that resonate with our deepest desires and needs as human beings because this is what God created us for.  And the worship and praise that God asks of us is first of all to live in accordance with this vision.

You may have noticed, however, that as appealing as this vision of what life as God’s people can be, the world we actually live in is quite a bit different.  The Ten Commandments have been around for more than three thousand years now, and if it were easy to put them into practice, I think we’d have done it by now.  So what’s the problem?  What can we do about it?  What can God do about it?  These are questions that the Scripture readings for the remaining Sundays of Lent try to address.

But for today, it is enough to notice the distance between God’s vision for how human beings could live, and the way that we actually live.  This distance between, on one side, the worship God wants, the life God wants for us, and on the other side the worship we actually give to God in this life that we actually live – this is the distance that Jesus perceives and reacts to in today’s gospel reading, when he arrives at the Temple in Jerusalem.

As the gospel of John tells it, Jesus goes directly to the Temple from the wedding feast at Cana, where he turned water into wine.  This was the first “sign” of the arrival of the Kingdom of God, the kingdom that enacts the vision Moses received from God on Mount Sinai – everyone is welcome, there is enough for all, and Jesus takes care of what’s needed to keep the party going.  Finally, a taste of the life of freedom God has promised us, of the kind of the worship that God asks of us, of the world for which we are still longing.

And then Jesus goes to the Temple, and how different this worship is.  People trying to offer the proper sacrifices, paying a big markup to get the right doves or sheep or whatever they’re supposed to offer, trying to make sure they don’t get anything wrong.  The temple police making sure no one goes where they not supposed to.  Only priests over here.  Lay men, you can go over there.  Women, you have to stay way over there.  No, no, over there.  Gentiles, oh dear, you see Parking Lot R, there in that back, don’t come any closer.

And Jesus sees all of this and says, No.  Stop.  Stop this!  This is not what God wants.  God told us about the worship God wants, on the mountain.  This feels like a temple in Egypt already.  Just stop

And to be clear – this isn’t Jewish temple bad, Christian churches good.  We Christians are always building the temples of Egypt, where people are afraid they’ll do something wrong, where we create circles for the insiders and look down on the outsiders.  Communities where you need two hands to count how many commandments are being broken on a Sunday morning – where ancient customs are dishonored, people are shunned and excluded, some people’s relationships and boundaries are disrespected, where reputations are dishonored and coveting is celebrated and all of this is falsely done in the name of God.

You can understand what drove Jesus to flip some tables.  We read that the churchgoers were not too pleased with Jesus, and so they asked him: What sign can you give us authorizing you to do these things?  Jesus says, you want a sign?  Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.  The people say, This temple has been under construction for 46 years, and you’re going to raise it up in three days?  Jesus says, That’s right.  And John tells us that after Easter, the disciples of Jesus figured out what he meant – that the temple now is his body.  The body of Christ, in which you and I are invited to be take part, this is the place where God can be worshipped as God invited us to worship long ago – by living in beloved community.

And even if the Ten Commandments vision of community is far from our everyday life, at least here, gathered as the body of Christ, if only for a moment, we are invited to see and taste and practice what it means to live as God’s people.  At a table where all are welcome, where everyone is respected, where there is enough for all and no one is left out.  This is the life we were made for, this is the worship that the God of freedom and grace calls us to, this is the body of Christ that is the true temple – where the wine flows as freely as the mercy, where we are welcomed and accepted as we are, where all our needs can be satisfied.