Day 1497 - Sanctuary

A sermon given on January 15, 2017 at First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN.

Isaiah 66:1, 2

John 2:13-22   

What is a sanctuary? is it a place of refuge, a place of worship, or both? Sanctuary and worship are major issues in the scripture from its beginning in Eden to the end of the Revelation of John.

Genesis tells the story of Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham. Isaac sent Jacob back to Isaac’s homeland to find a wife. Jacob stopped for a night of sleep in a place using a rock for a pillow. He dreamed of angels and the Lord standing by his side. The Lord gave him the same a blessing he gave Abraham, that he would be the father of many nations. Jacob said surely God is in this place. He placed the stone pillow in a prominent spot and named the place Bethel which means the Lord’s house.

Many, many years later, the judge Samuel called all Israel together after they had repented of straying from the ways of the Lord. Their mortal enemies, the Philistines, saw the gathering and attacked to destroy them, but the Lord confused the Philistines and Israel routed them. Samuel set a stone in place near the battle acknowledging the power of the Lord. He named it Ebenezer, a Hebrew word for cornerstone that signifies God's watchfulness. The Hebrew prophets always marked special places where God revealed his power and steadfast love with stones or stone pillars as sites for worship and refuge in the Lord. 

The idea of a Temple came much later. King David wanted to build a temple as a house for the Lord but the Lord said he needed no house. Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem. For centuries, it was considered the house of the Lord, a place that every penitent Hebrew came to worship.

Generations later Temple worship became a time of social celebration and festival giving only lip service to the Lord and Law. Isaiah tells us the result. The anger of the Lord destroyed the Temple and Judah except for a small remnant. 
In the two verses above, Isaiah describes to this remnant the Lord’s creative power and lack of need for a house. “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, what is this house that you would build for me to be my resting place? I have made all these things and so they are already mine, including you. I look to the one who is humble and penitent, the one who knows who I AM.” The Lord’s place of rest is the humble and penitent person who knows God. 
These had to be strange words for the Israelites who placed such great value on the Temple in Jerusalem. They turn the Hebrew world upside down.

It puzzles me that for over two thousand years people have not grasped the importance of these short two verses. This temple and Jerusalem was the focus of everything before the exile yet God diminished its importance as a place of worship afterwards. The Hebrews are returning from captivity to a desolate (theologically)place where God destroyed everything of the past and the Temple. Is God saying the most important thing for the Hebrews (and us) is to look seriously at what worship and sanctuary mean to our relationship to the Lord?

Jesus says something similar to Isaiah about worship in John’s account of the cleansing of the Temple during Passover.

The Temple in Jerusalem was a very large area enclosed by a wall. A curtain divided the inner area into a large courtyard for the people and sacrifices, and a much smaller area in the rear where the true Ark of the Covenant and priests rest and offer special sacrifices.  The Law (See Numbers, Leviticus) says that people should bring gifts from their possessions, either sheep, or birds, or grain. The expectation is that these are personal gifts from their own possessions, but it was permissible for people who traveled great distances to bring money and procure a sacrifice, and for poor to buy inexpensive sacrifices.  If you had to buy such a sacrifice, the clear implication of the Law is that you buy and bring it to the Temple with you.

The people seem to have adopted this permissible option as the routine and enterprising merchants had set up their shops in the inside the temple court selling all these things as a business. If you've ever been to Mexico on vacation, or some small touristy shop in Florida like Ron John's Surf Shop, or a roadside store such as Stuckey's,  and you can see all the trinkets and items made in China and can imagine this courtyard might have been similar.

Looking over this courtyard where hundreds, maybe a few thousand people milled around looking to buy animals as their required offerings angered Jesus, not that the people are trying to follow the law but perhaps because both the worship and courtyards been turned into an open-air market for merchants where someone is making money of the activity. The Temple and Passover had become festive opportunity to make money where, for many, worship took a back seat.

The disciples remembered these words about Jesus, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  This can mean two things. We already know the end of the story so he could be saying his zeal to worship the Lord will lead to his own death and resurrection. However, it can also mean his zeal to worship the Lord will occupy every moment of his existence.

Perhaps his answer when the authorities questioned him is the important thing, “If you destroy the temple (one can argue they have already done this to the physical Temple), I'll rebuild it in three days.” Without saying it directly, Jesus says that he will teach us a new way of worship and shall become the temple used to worship the Lord.

If that's the case, what is this new way of worship? Think about it this way. Jesus is Emmanuel, God is with us. The name, Jesus, means The Lord saves us. Jesus said, see and believe me, and if you want to follow me you must walk the path that I walk. He gives a double-edged message about getting grace, (1) see and believe, and (2) walk in the world as I walk. After all, God did say through Isaiah, “The earth is my footstool.” The way to worship is to live in the world as he did, spreading grace.

There's a question with no simple answer often posed in theology class, "Is the church a hotel for saints or a hospital for sinners?" The answer is probably both and more.

I am convinced of two things. First, if we are able to do more than sit in our pews on Sunday and sing hymns, pray and share the sacraments but do not do more, we are missing the full power and benefit of being a believer. Second, while compassion is powerfully honorable, if we look at someone in distress feeling even the deepest compassion and if able do not get up from the pew and offer to help them, we are missing something serious about grace. There is no more powerful a force for change than to stand shoulder to shoulder, face to face, and help someone climb out of a hole.

My days in Mississippi rebuilding after Katrina hammered that message home to me every single day. I was humbled every time I knocked on someone’s door to work and was invited in to a meal given to us solely as an act of grace and thankfulness for us being there. They did this over our protest, insisting on a luncheon feast when they barely had enough money to buy food for themselves. It's a powerful and transforming experience to look at the world through another person's eyes, to be treated graciously by the one who is suffering as if we are the one who needs compassion.  

To look at the world through the eyes of the other person requires the hardest thing, "suspending judgment."  It is hard even for someone who claims to be nonjudgmental.  Suspending judgment does not endorse their situation but creates a bond of fellowship, a trustworthiness in us as a friend by looking at the world through their eyes.

What we want to do is judge the world with our own eyes. We think, “That person only needs to get serious about a job. All they need to do is stop doing alcohol, coke or meth, and start worrying about their children, not themselves.” But an alcoholic or meth-addicted person or a person from a generation or more of poverty cannot take control of his life without great effort and support of others. We cannot appreciate another person’s life until we walk with them and look at the world the way they do. Our fellowship empowers them to work against an addiction, towards going back to school and getting a HS diploma, an associate’s, bachelor's or graduate degree, or recovering from disaster so they can put food on the table for their family and help others do the same. You can’t fake it, you have to be “all in.”

One thing I've noticed, and you probably, is that it is very hard to pull the wool over someone's eyes for very long about not being judgmental. Someone comes up to you all cozy and friendly but it doesn't take long before you see through a false facade if it's there.  If you can get past your own facade to embrace a person as an equal, it is very obvious to them. When you stand shoulder to shoulder as an equal and look at the world with their eyes, your life will be changed forever.

You learn something about yourself, and about God. You learn that working hand in hand with God's children makes you a living example that God is God of the living. You, the sick sinner (are we looking for a hotel for saints or a hospital for sinners?), are spiritually healed, and at the same time are glorifying the Lord with all the other saints! Glorifying God is worship; experiencing healing grace is worship - the building where we do it is often God’s green earth.

So I challenge us  to write our story by our worship.  It is an act of worship here at First Presbyterian Church Spring City  when we open our food pantry and when we begin other activities that have yet to create. “Walking among the living” spreads grace and compassion. We testify to the glory of God to a large group of people, everybody in Spring City, even to our friends worshipping over at the Piggly Wiggly, to our friends who worship across the Presbytery of East Tennessee,and perhaps even to our friends in the PC(USA). Actions that testify to the glory of God are the most important things we do.

A few weeks ago, after a Sunday service, one of our young people posed to me a question, "How do you know who God is?" You know God by experience. You know God when see a person who is hurting and know them as another one of God's children and offer them your helping hand regardless of their station. Your act of grace gives you the tiniest glimpse of our gracious God. The thought may pass your mind, "There but for the grace of the Lord goes I," or you may feel a powerful sense of humility that moves you to see your blessings as something to share with the world as your glorification of the Lord.

Worship of the Lord does not need a building with fancy chandeliers, gold gilded altars, ornate baptismal fonts, 1000 watt sound systems with audiovisual projection systems, a great basketball court and an enclosed, heated swimming pool. You only need to stand on his footstool, the earth, and share the grace the Lord has given you with all God's children.

Perhaps, just perhaps, that's the message about worship Jesus was giving us when he cleaned out the temple in Jerusalem.

Thanks be to God. Amen