I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear this rendition of the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, I cannot help but have John Williams’ theme music to Indiana Jones running through my head. Jesus fashions a whip of cords and drives out the money changers, the sheep and the cattle. Sounds like Indiana Jones, doesn’t it? That was running around my brain … and then Harrison Ford crashed his airplane this week. I sooooo did not see that coming!

All four gospels relate the story of Jesus cleansing the temple BUT, three (Matthew, Mark & Luke) say he did it at the end of his ministry – after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. These gospel writers posit that the cleansing of the temple was the final act of breaching the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome”, and the final challenge to the religious establishment that lead to Jesus’ crucifixion. John, who is always doing something totally different, sets the story at the beginning of his gospel, right after the miracle of the wedding at Cana. Why? Well John, more than any of the other gospel writers, is chiefly concerned about why Jesus is Christ and what that means for you and me. Not that the other gospel writers aren’t thinking this, because they are, but the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke approach the why by first telling us the “what” – what happened, what Jesus said and did, and why what he said and did points to his being Christ. You see the difference? John starts with “why” and Matthew, Mark & Luke start with “what.” So they come at their witness from different angles.

John places this story right after the miracle at Cana quite purposefully. Both stories tell of a complete transformation. First, the element water is transformed by Jesus into wine. Don’t think about the “how” of this, think about it as symbol. An element given by God is changed completely by this one man. A transformation has happened because God has broken into the world through the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The temple cleansing is a similar transformation and we need to see it as John did – from the perspective of the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. which was about 30 years before John wrote this gospel. The lens of temple destruction makes John see that the complete breakdown in how God is to be worshiped begins with Jesus upending the system. God would no longer be encountered strictly through the temple sacrificial system because Jesus becomes the temple sacrifice in his death and resurrection. God would encounter humanity in and through humanity itself. This is a radically different understanding of how God encounters us!

This loops me back to our reading from Exodus this morning. You probably recognized the reading as the giving of the Law – the 10 Commandments. We did not use the version in your bulletin insert for a reason. The New Revised Standard version renders the explanation of the second commandment as “You shall not bow down to them [graven images] or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me…” Wow! Does this ever paint God as a sadistic SOB, right? That’s right … God is jealous and will smite your children when you screw up. Really?!

While it is legitimate to translate this passage this way, there are other ways to view it. We used the JPS Tanakh … a Jewish translation. I don’t know about you, but when I look at Jewish writings, I think going to a Jewish source is a good idea! The JPS (as well as Everett Fox’s Torah translation) come off with a more nuanced view. JPS reads, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the LORD your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me…” Instead of seeing this as God being unfairly sadistic, the JPS picks this up more as an observation of how families perpetuate guilt down through the generations. And we see this, don’t we? If people are raised in homes where domestic violence occurs, they are more likely to become abusers or seek abusers as partners and repeat the behaviors in the next generation. If one comes out of a home full of smokers, the likelihood one will take up smoking increases dramatically. If one witnesses infidelity of parents as a child, the likelihood increases they will repeat the behavior as adults. Rabbi Edwin Friedman wrote a book on how family systems perpetuate themselves called “Generation to Generation.” Often these behaviors repeat because they are experienced as normal and we don’t tend to do the reflecting and adaptive work to change the underlying behaviors. We get stuck in seemingly never ending cycles.

But patterns can change and the story of the cleansing of the temple is a reminder that we are not stuck like hamsters in the wheel repeating the same things over and over. There are exit ramps – it is possible to break cycles of behavior that are destructive or no longer work. Sometimes, these exit ramps happen through cataclysmic events.

Have any of you heard of the 500 year cycle in Judeo-Christian culture? There is one and it is an observable pattern that about every 500 years (give or take 20%), something radically new shakes up our civilization and we see God breaking through in new ways. If we go back to about 1,500 BCE, we hear the story of the Exodus. About 500 years later, we find the Israelite kingdom being established under Saul, David & Solomon – finally settling in the land which had been promised to Abraham. About 500 years later, Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians ending the Israelite kingdom – and creating a crisis of faith for the chosen people (“If we are God’s Chosen, how could this happen?”). 500 years after that, Jesus was born – which ushered in a new way of encountering God not dependent upon the temple. About 500 years later, the Roman empire falls (around 476 C.E.) ushering in the rise of monasticism. In 1054, 500 years later, the Great Schism would split the Church based in Rome from the one based in Constantinople – the Roman Catholic/Orthodox split. About 500 years later in 1517, Martin Luther would nail his 95 Thesis to the door of the church in Wittenburg Germany – lighting off the Protestant Reformation. 500 years later … well … I see you doing the math! Yes, we are now at that 500 year mark. What will that mean? Honestly, I don’t know. I think we’ll know in hindsight … likely my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will sort it out. But we do see some shifting going on in what it means to be church and I’ve seen a radical change since my childhood.

Church used to reference the building you went to in order to encounter God and have fellowship with other believers. Our language reflected that: “I go to church on Sundays.” That has changed in my lifetime and, I strongly believe, for the better. Church is no longer seen primarily as place but as people. You and I are the Church. We don’t come here to encounter God as much as we come here to be nourished by the sacraments and prepared to go out through those doors and find God outside these walls. That isn’t always easy. Life is hard. Finding God in everyday encounters takes practice. We come here to have the lens of the eyes of our hearts reshaped so we can see Christ in the world much more clearly and to be Christ in and for the world more consistently. Our paradigm of being Church is shifting and that is exactly what needs to happen. One way of understanding “church” is giving way to a new one – one which is more organic and, in many ways, more like the Church of the early Christians than it is of the most recent ages.

Some are frightened by this because it is a kind of death. When our lives and our beliefs about something get upended, it feels like death … and in a way is it. But it is only through the upended chaos and death that God works out a resurrection, a transformation. Christ came to transform us personally and corporately – as individuals and as a community. So rather than fear the chaos, consider it an inbreaking of the light of Christ. It will be unsettling but Christ walks through and with us in it. As we continue our Lenten journey, I ask you to ponder these questions this week:

What in your life is getting upended, turned on its head, transformed? What in our communal life is experiencing the same upheaval? Pray for the patience and calm of Christ to enlighten you and walk with you in this chaos, trusting God is now finding a new way to lift you up.

Grace is so blessed with so many people who are willing ministers of the gospel who share their gifts and graces generously to spread the good news. One of our newer groups is the Liturgy Planning Team and, because of our work together, you are experiencing a different approach to our worship this year. Our work begins with studying all of the season’s scripture readings and looking for themes. Sometimes we find themes that seem to tie the readings together. Other times, we find contrasts and this year’s Hebrew scripture readings and the gospel readings seem to be more contrasting than harmonizing. The Hebrew Scriptures have an overarching theme of God’s covenant with his people – one might say God’s faithfulness to the covenant in spite of us. I say “in spite of us” because it is clear that we frail humans break the covenant on a pretty regular basis! The gospel readings, on the other hand, contrast by showing us the scandal of a God who would make a covenant born through us in human flesh.

Last week, we heard about God’s covenant with Noah, his family, and indeed all of creation that the earth would never again be destroyed by flood. This week, we hear about God’s covenant with Abram, who gets a new name in the process: Abraham – father of a multitude of nations. Sarai gets a new name too: Sarah – meaning “queen.” God makes this covenant with Abraham several times: first in Genesis 12 when he tells Abram to get up and go to the land I will show you. This is the second time God restates his covenant promising children to the aged Abraham and the barren and aged Sarah. Now both of them struggle to believe this, regardless of what Paul says in Romans! There will be fits and starts along the journey – places where they even appear to have trouble believing God is going to come through. But God is faithful and remembers the covenant, in spite of Abraham and Sarah’s shortcomings and doubts. This is the faithfulness of our God in spite of our human frailty.

In the gospel readings, we are getting another perspective of God’s covenant faithfulness – one that perhaps is a bit more oblique. Last week, we heard of Jesus’ baptism: the voice declaring him as “beloved Son” and the one in whom God takes great delight. But the scene immediately following is one of trial and temptation, not one of comfort and ease. This week, we hear that Jesus tells his followers plainly that he will undergo great suffering, be put to death and rise again on the third day. Suffering? Death? Testing and trials? This sure doesn't feel much like the covenant faithfulness of God, does it? This is why Peter protests against this vision – it doesn't feel like what God should be up to when it comes to salvation.

The paradox here is this is exactly how God works out salvation – both in spite humanity of and through it. Jesus, whom the writer of Hebrews calls “the pioneer and perfector of our faith,” shows us through his life, ministry, death and resurrection that the pattern of salvation is counterintuitive to human desires. It’s not the road we want to take, but it is the only road for the faithful – that of death and resurrection.

None of us wants to die – none of us. And I’m speaking of more than just the final, physical end of our existence on planet earth. I’m talking about the dying to self – the dying to our own ego need to control and manipulate both ourselves and others. This takes many forms. Maybe it’s dying to the need to be right and win fights at the expense of others. Maybe it’s dying to never being able to admit you are wrong so that you can truly and humbly seek the forgiveness of others and live in healthier relationships. Maybe it’s letting go of a vision of yourself that isn't true anymore … or perhaps never was. This is what Jesus is speaking of when he tells his followers to deny themselves – deny the ego needs of your self … which always feels like death and it is.

When we do this, we continue the work of Christ as his Body on earth. In our own flesh, God is still working the plan of salvation both through us and in spite of us. We lost one of the people who did this well this week. The Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd died in hospice care in Los Angeles. His name might not immediately be recognizable, but his life was one lived in this pattern of dying to self. Malcolm began his career in film as a producer – even starting a production company with silent film star Mary Pickford. But shortly thereafter, he followed the same call as his grandfather - into ordained ministry as an Episcopal priest. He graduated from Church Divinity School of the Pacific and was ordained a priest in 1955. He was controversial from the start. Dubbed by a newspaper as the “Espresso priest” while serving in Colorado as a campus chaplain because he hosted conversations on faith in coffee houses and reading his gritty poetic prayers, he ran afoul of the local bishop and resigned his post. He went to Detroit as a campus chaplain next and got involved in the Civil Rights Movement as a freedom rider and marched with Dr. King. He wrote prolifically. Unlike the Elizabethan language of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, Boyd wrote prayers from the darker side of life – about people on the margins … drunks, prostitutes, hoods, the poor, people of color. He saw God in nightclubs, slums and in the streets. His best known book, Are You Running With Me Jesus? became a New York Times bestseller, much to his surprise. He ushered in a whole new way of being clergy – blurring the lines between what was thought to be “proper” and “holy” and what was considered “base” or “profane” … not unlike the savior he followed. I daresay Boyd’s unflinching look at God’s presence in the broken places paved the way for other clergy, like Nadia Bolz Weber, to follow in those steps. He was controversial and criticized for his flair for the spotlight. But his most personal and courageous act was telling the truth of his life at an Episcopal convention in 1976 when he came out as a gay man. In a day and time where homosexuality was considered by most a “lifestyle choice,” Malcolm found himself unable to find a call in the Episcopal Church – we weren't quite ready for that yet. An old friend who was rector of St. Augustine by the Sea in Santa Monica hired Malcolm and, while some left in protest, those who stayed found in him a caring priest who could bring Christ to those who felt alienated by “organized religion.” He met his partner Mark Thompson, editor of the Advocate, in the 1980’s and Mark was at his side when he breathed his last this week at the age of 91.

Malcolm Boyd deeply influenced my parents … and in turn he influenced me. As one of our brothers in the Body of Christ, God showed us the continuation of that pattern – covenant faithfulness both in spite of us and through us. Malcolm could ruffle feathers and make you squirm – he was not perfect! But like Abraham, in spite of his very human shortcomings, God was faithful to him and those he served in the course of his life. This isn't to say he didn't have hardships, for he certainly did. Yet Malcolm had a way of confessing God’s presence and through him we witnessed Christian justice making and the radical inclusion of everyone in the kingdom. Malcolm Boyd’s life serves as a reminder to each of us that this pattern is our pattern too. God’s covenant faithfulness is operative in spite of and through you and me … each and every one of us.