Collect
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
(or)
Eternal God, give us insight to discern your will for us, to give up what harms us, and to seek the perfection we are promised in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament
Then 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; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them 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, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
Exodus 20:1–17
Psalm
1 The heavens are telling the glory of God •
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 One day pours out its song to another •
and one night unfolds knowledge to another.
3 They have neither speech nor language •
and their voices are not heard,
4 Yet their sound has gone out into all lands •
and their words to the ends of the world.
5 In them has he set a tabernacle for the sun, •
that comes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber
and rejoices as a champion to run his course.
6 It goes forth from the end of the heavens
and runs to the very end again, •
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; •
the testimony of the Lord is sure
and gives wisdom to the simple.
8 The statutes of the Lord are right and rejoice the heart; •
the commandment of the Lord is pure
and gives light to the eyes.
9 The fear of the Lord is clean and endures for ever; •
the judgements of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
more than much fine gold, •
sweeter also than honey,
dripping from the honeycomb.
11 By them also is your servant taught •
and in keeping them there is great reward.
12 Who can tell how often they offend? •
O cleanse me from my secret faults!
13 Keep your servant also from presumptuous sins
lest they get dominion over me; •
so shall I be undefiled,
and innocent of great offence.
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight, •
O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
Psalm 19
Epistle
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
1 Corinthians 1:18–25
Gospel
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
John 2:13–22
Sermon on Third Sunday of Lent
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them 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, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
What are the idols of our time? In this age of terror, what do we set in front of us – to keep us safe in our time? What intervenes between the face of God and ourselves, so that we do not see the divine in our lives?
We must be living in a time when our great-grandparents must have done something so iniquitous that our God has punished our parents and us, and it seems that God will punish our children. What can we do now to ensure that the steadfast love of God will be shown to the thousandth generation from us?
But this raises the question, if three or four generations back have been so evil, how is it that we here in church still look to the love of God, how do we know that there is a steadfast love of God? If that previous generation had been so wicked, why do we still pray for the grace and mercy of God? Or are we the fifth generation – the generation that will redeem humanity? Are we the generation which will bring the steadfast love of God to that generation a thousand generations from this time?
Surely, in this dreadful period of history, when there are so many wars, famines and now the terror of hatred – surely this generation is doomed as the one which has been cursed by God. How often do we hear people say such things round about us? How are we tempted to acquiesce into an agreement with such a judgement, and in the lee of this decision about ourselves we agree to that opinion and condemn all of our neighbours and ourselves to punishment and do nothing about our sinfulness? This has not happened just in our generation. Throughout the history of the west we have people submitting to this bullying thought, kowtowing to the wicked because they “have the power”, and the theologians in their generations have justified such a deference to the fates of the pagan religions or to the notion of predestination of our own protestant forbears.
And then when we hear Paul’s words, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” doesn’t everything get turned upside down? It makes the statements of the mass of humanity, that anonymous silent majority, nonsense. Paul is saying that wickedness makes no sense, that the visible behaviour of the so-called “normal” people is just plain wrong, and that justice and truth, goodness and mercy, they are the real marks of reality – what we really do want.
The wisdom of this world is not really the message from the OT and it certainly has not come down from Jesus, has it? On the contrary, even in this verse condemning idolatry there is hope, there is an expectation that every generation will work toward that steadfast love of God.
Those idols, what we might call “the wisdom of the world”, which we place in front of the face of God have bamboozled us into inactivity, a lack of decision for what is right and working to enact the good in our lives – in spite of the fact that no one seems to care. In the extremes of our lives, don’t we ask about mercy and goodness?
Jesus was a prophet who spoke for God, and his life and death was the focus for God’s saving action in the world. In the Gospel reading for today, we heard about Jesus cleansing the temple of the thieves who had taken up residence in the most holy of places for the Jew. Jesus in prophetic zeal acted for what was right, in spite of the fact that everyone was prepared to allow the morally questionable to continue. When I read this story, I wonder what my zeal has accomplished.
I stand here in this out-dated garb in a building that the majority of the population here has never entered, and I do wonder what my zeal has accomplished. When I read this story about Jesus, I ask whether my zeal should be cleansing the temples of our age. In my doubt, I suppose that many look at me as I stand up front here and they must wonder what I am doing. My zeal for worship is foreign to so many – but not you who are here so often, of course. However, for those who come only for baptisms, weddings and funerals, our worship is a completely foreign language. Does our zeal for our God in fact make any sense to the unchurched?
How can we be zealous for a vengeful God, which all so easily remember from their religious education in school? How can we be zealous for a seemingly uncaring God who allows all this mayhem on a global scale and above all this personal suffering? However, I ask in response, “Is this the God we worship?” Especially, after we have read our lessons for today. I now have to ask myself “Have we really understood our God at all?”
We are in the midst of Lent, when we have to ask ourselves these hard questions. We are supposed to examine our lives in depth during Lent, aren’t we? We are to put our zeal under the microscope and understand just what its intention is.
An alternative collect for today is this:
Eternal God, give us insight to discern your will for us, to give up what harms us, and to seek the perfection we are promised in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Lent is the time we are to “discern God’s will” for ourselves – and I mean this in two ways.
First, we must work God’s will out as it is in our lives – perhaps to attribute all the good that we have experienced to God, and all the bad to our own wickedness. We need to see that goodness and mercy has flowed from God to the world and, in particular, to ourselves individually.
Second, I mean that we need to “discern God’s will” by our own efforts, albeit founded on the grace of God’s granting us insight. We need to disentangle ourselves from the “wisdom of the world” and that oftentimes is not in our own power, that moment is the time of grace in our lives, when we begin to act in righteous humility with mercy to all around us. That is a life-changing moment – a revelation which emerges from a Lenten discipline, when we truly understand for ourselves the idols of our times and we begin to overthrow them for the true divinity Jesus Christ showed when he scourged the traders in the temple.