Epiphany
7A 2014
Father Adam Trambley
February 23, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
In seminary, to show that we were both cool and devoted to
God, we had this thing where somebody would yell out, “Who’s in the house?” and
everybody would yell back, “Jesus is in the house.” So let’s just try that – I say “Who’s in the
house?” and you all respond “Jesus is in the house.” Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house. Good.
This morning’s readings bring us the next section in the
Sermon on the Mount, a portion of the Law of Moses from Leviticus, a stanza of
psalm 119 praising God for his instructions, and an appeal from Paul to the
Corinthians to be what God has called them to be. I want to highlight some of the instructions
we heard today before focusing on the importance of what Paul is saying about the
local church.
To start with, I hope we don’t have to spend too much time
explaining why it is wrong to put things in front of blind people so that they
trip and fall, or why we shouldn’t make fun of deaf people behind their backs
when they can’t hear us. I hate to think
about what was going on in ancient Israel that God felt a need to include those
commandments.
Leviticus also instructs farmers not harvest all of their
fields, but to leave some of the harvest for the poor and needy to gather. God is reminding us that even the things we think
of as ours, and even what we have worked hard to obtain, still belong to
him. More than that, he allows the poor
and needy to redeem some of his claims.
If we don’t leave some margin in our work for others, we are probably
being selfish with God’s gifts to us. That
margin of generosity will be different in our lives than for ancient farmers,
but the concept is important.
Another important concept here is that holding back wages to
pay someone later is equivalent to stealing.
If people need their money, once they have done the work they are
entitled to it. No one should have to go
get a payday loan for money they have already earned. We also hear not to profit by the blood of
your neighbor. At a basic level this
means don’t lie about them in court to get their stuff. At a more general level, especially in
today’s economy, we should try to be aware of the ways that our own buying
choices might contribute to the misfortune of others.
Many of the items in Leviticus are familiar to us: don’t
steal, don’t lie, don’t treat people differently whether they are rich or poor,
don’t hate people, don’t take revenge on people or bear grudges against people,
and love your neighbor as yourself.
The verses from today’s psalm give us words to thank God for
how good his instructions are to us.
They remind us both how much we need God’s help to stay focused on his
way of life and how much better that way is for us than the alternatives. One line of this psalm, however, always hits
me: Turn my eyes from watching what is
worthless. We have so much that
passes for entertainment, or even on some level news, that is worthless or
worse. Television and on-line
programming are both excellent at keeping us hooked so that our eyes stay glued
to the screen. Yet we waste so much time
on worthless things that we wouldn’t even miss if the power went out for a
day. How many relationships are
underdeveloped, how much useful work is undone, how much art and beauty and
music remains unexpressed, how much rest is left unslept because our eyes zone
in on something worthless and we can’t break away? This line is important for us to pray: Turn my eyes from watching what is
worthless.
In the Sermon on the Mount today, Jesus gives us some very
difficult instructions that all flow from the instruction to love our enemies
and pray for our persecutors.
Fundamentally, we are instructed to change our hearts from loving only
those people who we believe are worthy of our love to loving everyone as God
our Father loves everyone. This love is
not easy or natural for us, but we are still called to love like God. Moreover, Jesus does actually mean all of the
specific instructions he gives which are the practical consequences of a heart
overflowing with love for everyone. We really
are not supposed to retaliate when we are injured. If people want our stuff, including our time
or our labor, we can actually give it to them, and even offer them more, and
trust that God will take care of what we need.
Part of the secret to living this way is knowing that because we are
children of God we are actually stronger and richer and more capable than those
in the world, so we can do with less or bear more burdens or suffer indignities
or even be crucified without losing the most important thing, which is the love
of God in Jesus Christ that has been poured out on us. We can strive, then, to be perfect like our
heavenly Father. Part of God’s
perfection is being able to love everyone, even at the greatest of costs, and
we strive to love like him.
Who’s in the house? Jesus
is in the house.
All of these different instructions are meant to help us
create a community that lives according to the values of the Kingdom of
God. Paul has an important reminder for
such a community. He says: Do you not know that you are God’s temple
and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?...For God’s temple is holy and you are
that temple.
The first important thing to note about what Paul is saying
is that his words are directed to the local church. He is not saying to Christians as individuals
that they are God’s temple. He is
telling the people gathered into the local church in Corinth that together they
are God’s temple where the Holy Spirit dwells.
The second important thing to note is that the local church
in Corinth had serious problems. They
had different factions based on different apostles who had come through and
taught them. They had divisions along
class lines. They didn’t always have the
highest standards of morality. And they
had some people that seemed much more concerned about the earthly wisdom of the
day than the gospel of Jesus. In fact
these problems were so serious that we have a Christian leader sending them a
letter of instruction a generation after Saint Paul dealing with the same basic
issues.
Yet in the midst of all their issues, which by the way we
still have in our churches today, Paul says that their congregation is where
God resides in Corinth. He is reminding
them how important their community is.
Corinth was a pagan city with numerous temples to any number of pagan
gods and all manner of other unchristian behavior. The Corinthians could go anywhere for all
manner of philosophy, religious festivals, fertility rites, magic charms,
spiritualized self-help and or to make offerings to idols in return for luck,
warding off evil spirits or cursing enemies.
But anyone who was looking for the living God had to come to the
Corinthian church. Anyone looking for
resurrection in the midst of death, anyone looking for strength to love others
to the foolish heights of Jesus, anyone who was convinced that a personal God
loved all his children enough to bring salvation and healing through his Son,
anyone, in short, looking for God’s temple where his Holy Spirit dwells, was only
going to find that temple where the church met.
That temple in Corinth – the local church -- was vitally important.
Do you know, brothers and sisters, that we are God’s temple
and that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us?
Do you know how vitally important that temple is? The world around us desperately needs this
holy Temple of God. Only in God’s temple
are they going to find what they need.
And the need is great.
Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find
people living according to the commandments we’ve been hearing these past few
weeks, either the basic community laws from the Old Testament or the
self-sacrificial love of the Sermon on the Mount.
Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the
light and salt needed to overcome the world’s darkness and dreariness.
Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the
good news that God loves them so much that Jesus Christ has come into the world
to forgive their sins and allow them to live a new life of purpose and meaning
in him.
Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the
real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and be able to become a living
member of the Body of Christ.
Nowhere else but in the Temple of God will anyone find the
hope of the resurrection breaking forth into a world still bound by the chains
of death and despair, and once again this week our community desperately needs
to know resurrection.
Nowhere else but in the Temple of God.
So we live like the Temple of God, doing our best to keep
the commandments and to be perfectly loving as our heavenly Father is
perfect. As we try to live as that holy
Temple, we trust we will get whatever we need.
Providing a Temple for himself in the midst of our area is so important
to God that everything is put out our disposal, whether the world or life or
death or the present or the future, and that pretty much covers
everything. We belong to Christ, through
whom all things were created, and he wants to dwell in our midst so he can love
us and bring healing and salvation to everyone in this region through our life
as his church. He is our foundation, he will protect us in our struggles, and
he will provide us whatever we need if we are willing to accept it.
Brothers and sisters do you not know that you are God’s
temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
Or to put it another way: Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house… Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house… Who’s in the house? Jesus is in the house.
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