“Along the Way: Leaders/Guides,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 3/8/15
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https://heartoftherockies.org/wp-content/uploads/_file_mp3/718807-a836ce1e.mp3“Along the Way: Leaders/Guides”
A sermon preached at
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Fort Collins, CO
by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair
March 8, 2015
The world lost more than one out-of-this-world legend in the past few weeks. Both stirred our imaginations about the realm beyond the one in which we currently live. Both inspired more than one generation of fans and followers. I don’t have much to say about Mr. Spock this morning, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a nod to the Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock.
Fred tells the story of the time he was in Atlanta, close to his home in Georgia, visiting over lunch with a fellow he’d met not long before. His lunch companion wasn’t currently attending a church, although he had as a kid. Same story you hear a great deal, Fred says. “Oh, I used to go all the time when I was a kid.” He had been in a church when he was growing up, but he hadn’t darkened the door of a church in years. The conversation came around to Fred’s work, which had always been church and ministry. His lunch mate’s, in the business world. “Well, I guess I came to doubt,” he said to Fred. “What doubt? Doubt in the existence of God?” Fred asked. He said, Oh, no, no. I think I came to doubt what the church was saying. Fred said, “What did the church say that you doubted?” And he said, “I think I doubted that it was possible for a person to really be forgiven and begin a new life.” Fred said, “It’s true, it’s true, you can.” He said, “Really? Do you believe it?”
And he began to talk to Fred about his life and his need to turn a corner and begin anew. He had lost so much, including wife and children and business. “Is it really true?” Yes, it’s true, Fred said. He acted as thought the message of the Christian faith had just come from Mars and Fred got to wondering later. “Are there a lot of people in the world who really do not think that it is true?” What is true?[1]
John’s gospel was woven from that very thread. The evangelist was writing for a segment of the wider Jewish community that had chosen to identify itself as believing in Jesus. These words were written so that people could “come to believe” or “continue to believe.”
Each time Jesus performed a sign, or miracle, every time someone new encountered Jesus in John’s gospel, they had a choice – belief or unbelief. Just as there is not one single strand of the Christian tradition today, neither was there a sole expression of the Jewish tradition in John’s day. Those within the Jewish community who chose to believe in Jesus, himself a devout Jew, did so in the face of opposition. They were more or less thrown out of their community for their belief in Jesus. [2] Imagine hearing about what Jesus did in the temple through the ears of those who had been driven out of the places they had lived and worked and played.
READ JOHN 2:13-25
I only saw them come out on the busiest days of the year – First Fridays in downtown Springfield, Missouri. They showed up no matter the weather. Well, unless it was raining, because that would get their signs all soggy. “The Party Ends in Hell.” “To marry a divorced woman is adultery.” “Women are to be silent in church.” I’ll let you use your imagination from there. The busiest days, the biggest crowds. A message most didn’t really didn’t want to hear.
Three hundred thousand people crammed into Jerusalem to observe the Passover. The temple buzzing with people exchanging coins for the animals that would be used to make obligatory sacrifices, because there’d be no way to BYOBS – bring your own blemish-free sacrifice – when traveling so far on foot. The clinking of coins, the echo of Roman currency sliding past the Jewish money needed to pay the temple tax.
The busiest days, the biggest crowds. That’s when Jesus arrives on the scene. Or, should I say, starts making a scene.
This account from John’s gospel is the Go-Pro cam of the ancient near eastern world. The narration happens in real time, as if the reader can see everything Jesus sees.[3] The cattle. The sheep. The doves. The money changers seated at their tables. The throngs of people. Jesus turns them all upside out and inside out. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t peaceful.
It was sending a message most didn’t want to hear.
John tells this story a little bit differently than his synoptic gospel colleagues. Matthew, Mark, and Luke place Jesus in the temple driving out the pandemonium much later in his ministry. In fact, it’s the precipitating factor in his arrest, which ultimately hastens his death.
In John’s gospel though, it’s within the first year of Jesus’ public ministry that he shows up in the temple and throws down. It’s the inauguration of a new era – one in which the grace of God is no longer mediated or accessed through animal sacrifice. Instead, it’s available to all who receive Jesus as God’s Messiah.[4]
Which, as it turns out, is easier said than done.
Even when people see for themselves Jesus’ capacity to heal, to bring new life, to perform miracles, even if they might’ve seemed a little trivial at times (did the wedding guests at Cana really need more wine??). Even in the face of these very real encounters with Jesus, not everyone believes.
When we think of “doubters,” it’s easy to fast-forward to behind the locked doors where Jesus appeared to his followers after his resurrection. It’s Thomas who earns his “doubting” reputation when he tells Jesus that “unless [he can] see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put [his] finger in the mark of the nails and [put his] hand in his side, [he] will not believe” (Jn. 20:25).
I mean, how could you doubt in the face of such definitive proof. And yet how easy is it for any of us to miss what’s right in front of us?
Sheyann Webb noticed a group of black people and white people together at the Brown Chapel AME church in Selma, Alabama, and followed the crowd into the church where a 5-hour conversation on civil rights ensued. She went home and asked her parents why they couldn’t register to vote. Fifty years ago yesterday, despite being forbidden to attend by her parents, Sheyann joined 600 other protesters on a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery. At nine years old, Sheyann could see something that others couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see and believe.[5]
Bill Jones adopted his only son in the 1960s. He was a gay man and a single dad. Aaron was born to a mother addicted to heroin, and when she gave birth to him, he went through withdrawal himself. Aaron was turned down by five couples before he was introduced to Bill. At first, Bill turned him down, too. After Bill left the adoption agency, he went down to FAO Schwartz and bought Aaron a teddy bear. He went back and said, ‘I want to give a present to that kid.’ Aaron heard his voice and came running across the room and threw his arms around Bill’s legs. Aaron – and eventually Bill – saw something that others couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see and believe.[6]
Ted took his insurance money and bought the only place he could afford so his son would have a place to call home after their house was leveled in the Joplin tornado. By the time our mission trip team met Ted, he’d desperately tried to fix the place up with his limited skills and resources. Even so, about the only things worth salvaging were the house’s bones. Our team spent days sledgehammering out drywall and cabinets and ripping up layers of floor and more floor and subfloor. Ted would stop by everyday on his lunch break and would rush home after work and picking up his son, absolutely beaming at the destruction we were leveling on his house.
He saw something for his son in this place that others – including us, at many moments – couldn’t, and wouldn’t, see and believe.
Jesus was right there, in the temple, making the bold statement that God no longer just going to be accessible in that place. That faith in him, in Jesus, was a new way to experience God’s grace. That it would no longer be necessary to go to the temple to encounter God. That anyone could meet God in everyday life, if they could – and would – see and believe.
There’s a notecard in your bulletin. Would you take a moment and write down a place you’ll be this week – at the doctor’s office, in the classroom, on the soccer field, at work, out to dinner at the restaurant. Just pick one place you’ll be this week and jot it down. Then drop that card in offering plate.
Your pastors will be praying throughout this week that the ordinary places you’ll go over the next several days will be places that you can – and will – see and believe in the living God, who meets us in everyday life.
[1] Adapted from Fred Craddock as printed in The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, 114.
[2] Karoline Lewis, Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries: John, 40-43.
[3] Karoline Lewis, Working Preacher, Commentary on John 2:13-22. Full post here: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2377.
[4] David Lose, Lent 3B: Igniting Centrifugal Force. Read full article here: http://www.davidlose.net/2015/03/lent-3-b-igniting-centrifugal-force.
[5] From A Mighty Girl Facebook post. March 7, 2015.
[6] Compiled by NPR staff. Pain, But No Regrets: A Father Remembers His Adopted Son. Posted February 20, 2015. Read full story here: http://www.npr.org/2015/02/20/387309723/pain-but-no-regrets-a-father-remembers-his-adopted-son.