Sermon for 3rd Sunday of Lent: Happy Easter!

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

Lent 3 Year B

Exodus 20.1-17

1 Corinthians 1.18-25

John 2.13-22

Today's readings are sharp. I mean they can set your teeth on edge, like a sorbet ice-cream. They shock, like getting Marmite, when you were expecting chocolate spread. They challenge us. Which is good. It is Lent, after all.

In the first reading, we have the Exodus version the Ten Commandments. Whatever the details (are they meant for all people or just the People of Israel? etc), their very existence, at the beginning of the revelation to the People at Sinai insists that God can command us, can make demands of us. Gd is not there just to reassure or rescue. But to command and demand. Sharp!

And it gets worse. In the second reading, Paul tells us bluntly that we preach - we must preach - Christ crucified. That sounds as natural as breathing to people used to church-language. But think of what it actually means: at the heart of our 'good news' (if we can call it that), is that our founder was tortured to death as a criminal, if not – let me say it – a terrorist. 

So Christian faith does not begin with us asking what it would be good, important, timely for ourselves and our neighbours to hear, whether to build a Big Society or a revolution for that matter. We start just there, with the image of the tortured-to-death one. Because Gd loves us yes, but loves us by showing us who we are, tied up in violence or the desire for violence in all kinds of direct and subtle ways. Oh dear. Shock!

And it gets worse still. In the gospel, we see Jesus at his most oppositional, judging, and apparently violent himself. In any event, we are a long way from 'Gentle Jesus meek and mild'. Zeal for Gd's House overcomes him. Zeal, or, many would translate – anger, rage. Sharp and shocking.

What is going on? It isn't actually clear. It is unlikely that Jesus wanted a ban on animals and money-changers everywhere on the Temple's vast premises. People had to buy unblemished animals for the sacrifices, and exchange their ordinary money for the special half-shekel to pay their Temple tax, to keep the whole Temple functioning. Remember Jesus does not object to the Temple or the sacrifices as such. (We may be used to thinking he does, but he doesn't.) So it's actually a more subtle argument that things had got out of hand. The tail was wagging the dog. The business around the sacrifices had taken over from the directness of prayer, prayer for all people, not just Jews, let alone just priests.

You can perhaps imagine the Temple PCC meeting. 'Yes, well of course we'd like to keep prayer at the centre of things, but we are struggling to pay the bills. We will get back to prayer, but for now, we need to rent out a bit more space to the business people. It's “expedient”. It's “necessary”. It's an “emergency”.

It's expedient/necessary/an emergency is the excuse politicians use for every unpalatable thing they want to bring in, from cutting benefits from families to taking away human rights to going to war. 

And when the Church does it – makes it harder for people to pray, for the sake of some temporary expediency – this, we learn today, infuriates Jesus. I don't think that is overstating it. (Thank Gd forgiveness is available to churchpeople as well as others.)

So far, so sharp. So far, so Lenten.

But once again I am going to insisting that Lent is not just about our facing up to difficult things about ourselves (though it is that). Rather, Lent is also always already about Easter. We anticipate Easter joy by enjoying experimenting with our Lenten discipline. And Easter too is here in our readings today.

Let us work backwards, since Easter is explicitly there in the gospels: Jesus 'was talking of the Temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this...'. So already – this is only the second chapter of John – we are told that its climax is Jesus as raised from the dead.

And Easter is hidden but present in the second reading, from 1 Corinthians. 'We preach Christ crucified', yes. But you only have to read or hear Paul's letter more than once to know that this crucifixion is what makes possible the resurrection of Jesus, which Paul goes on (in chapter 15) to have much to say about.

And it is important that it is not that the cross is the curse or the question or the problem, and the resurrection is the blessing or the answer or the solution. The relationship between cross and resurrection is more complicated and mysterious than that. They are profoundly one. How can this be? What does this mean? I'd answer that my saying: Stick around! Stick around, and especially make the journey with us from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Eve. I am not saying that all will become clear. But I am saying that we will be able to live the truth of the oneness of the cross and empty tomb more deeply.

Where is Easter in the first reading, from the Hebrew Bible on the giving of the Ten commandments? I might say it is there in the command to keep the Sabbath and make it holy. One day in seven which is holy, which I about rest. Which is in the Jewish tradition called a light and a joy. Which is, let's say it, a foretaste of heaven, among us, for us now. A foretaste of heaven, and so a foretaste of resurrection life, and a foretaste of Easter, and in that way, of Christ.

But I have another suggestion. The ten commandments are actually called in the Hebrew Bible the Ten Words [Exodus 34.28; Deut 4.13; Deut 10.4]. This is Words with a capital W (as there are many more than ten words): Ten Utterances if you like. And in the Jewish ordering of the Ten Words, the first Word is: I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.' And that's it! It stops there.

I am the LORD your Gd – I am the One you already know. We belong together. Moses encountered me in the burning bush. The commandments are not the means by which you come to find me, or please me. You already know me. I have come to you.

I am the LORD your God... who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery. Who liberated you. Who, when your life was narrow and your hard-labour was crushing, saw you, loved you, who involved myself, aligned myself with you, and freed you. The liberation of the People from Egyptian slavery is of course the theme of Passover. Passover is also a theme of today's gospel, if you look at it again. But it's even more the theme of Easter. Gd is One. There is only One Gd. Gd who frees slaves from slavery is Gd who frees us from death, from all that is deadly and deathly in our lives, from the fear of death. Easter is anticipated in the Ten Words in the Hebrew Bible. Or if you insist 'even' in the Hebrew Bible.

Brothers and sisters, if we are serious about our faith, there is no running away from all that is sharp and shocking in the Bible. It has to be there. But all is in the context of Easter, already. 

Remember, perhaps, what I said on Ash Wednesday, about St Seraphim of Sarov, standing outside Church on Good Friday, eating sausages while others were fasting, and greeting everyone even then with his 'Christ is risen!' On Good Friday! I stand by that, by him. 

So, even if we have taken on a Lenten discipline (a good thing!), let us not only be introspective this Lent. Let us also look, even now, for the newness of life, the raised-up life, which is there for us, and for all. Amen.