Lent 3 | John 2:13-22
As some of you may know, I did not leave the fundamentalist church of
my youth. I was kicked out. Kicked out for being a heretic, for
listening to the devil’s music—rock-n-roll—and for
refusing to submit to the authority of the youth pastor. Not only was I
tossed out on my ear, but my whole family as well, for similar crimes
of independent, critical thinking, and the rejection of blind faith as
a given in the religious life.
I played at church for a while after that, but the truth was, I was
hurt, and badly. As you may have gathered by now, the whole of my
career has been made up of my attempts to understand what happened to
me during those years in the Baptist church, and to warn others away
from similar dangers.
It wasn’t long after, that I simply stopped going to church
altogether. I stopped subjecting myself to power-hungry pastors,
stopped filling my head with reality-bending theologies, and yes, even
stopped worshipping God. Partly because it was dawning on me that the
God I worshipped wasn’t a god of love. The God I had been given
was a cruel and sadistic monster, and was not worthy of my love, my
service, or my praise. It wasn’t me who deserved to go to hell, I
realized, but if anyone was, it was him.
It was the best thing I ever could have done. To continue going to
church would have been continuing the abuse—self abuse, in face,
and not the kind that was any fun at all. As I have counseled people
who are likewise recovering from religious abuse, I have seen this same
thing again and again. They simply have to stop, get off the religious
hamster wheel, and take a good chunk of time away from God.
Fortunately, in this country, freedom of religion includes freedom FROM
religion, which is precisely what is called for in such cases. I
remember one woman who came to me in considerable pain over the abuse
she had suffered. She was struggling because she could not seem to
establish any intimacy with God. I asked her to describe her God to me,
and my friends, it was not a pretty picture. Finally, I stopped her and
asked her, “He sounds like a horrible deity. Why in the world
would you want to cuddle up to him?”
“Well, what should I do?” she asked, not seeing any options for herself.
“Why not fire him?” I said. “Hand him his pink slip,
tell him not to the let door hit him in the rear on his way out.”
She was horrified. “I can do that?”
“I think you SHOULD do that,” I told her, “because
frankly, as a deity, he’s a slouch, and you deserve better. You
are a good person, and the God you are serving is not worthy of your
worship.”
I wonder how true that is of the rest of you? You don’t have to
have a horrific church experience to hold images of God that are less
than worthy of you, that don’t serve you, or that are even
downright harmful to your psychological or spiritual health. So if you
need permission, if you need encouragement or support, if you need
someone to hold your hand and tell you you won’t go to hell if
you hand your God his walking papers, let me know, because I can do
that for you.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus comes into the temple and sees that
human beings have taken the world’s most holy place and turned it
into a den of thieves. Who can blame him for his reaction? He is
outraged, he picks up a whip and starts driving all those who dared to
prey upon God’s people out of there.
One of my favorite ways of understanding scripture is that everything
that happens in the Bible is, in some way, happening to me right now.
That is what makes it such rich, vibrant, creative mythology.
That’s why it works, because every story in it is MY story, and
yours, too.
We should be just as outraged as Jesus is. Because negligent, greedy,
power-hungry human beings have come along and turned the most holy idea
in human history into a disaster. Every power-obsessed pope and
preacher, every greedy televangelist, every parent that couldn’t
be bothered to think critically or teach their children to do the same,
through two thousand years of tumultuous human history have conspired
to turn the idea of God into a monster who is not worthy of our love,
service, or praise.
It’s time to grab the whip, folks, it’s time to turn over
some tables. It’s time to drive those who would prey upon the
vulnerable and gullible out of the temple. It’s time to hand the
god they have concocted his pink slip, time to call the bouncer, time
to give him a good boot in the butt.
Lent is a time when we traditionally give up something we use or do
habitually. I say, this year let’s give up God for Lent. We could
all use a break, couldn’t we? Every relationship needs a little
time off. But let’s especially give up those ideas of God that do
not serve us, that actually hurt us, that use, abuse, and refuse us.
The paschal mystery that we celebrate at this time of year supports
this, for it tells us that in order for God to arise in glory, he has
first to die in shame. Before you can discover who God REALLY
is—the god who loves you, the God who is actually WORTHY of your
worship—you have to allow the ideas you were given about god to
die. The monster god MUST die. He is a fake, a phony, a pretender to
the throne that must be driven from the throne-room of your heart with
a whip, and you must be the one to do it. You have to hand him his
walking papers, you have to fire him—because until he is dead and
buried, the real God cannot rise. Until the fake is driven out, the
king of Glory cannot enter the gates of your soul.
What false images of God do you harbor? What ideas are leftover from
childhood, but do not serve you now? Which frighten you? Which no
longer make any sense? Which do not support you in your adult life?
Which ideas stand between you and real, intimate connection with the
universe, with the earth, with your fellow creatures? Which ideas
contribute to the rape of our planet? Which contribute to your lack of
self esteem? Which condemn or undermine you? Which ideas about God do
you hold that are not worthy of your rational understanding of God? In
our reading from the Hebrew scriptures, Moses tells us that we must
make no graven images, that we must have no gods before the real god.
The false gods must be smashed, they must be fired, they must be
buried. Because only then can your Easter come. Let us pray…
Jesus, we’re gonna talk to you today, because sometimes talking
to the Father is…well, complicated. It’s been complicated
by two thousand years of greed, power-lust, and abuse. You once said
that it would be better, for anyone who would lead one of your little
ones astray, to have a mill stone hung around their neck and be thrown
into the sea. Help us to give ourselves permission to get just as
pissed off as you were at those who would twist the faith to suit their
own purposes, for they have ruined God for untold millions of people.
Give us the courage to banish those twisted ideas so that we may
welcome you in with whole hearts, to dwell with us in love, peace, and
the true intimacy which many of us have never known. But we know you
ache for it. And Jesus, believe me, so do we. Amen.