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.