Sermon on the Third Sunday in Lent: How do We set Rules?
What religion has always been about, is teaching people what is truly important. Most all religions proclaim rules of behavior, usually attributed to divine beings. To break those rules is to risk misfortune, death, or eternal damnation, depending. Religion is also about, what the word literally means in Latin, is how to bind people together—how to have them get along with each other based on agreement about the divinely-set rules.
Now, here we are in the 21st century after the incarnation of Jesus, and religion seems to me to be in more trouble than ever. People are finding other rules than religious ones, or fighting about the rules. That’s actually not so very new, especially in Christianity. Often over the centuries schisms have divided the Church or new denominations have sprung up because of disagreements about what should be a common set of rules.
The Ten Commandments are, of course, foundational rules of the Bible. Some people make a big show nowadays of trying to get them posted in courthouses, parks, schools. They make less of a show about actually upholding the rules. Let’s start with number ten, coveting. If we stopped that the whole advertising industry would collapse and the economy along with it. Next, does “not bearing false witness” include not telling lies about one’s neighbor? Our political system is rife with lies (not even also to mention advertising, again). Stealing is hard to pin down these days. Some people claim taxes are theft by government. Others say usurious profit is theft of properly compensated labor. As for adultery, many of our recent leaders and celebrities participate in that “shalt not” without any loss of popularity by their supporters and fans.
Skipping up to the not making an idol, that may be part of what Jesus is objecting to in the temple. Instead of a place of spiritual worship of the Lord, he found haggling and hawking over the price of things. Like the pagan god Mammon (which we talked about in Bible study this week) money, profit, wealth can become a dangerous in the wrong place with the wrong attitude. And a place for it is not the church. In turn we have a rare moment when Jesus is actually angry and uses violence. That’s how seriously he took idolizing wealth.
That doesn’t mean the church doesn’t need your contributions! If we want a community centered in a church, bills need to be paid, fixtures and features need to be maintained and replaced. For that we need your time (for those who volunteer), talent (for those who can fix or supervise others who do), and treasure (actual monetary donations).
The real problem is in general society, when we neglect the attention that should be paid to loving God and loving our neighbor (Jesus’s boiling down of the 10 Commandments into two). To do that requires generosity, not greed. How do we encourage good virtue and discourage the bad vice?
Written for the parish of St. James & St. George 2021 March 7
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