Out of Here

Third Sunday of Lent

By Jim Bayne

Then God spoke all these words:  I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  You shall not have other gods beside me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or serve them.  For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but showing love down to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

– Exodus 20:1-6

Lord, you have the words of everlasting life. 

– John 6:68c

Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money- changers seated there.  He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

– John 2:13-16

Piety

I prayed to the LORD, my God, and confessed, “Ah, Lord, great and awesome God, you who keep your covenant and show mercy toward those who love you and keep your commandments and your precepts!  We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have rebelled and turned from your commandments and your laws.  We have not obeyed your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our ancestors, and all the people of the land.

O LORD, we are ashamed, like our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, for having sinned against you.  But to the Lord, our God, belong compassion and forgiveness, though we rebelled against him and did not hear the voice of the LORD, our God, by walking in his laws given through his servants the prophets.   – Dn 9:4-6, 8-10

Study

There is perhaps no greater sin for those of us who have been blessed to live in this country and benefit from all it offers than the sin of creating false gods of all kinds.  Currently, the biggest false god I see is our political ideologies.  Not only have they taken God out of the picture, they have caused great rifts within our families, our neighborhoods, and our churches.

No need for God to inflict punishment on us, we are doing it to ourselves.  The passions that have been raised are causing us to violate more than the first of the ten commandments.  For example, You shall not kill. You shall not steal.  You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

These false gods of political ideology, are causing mental and physical illness.  I have friends who say they will not watch the news again until we have a new president.  In a recent newspaper article, the writer spoke of taking a break from Trump for Lent.  Most recently we have added arguments for and against gun control to the list of false gods that have given us one more thing to argue about and taken us one step further from making God first in our lives.

In his book Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity, Ronald Rolheiser calls on us to respond to these temptations to create false gods by following the example of Jesus:

Jesus functions like the sacrificial scapegoat, except he does not take away the tension and sin of the community by some type of psychological transference or spiritual magic, as did the ancient scapegoat.  Rather, he takes away the tensions and sins of the community by absorbing them, carrying them, transforming them, and not giving them back in kind.  In [the eyes of the early Christians], Jesus did this by functioning like a water purifier, a filter of sorts.  In looking at his death, they understood this:

he took in hatred, held it, transformed it, and gave back love; 

he took in bitterness, held it, transformed it, and gave back graciousness; 

he took in curses, held them, transformed them, and gave back blessings;  and

he took in murder, held it, transformed it, and gave back forgiveness.

Jesus resisted the instinct to give back in kind, hatred for hatred, curses for curses, jealousy for jealousy, murder for murder.  He held and transformed these things rather than simply re-transmitting them.  He took away the sins of the world by absorbing them, at great cost to himself.

Action

Take some time this week to take a few deep breaths, sit in the quiet for 20 minutes each day and repeat the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Write out on a 3x5 card, the 4 statements in bold above, which describe how Jesus responded to the false gods of his day.  Stick it in your pocket or purse.  When you‛re tempted to blow off steam about the latest presidential tweet or another distracting story of the day, take out the card and recite the contents as a prayer.  Add a prayer for our President, national and local leaders, and our world.  Be a blessing for your children down to the thousandth generation.