SUNDAY OF THE PASSION (Palm Sunday) Yr B. - Br. Simeon

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

Homily preached by Br. Simeon at Blaxland on Sunday 29th March 2015

Sunday 29^th March 2015:  SUNDAY OF THE PASSION (Palm Sunday) Yr B.

Gospel:  Mark 14:1-15:27.

Lord, as we remember how Christ the King entered Jerusalem to the sound of joyful shouts, increase our faith and listen to our prayers, so that we may praise you every day, by living always in him. For he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

A young girl became lost in down town London, England. She was from Charing Cross, a section of that great metropolis. She came upon a London policeman, who asked her if she was lost. When he offered to help her find her way home, she replied, “If I can get to the Cross, I can make my way home.” The Cross is the way home to God.

Jesus’ entry into the holy city and his “cleansing” of the temple with the demand that it be a “house of prayer for all people” will bring his clash with the ruling class to a head. In his account of the Passion, Mark portrays the anguish of Jesus who has been totally abandoned by friends and disciples.  Mark’s Jesus is resigned to his fate. He makes no response to Judas when he betrays him nor to Pilate during his interrogation (and Pilate makes no effort to save him, as the procurator does in the other three Gospels).  As he does throughout his Gospel, Mark pointedly portrays the utter of failure of the disciples to provide any assistance or support to Jesus or to even understand what is happening.  The “last” disciple who flees naked into the night when Jesus is arrested is a powerful symbol in Mark’s Gospel of the disciples who left family and friends behind to follow Jesus now leave everything behind to get away from him.

There is a certain incongruity about today’s Palm Sunday liturgy.  In Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions  -- we carry palm branches and echo the Hosannas (from the Hebrew “God save [us]”) shouted by the people of Jerusalem as Jesus enters the city.  But Matthew’s account of the Passion confronts us with the cruelty, injustice and selfishness that lead to the crucifixion of Jesus.  We welcome the Christ of victory, the Christ of Palm Sunday -- but we turn away from the Christ of suffering and of the poor, the Christ of Good Friday.  These branches of palm are symbols of that incongruity that often exists between the faith we profess on our lips and the faith we profess in our lives.

In his account of the Passion, Mark portrays a Jesus who has been totally abandoned by his disciples and friends.  There is no one to defend him, to support him, to speak for him.  He endures such a cruel and unjust death alone.  Yet, amid the darkness, a  light glimmers:   The Passion of Jesus should be a reason for hope and a moment of grace for all of us as we seek the reign of God in our own lives -- however lonely and painful our search may be.

The Gospel calls us to take on what Paul calls the “attitude of Christ Jesus” (Reading 1) in his passion and death: to “empty” ourselves of our own interests, fears and needs for the sake of others; to realise how our actions affect them and how our moral and ethical decisions impact the common good; to reach out to heal the hurt and comfort the despairing around us despite our own betrayal; to carry on, with joy and in hope, despite rejection, humiliation and suffering.

In our remembering the events of Holy Week -- from the upper room to Gethsemani, from Pilate’s bench to Golgotha, from the cross to the empty tomb -- Jesus will turn our world and its value system upside down: true authority is found in dedicated service and generosity to others; greatness is centred in humility; the just and loving will be exalted by God in God's time.

Today’s liturgy confronts us with the reality of the cross of Christ:  By the cross, we are reconciled to God; by the cross, our lives are transformed in the perfect love of Christ; by the cross, Jesus’ spirit of humility and compassion become a force of hope and re-creation for our desperate world.

Amen.

3rd Sunday in Lent 2015 - Br Simeon

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

Homily preached by Br. Simeon vat Blaxland on Sunday 8th March 2015:

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. YR B.

Gospel:  John 2:13-22

“Zeal for the Father's house”.

May I speak in the Name of the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit . Amen.

Isn't the gospel account of Jesus cleansing the temple amazing? It stands in stark contrast to many popular notions of Jesus' character. Here is no picture of a gentle, soft-spoken Jesus calmly confronting the religious establishment with authoritative teaching and divine wisdom. Rather, here Jesus appears with His sleeves rolled up ready for a fight. After making His very own whip, He charges through the heart of the religious establishment striking forcefully and aggressively at a religious system that has become skewed. Imagine it! Jesus is opening pens and cages of oxen, sheep, and doves with one hand, while, with a whip of cords in the other hand, He is driving animals and people alike into confusion and retreat.

The temple is the focus of today’s Gospel.  Whereas the Synoptic Gospels place Jesus’ cleansing of the temple immediately after his Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem, John places the event early in his Gospel, following Jesus’ first sign at Cana. While the synoptics recount only one climactic journey to Jerusalem, the Jesus of John’s Gospel makes several trips to the holy city.

Pilgrims to the temple were expected to make a donation for the upkeep and expenses of the edifice.  Because Roman currency was considered “unclean,” Jewish visitors had to change their money into Jewish currency in order to make their temple gift. Money-changers, whose tables lined the outer courts of the temple, charged exorbitant fees for their service.

Visiting worshippers who wished to have a sacrifice offered on the temple altar would sometimes have to pay 15 to 20 times the market rate for animals purchased inside the temple.  Vendors could count on the cooperation of the official temple “inspectors” who, as a matter of course, would reject as “unclean” or “imperfect” animals brought in from outside the temple.

Jesus’ angry toppling of the vendors’ booths and tables is a condemnation of the injustice and exploitation of the faithful in the name of God. So empty and meaningless has their worship become that God will establish a new “temple” in the resurrected body of the Christ.

Of course, the leaders and people do not appreciate the deeper meaning of Jesus’ words, nor did the people who witnessed his miracles understand the true nature of his Messianic mission.  John’s closing observations in this reading, point to the fact that the full meaning of many of Jesus’ words and acts were understood only later, in the light of his resurrection.

In the temple precincts of our lives are “money changers” and connivers -- fear, ambition, addictions, selfishness, prejudice -- that distort the meaning of our lives and debase our relationships with God and with one another.

The action of Jesus in the Temple challenges our understanding of his character, our business ethics and our religious practices. He was not kind and gentle that day. He offended people by threatening their income, social status, and religious practices. He risked his life because a righteous anger burned within his soul.

The issues were too important. He could not accept a religion that oppressed people. He would not tolerate a faith that took advantage of others or one that excluded others. With the crack of a whip, he drove the money changers from the temple. 

Lent is a time to invite the “anger” Jesus of today’s Gospel into our lives to drive out those things that make our lives less than what God created them to be. To raise one’s voice against injustice, to stand up before the powerful on behalf of the weak, to demand accountability of those who exploit and abuse others for their own gain is to imitate the “holy” anger of Christ.

Amen.

Loving Words and Strong Actions

“Moses said to YHWH, “But, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence,

either before or since you have spoken to your servant.” Ex 4:10

Lent 3B: Loving Words and Strong Actions

 This Sundays scripture readings could make some people feel uncomfortable. The first from Exodus (20: 1-17) contains what is usually called "The Ten Commandments." In the Hebrew text they are not called "Commandments," but the "Ten Words." Our spiritual ancestors saw them not so much as laws and regulations, but more as a guide to understanding the will of God. They tell us what God rejects and what we should as well. The 'Ten Words' don't cover a lot of everyday life; instead, they deal with situations, like idolatry, murder and violation of property. They are a light to guide our journey with God and our neighbour. We observe them not to earn God's pleasure, but to know the direction our lives should take, so as to live as God's holy covenant people.

The second difficult reading for some is from the gospel of John (2:13-25) which reveals an angry Jesus "cleansing the Temple" at the beginning of his ministry. The passage shows Jesus fulfilling the prophetic hopes of the ancient prophets. The prophets Malachi (3:14) and Zechariah (14: 1-21) had anticipated the messianic age when God would "suddenly" come the Temple to "purify and cleanse it." Jesus' true messianic ministry will overturn the religious laws and drive out greed, hypocrisy and the crippling legalism in religious practice. He was going to establish the new and holy temple of his body. In this new body, God and humanity would be able to meet and enter into a new relationship.

The scene of the cleaning, takes place in the outer courts of the Gentiles, where animals were sold for the Passover feast to about 300,000 thousand pilgrims who had travelled to Jerusalem. The moneychangers would exchange foreign coins for the acceptable Temple ones. They were known to defraud or scam people in the exchange for the 'sanctuary shekel'. In a subtle touch John describes Jesus as having a milder attitude towards the sellers of doves which were the offerings of the poor. The anger of Jesus here is not motivated by self-interest but by a healthy holy righteousness.

In reality Jesus will replace the Temple built by Herod, with himself. Jesus says; "Destroy this sanctuary (temple) and in three days I will raise it up." The religious authorities did not understand his words. John makes it clear that "He was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body ..." So, where will people now go for a full and welcome reception by God? To Jesus, whose resurrected body will be that new temple. Later in the gospel Jesus will offer himself as a new 'Passover Meal' through which we can share fully in his resurrection life (6:30ff). When we eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord we become aware of our need for forgiveness and the cleansing. The risen Lord enters our lives, forgives our sins, cleansing us so we can give fitting worship to our God. Through boundary-breaking Jesus, the "temple raised up" in three days, we have been given forgiveness and freedom. We don't receive these gifts of grace because we have followed and kept perfect rituals, but because we are loved by a jealous God.

Jesus' angry actions might make some of us uncomfortable. Sometimes the gentle images of Jesus as the healing man of compassion, risk making him seem too soft. But today's depiction shows us how the strong convicted Jesus could ruffle the Jewish religious and Roman authorities. In the temple cleaning we confront our temptation to turn Jesus into a manageable deity. The cleansing of the temple is a warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced values, religious presumption, pathetic selfish excuses, smug self-reliance, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours. What was it, apart from the money changers and merchants, that stirred Jesus' anger? Perhaps it was the fact that the Temple was not open equally to ALL PEOPLE. If this is true then Jesus' attitude, challenges the openness and hospitality of our places of worship? Do we lack "zeal" for our worship community? Our goal should be to make our personal and communal lives true "houses of prayer", places of generous welcome and prayer for ALL peoples, like the zealous Jesus desires. A place where we can worship God in 'Spirit and in Truth'. May we continue to 'follow him'.