For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.
Have you heard the saying – if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. It’s a Buddhist (obviously) koan. A koan is teaching tool kind of like what we call a parable. The intention of both is to “shake-up” rational thinking – to turn conventional wisdom on its head.
For instance – one of Jesus’ parables in Matthew is – the kingdom of God is like a man who finds a pearl of great price and sells everything he has to acquire that pearl (Matt 13:45) On the surface that sounds ok – but if you apply reason – it doesn’t make sense. You sell everything you have for a pearl? What are you going to do with just a pearl – you can’t eat it or live in it or wear it. To sell everything you have for one pearl is foolish. That’s the point of parables. Jesus uses foolishness to upend our thinking – because the kingdom of God – the kingdom of radical grace, love and acceptance is indeed pure foolishness, and giving up everything to acquire it is anything but rational.
A koan serves a similar purpose. And this one – if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him – doesn’t sound reasonable does it? Why would a Buddhist kill the one they follow? The Buddha is the Enlightened One – we might say, what Jesus is for us, the Buddha is for Buddhists. Your life is the road, it’s a fairly straightforward metaphor. So the teaching is - if you meet what you think is Enlightenment – in yourself, in another teacher, in a concept you learn or devise – kill it. Because if you think you know it all, if you think you’ve finally got it – that’s an idol. Destroy the image, let go of the concept and focus back on the road, the journey, the practice.
Jesus is killing idols and concepts in our gospel. In fact in all the lessons this morning I pick-up on a theme of God wanting God’s people to understand our relationship with God is ever-evolving, just like our understanding of who/what God “is”. And when we think we have finally got “it” – when we think we have it all figured out – that is its own stumbling block. That can be the downfall of the religious.
In John’s gospel this story of Jesus overturning the temples takes place right at the beginning of his ministry. We’re only in the second chapter when Jesus has this outburst in the temple. And if you don’t find my mixing of religious metaphors too blasphemous – than I submit that the Temple is the proverbial Buddha on the road and Jesus knows to destroy it.
You see, Jesus isn’t mad about the fees the priests are charging. Jesus is not angry about temple mismanagement – he does not call them a “den of robbers” as he does in the other gospels. His actions are a literal overturning of a fixed concept of God. The temple system had its run, but it’s finished. It’s become to constricting, access to God controlled by the religious authorities. But God does not need the temple system and God wants people to worship the living God to be met on the road. The relationship with God is evolving. It’s been evolving since the beginning, and at this point, God is incarnate right there in front of them – in the person – the living breathing power of humanity – that is Jesus Christ.
Remember later in John’s gospel, just a few chapters later actually – when Jesus meets the woman at the well? Remember that story? He asks the woman for some water from the well and they get to talking. She says to Jesus – I can tell you are a prophet, and our ancestors said we are to worship on this mountain, but you say we are to worship in Jerusalem. And Jesus replies – believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem – but you will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him (4:20-23). That is who God wants to be in relationship with.
Not a people who have made a religious system their God. Jesus is smashing that concept. Jesus is enacting a new reality. Because God is doing a new thing in and through Jesus.
Do any of you remember back in 2003 when the then Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore, was ordered by the federal appeals court to remove his 5,000+ pound monument of the 10 commandments that he had erected in the middle of the Alabama State Judicial building? It got a lot of press. And later when he was campaigning for another office, he took the monument on tour.
I remember reading an article from The Atlantic at the time that described how the monument was transported. (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/roy-and-his-rock/304264/)
Apparently it traveled on the flatbed of a large truck and would be hoisted aloft by a 5-ton crane that audibly groaned and visibly buckled with the weight of Chief Justice Moore’s concretized interpretation of God’s granite rules of law.
That is not a helpful visual for Christianity. We follow a savior who says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Not a god who imposes written-in-stone restrictions that feel like a soul crushing 5-ton weight around our neck. And when one person tries to impose their vision of God’s law…well, doesn’t that make them a god? Doesn’t that create a stumbling block for people who want to be in a mutual, life-giving and loving relationship built on hope? If that’s how people see organized religion, are we really surprised that more people these days prefer to be spiritual over being religious?
And what’s ironic to me (and it doesn’t take a Masters of Divinity or a degree of any kind), to see that the words God speaks, and God calls them words, not commandments – are intended to help us live and live well. God’s words encourage rest. God’s words encourage respect for ourselves and for one another. God’s words were given to God’s people – AFTER – God had granted them freedom and release – not before, as some sort of conditional contract.
And isn’t Jesus the Word of God? The living, breathing, incarnate Word sent to release us from the burdens history shows we impose on ourselves when we let our time-based and culture-bound concepts become idols. Our systems become gods. When we think we completely understand God and God’s ways, we prevent God from overturning the tables and doing something new.
So, this gets us to Paul. This is what he is frustrated about. Paul writes – the Jews demand signs and the Greeks desire wisdom – but we proclaim Christ crucified. And the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us – it is the power of God.
We proclaim Christ crucified. Does that make sense to you? Is that rational? How is a person, dying on a cross, naked, abandoned, and ashamed – a symbol of Almighty power?
It is the ultimate table-turning, idol-smashing divine act meant to upend any and all rigid concepts of God and God’s power. And it is only that death of what we think God is, what we think power is – that leads to resurrection.
It is not reasoned – love never is. It is not rational – forgiveness rarely is. It is not an intellectual exercise. For we believe God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
What is the foolish act of love in your life that you keep reasoning yourself out of?
Where is the weakness in your life that you keep covering up because it is impossible and probably terrifying to believe that in proclaiming your weakness – God’s power will pull you through?
What rigid way of thinking on your road do you need to kill, let go of, break free from, so that you might know the liberating and foolish freedom of good news? Because that – whatever that is – is something worth giving up for Lent. Amen.
The Rev. Arianne R. Weeks
No comments:
Post a Comment