(Graphic is titled “Christ Expelling the Money Changers in the Temple” ca 1600 by artist, Greco. Housed in the National Gallery of Great Britain in London)
Lectionary Scripture Focus - John 2 verses 13-22 NRSV
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Reflection on the Scripture Focus
Do you wonder what “an act of faith” is anymore? A seminary professor asked that question this past week. He asked it in light of the dramatic changes occurring in the North American religious landscape. For a quickly declining number of us, the “act of faith” has been “going to church”. In times gone by, ministers and pastors entrenched in this concept flaunted their “numbers” as a sign of how effectively they called people to acts of faith and supposedly then a life of faith. The pastors’ badges of success were then the large numbers of people attending the congregation’s religious services, or the huge numbers of people baptized the past year, or better yet the growing number of financial contributors and thus the growing number of dollars churches could gloat over.
I know this because I used to be one of those ministers. Heck, I remember the weekend our denominational general officer came to our Pacific Northwest judicatory and held a breakfast meeting with all the pastors. All the pastors were asked to stand up and then we ran through the baptism numbers. Every pastor who had one or zero baptisms were the first made to sit down. Then it was those who had four or less who were to sit down. Then it was six or less and then it was eight or less, at which point I, as a pastor, had to sit down. Finally, the last pastor standing had to sit down when the number twelve was called.
It was an interesting exercise at that time six years ago, but those kinds of numbers no longer mean anything. Why? Well, church attendance is declining so fast that only 25% of us attend church regularly anymore. So the question of what is an act of faith, especially in God’s eyes, probably means something altogether different any more than what we humans and our religious institutions have defined it to be. More and more, it seems to be something that people want to be undefined, to be as free as the wind blows, and not confined or limited by human contrivances or human institutional contrivances.
Ultimately, it means asking ourselves the simple and basic question of, “Where is God to be found today?” In Jesus’ day there was a great debate between the Jewish and Samaritan peoples. The Samaritans thought God resided on Mount Gerizim where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac. The Jews thought God resided in the Temple at Jerusalem. When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus where God should be worshipped? Jesus said neither on the mountain nor in Jerusalem. In essence, Jesus was telling the woman that Immanuel, i.e. “God with us”, was right in front of her. What’s next my friends is this: Anyone who genuinely loves God and selflessly loves God’s creation and selflessly loves people and selflessly seeks after their well-being and selflessly seeks after a just and peaceable world is simply “Immanuel”. And your acknowledgement of that person, your support of that person, and to the extent that you are a person like that yourself is an “act of faith” in today’s world. And whenever such things happen, regardless of where they happen, there God is. God is no longer confined to the places of Temple (i.e. our buildings representing our faiths) that we have erected all over the world.
There is a new nature of the intimacy God wants to have with us, as one seminary professor put it this week. Taking that notion further she said, “This is as close as it gets. God has become us. God is who we are. God is no longer contained. God has broken loose for all who believe.” Her words made complete sense for me in terms of the church God has called me to establish (see post “My Recent Journey, My God Encounter”). They make sense to me in the way that the blind man healed by Jesus was cast out of his community by the religious authorities of his day. The subsequent blessing was that the blind man found a new community willing to embrace him and willing to embrace the healing and new calling he received from Jesus – a calling and healing that the religious institutions of his day contested, dismissed, belittled, and maligned.
C.S. Lewis once said that when you know and have experienced the revealed God, you experience the inklings of God everywhere. No single house of faith or temple can therefore contain God. There does remain the need for community and means for God’s family and God’s community to gather. This will always be important so we can help one another to remain grounded and balanced in “acts of faith” together. And in the month of May, I will begin the process of gathering together persons who feel similarly called as I do “to establish a church free of the encumbrances of the world.” I pray and hope that those who gather to such a process will genuinely be open to an “act of faith” unlike any other in their lives so far. Not that it will be draining of your time or you energy or other resources that are precious commodities given the time we find ourselves in, but simply that you will allow the opening of your mind and opening of your spirit to a form of church and being the church that God has yet to reveal. As one friend told me recently, “I don’t even think you know what this is going to be or what it will look like.” His words couldn’t have been closer to the truth.
Be prayerful my friends, be open and seeking and alert to the inklings of God everywhere. Please write those down, please journal about them. Feel free to share them with me if you desire to do in advance of our first discernment gathering in May.
May the blessings of God’s Peace be upon you!
Brad Shumate, M.S., M.A., LMHC
Free of Encumbrance
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