Lent 3 B: A Thin Place Every Place
Dear Partner in Preaching,
John has something to say and he doesn’t mind messing with the standard story in order to say it. John the Fourth Evangelist, I mean. We are familiar with the story he tells in this week’s Gospel reading – Jesus cleansing the Temple – but if we pay attention we’ll realize he doesn’t just give it his own distinct spin, but actually takes great license with the details, symbolism, and even chronology. And all for a very good reason.
Let’s start with chronology. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple comes much later in the story, just after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Indeed, it plays a pivotal role as the “last straw” that drives his opponents to conclude that they only way to deal with this upstart rabbi who is threatening the primacy of the Temple and their precarious relationship with Rome is to do away with him. In John, however, the story is right near the beginning. Coming immediately after the relatively small-scale and more private sign of turning water to wine at the wedding of Cana, Jesus “goes public” with the first-century equivalent of activist performance art, driving everything and everyone out of the Temple and overturning the tables of the money changers.
Then comes the symbolism. Notice that Jesus doesn’t quote Isaiah (56:7) and Jeremiah (7:11) as he does in the other gospels (Mark 11:17, Matthew 21:13, Luke 19:46) to accuse his opponents of turning the Lord’s house of prayer into a den of robbers, suggesting that the main problem was defrauding the poor, corruption of the Temple leaders, and collusion with Romans. Rather, in John’s account, Jesus instead says, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace,” calling into question the not simply expedient but absolutely necessary act of changing coins in order to obey sacrificial law.
These details lead to a very different story with a distinct and valuable theological and homiletical thrust. John puts this story upfront because it reveals something crucial about who Jesus is: he is the Lamb of God, as John the Baptist said in the first chapter, who takes away the sin of the world (Jn. 1:29). He is, to return a few verses earlier, the embodiment of “grace upon grace” (1:16). There is therefore no further need for sacrifice; Jesus’ incarnated, embodied grace suffices fully, wholly, entirely, and completely. Keep in mind, the Temple had become a marketplace out of necessity. In order to buy the animals for sacrifice, folks needed to change their Roman coins for Jewish ones and then purchase the proscribed animals. But with Jesus on the scene – the one who embodies abundance having just taken the waters of purification (also no longer needed) and turned them instead into the wine of celebration – there is no need for changing money, for purchasing animals, for making sacrifice…at all or ever again.
Indeed, it may be that John the Evangelist is going so far as to say – to a community, keep in mind, living after the fall of the Temple and who likely were expelled from their local synagogue – that they do not need the Temple at all. Why? Because Jesus’ body – his physical incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Holy Spirit – was sufficient and is sufficient to mediate God’s grace and mercy. Jesus is the one who introduces us to the parental heart of God, the one who makes the unknowable God knowable and approachable. Then…ever since…and still today.
Celtic spirituality has included the identification of what are sometimes called “thin places,” those places – often but not always mountaintops or other beautiful natural settings – where it feels like the distance between our finite and material world and God’s eternal and spiritual reality collapses and becomes thin. I’ve appreciated that phrase and applied it from time to time to favorite locations in my life or places where significant insight or development occurred. But when I read John’s testimony, it occurs to me that every place has the capacity to be a thin place because God’s presence in Jesus is set loose in the world, no longer confined to Temple (or for that matter, church or sacrament) but always available to the followers of Jesus, those who, to borrow Paul’s words, are the Body of Christ.
Might we, Dear Partner, offer that as a gift to our people this week: the promise that God is available to them 24/7 absolutely anywhere they are. And that “anywhere” is both geographical and spiritual: In church our out, at work or in school, at a spiritual highpoint or desert, when in the company of loved ones or desperately alone, in times of joy and sadness, when changing diapers or running errands. In all these “places” and more, God is present, working always to comfort, encourage, strengthen, heal, restore, and send.
But if our folks receive that gift with joy, we may wonder, what happens to church? Why come on Sunday if God is available and present anywhere? Simply because this good news is so hard to remember amid the hassles, challenges, heartaches, and tragedies of everyday life. One glance at the headlines threatens our belief that God is present, let alone cares. One hour of listening to another’s pain calls into question the promise that God is with us. And so we come to church, not because it is the best or only place to experience God, but because at church we can detect God’s presence and promise most clearly and easily. In the beauty of our hymns, in the words of the sermon, in the bread and wine and water of the sacraments, we hear clearly the bold proclamation and promise that God is with us and for us, and that experience equips and encourages us to look for, and even partner with, God’s presence and work in the world in the multitude of potential thin places life will carry us this week.
Our call is not to draw people to church because this is the place people will see God. Our call is to invite people to church because, having experienced God during this one hour, they might leave more able to detect God’s presence the other 167 hours of their week. It won’t always be easy to see God amid all that they will encounter, but that’s okay, as we will gather once again to hear God’s promises and sing God’s story and be rooted in faith and commissioned for life once again. Our call, in short, is to help people discover that, and perhaps even make, the various and sundry places of their lives the “thin place” where God’s presence permeates our lives and world with the promise of grace, compassion, and courage.
It’s good work, Dear Partner, and I’m so grateful you have taken it up. Blessings this week and always on your life, ministry, and proclamation.
Yours in Christ,
David
Without doubt, one of your very best pieces. Thank you so much!
Also my first thought after I read this one!
Wow. This is absolutely an amazing message. Thank you!
Once again, thank you for pointing out something wonderful that I would not have seen otherwise! With the gift of evangelism that God graced me with in my baptism, I also encourage people to engage in the life of a congregation so they have other believers who can help them discern how God is working in their lives. Churches are not only valuable in connecting people with God, like thin places do, but they are also valuable (or should be!) in helping people understand/discern and live out what God’s dream/mission/purpose is for the world, our congregation, and ourselves (aka discipleship).
Love this reflection and have often thought about “thin places” I found this article in The NY Times and thought it was good material for a sermon as well as you thoughts
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html
Thanks, Dr. Lose! This was brilliant
“Our call is to invite people to church because, having experienced God during this one hour, they might leave more able to detect God’s presence the other 167 hours of their week.”
Our experience of God can be the destruction of our hopes as well as their encouragement; God happens in life. Aesthetic experiences are not the same as God’s presence. It may be that ‘church’ is an attempt to avoid God as much as to understand God’s presence in the world. But at its best, our gathering may provide a map, a framework, a context to deal with the overwhelmingness of God’s activity and claim upon us in our families, our communities, and our world.
Great reflection and thank you! I wrote my sermon earlier in the week before I read this but were on the same page. I spoke about thin places and quoted from Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.
Beautiful reflection. Thank you
Great message. Thank you.