West End Baptist Church

Monday, April 02, 2012

Readings:  Psalm 36:5-11; Isaiah 42:1-9; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 11: 12-25 John 12:1-11

Mark11: 14a.  And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple.

                Expectations have a way of becoming much too specific.  That is certainly the case with the account of Jesus’ temple cleansing.  It is shocking to most of us because it violates our expectations of what Jesus was supposed to do. 

        First-century Jews were convinced that the Messiah had been anointed to change the world rather than attack the “faithful.”  Messianic anger was misdirected; it should have been focused on the nasty and hated Romans, not at hard-working pigeon sellers and well-established money-changers.  The target should be them, not us!  But Jesus tossed that notion on its head by making the temple business center his first stop on the Holy Week path.

        The Jews wanted God to clean up the world out of love for the faithful, but Jesus set about cleaning up the faithful out of love for the world.  It’s hard to fault our spiritual ancestors for such self-centered thinking, since after 2,000 years most of us are still looking for the same thing. 

Our expectations are that God will rebuke the rest of the world so we can live as in perpetuity as God’s “favorites.”  But God keeps chastening the church so that we can change the world.  That’s shocking!

Returning to the Sacred Presence

Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012

One of the greatest theologians the world has ever known, St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), wrote about his prolonged, drawn-out search for God and the revelation he finally had that God had been with him all along:

I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new!  I have learnt to love you late!  You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself.  I searched for you outside myself….  You were with me, but I was not with you.
     Confessions, Book X.27

Waking to the reality of this very present Eternal Life, this “Beauty ever ancient, ever new,” is a transforming experience.  This life-giving Presence is always with us and within us.  The problem, of course, is that we are often distracted by many cares and occupations that keep us far away from God and from ourselves.  It is as if we spend much of our lives wandering “in a land that is waste,” while God constantly calls to us to return – return to ourselves, to our true life in God.

                The forty days of Lent serve as a time for Christians to return to the Sacred Presence, to the God who has never left us, even though at times we have been far away.  Lent is a time to renew classic disciplines of prayer and reflection, as well as ancient practices such as fasting and Bible study.  All of this is designed to renew a right spirit within us and to prepare us for the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter.

                Lent always begins with a day of special devotion and discipline known as  “Ash Wednesday” which this year falls on today, February 22.  The traditional worship for this day is especially powerful and calls for the “imposition of ashes.”  Congregants are invited to come forward to receive the imprint of ashes on their foreheads, as a sign of their mortality.  In this stark way, we are put in mind of the difference between those things that are passing away and those things that endure forever.

                Following are some opportunities designed to help you in your observance of a holy Lent and prepare you for a return to the Sacred Life and Beauty that is always with you.

Blessings for a holy walk to Easter Sunday,

Tad