Sermon John 2:13-22 God Steps out of the Box <\/p>\n
By Fr. Bill Wigmore<\/p>\n
(This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.)<\/p>\n
Well good evening once again & welcome. How’s everyone doing tonight?<\/p>\n
You probably don’t know this, but public speaking’s never come easy for me.
Over the years, I’ve had to do a lot of it -so I’ve worked through some of my worst fears.
But in the beginning I gotta tell you, standing up in front of a group like this –
absolutely terrified me!<\/p>\n
And way back when, when I first started doing my counselor-training, once a month,
it’d come time for me to face my fear.<\/p>\n
Every 30 days, I had to get up on a huge stage and deliver a 45-minute talk
to 180 alcoholics & addicts who were in treatment.
For three, long years, my assigned topic was always the same:
It was titled: “Where Is God?”<\/p>\n
About three days before I was due to get up and talk,
that’s when the panic would set in.
I couldn’t eat. I’d get physically sick.
I’d wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night thinking:
“Just three days to go and I still don’t know where God is!”<\/p>\n
Finding God was a really big problem for me
and I think that’s why they assigned me that topic.
They figured if I had to teach it
then maybe there was an outside chance that I’d actually come to learn it.
(You see, some of you folks get out of treatment in 30 or 90 days
but the really sick ones like me, they have to hire us!)<\/p>\n
Well now, it’s some thirty-six years later
and tonight’s readings seem to be asking us the same question
that my old lecture asked:
Just where is God? And how do we find him?<\/p>\n
What I can honestly report after all my time in the program is simply this:
Finding God’s whereabouts isn’t a problem that you or me will ever solve
by using our heads
Finding God is much more like taking a journey
And what I believe we’re each gonna find as we travel that journey is simply this:
God is found in our hearts as we travel towards him and make our way back home.
Like the Big Book says: “The Great Reality is within”
He’s been there within us all along <\/p>\n
And you know, as Christians,
much of our spiritual heritage
and much of whatever understanding we have about God,
often starts with the experiences of the Jewish people.<\/p>\n
And that’s because the Jews were a people who also asked that same question:
Where is God?
And their answer came to them out of their own journey too.
Their journey began when they found themselves living as slaves in the land of Egypt.<\/p>\n
Before that journey, they were a group of different tribes;
all living under the same slavery.
But that journey with God defined them
It defined them and it bound them together forever as one people.
And so that’s how they understood their God.
They simply referred to him as: “The God who led us out of slavery.”<\/p>\n
At first, just like me, they didn’t understand very much about God
But like those of us in recovery who’ve been led out of our own form of slavery
More gets revealed to us all along the way.<\/p>\n
After leaving Egypt, the new tribe carried around the Law or the covenant agreement
that God had given to Moses
It described their new contract
the Third Step Agreement that existed between them and their God.<\/p>\n
Basically it said: “I’ll be your God if you will be my people.”
“I’ll be your Father if you will be my children.”<\/p>\n
And so, once again, like our own Big Book says: “All good ideas are simple
and this was the triumphant arch through which they passed out of Egypt
and into freedom!”<\/p>\n
So for 40 long years, the Jewish people carried around a copy of their Law
the agreement made between God and them
They carried it in a beautiful box
They called it: the Ark of the Covenant <\/p>\n
And since they were a tribe wandering in the desert,
they believed that their God now wandered right along with
them, hovering like a Spirit right above their little, sacred box.<\/p>\n
Now the interesting thing about the Jews
and the thing that makes us addicts so very much like them
is just how thick headed, and stubborn,
and how defiant they could be.<\/p>\n
Over and over, they kept screwing up their end of “the God bargain.”
That’s why it took em 40 years to travel just a few hundred miles.
They could have reached the Promised Land in about 40 hours! but they kept relapsing and reneging on their contract;
So it took em 40 long years! <\/p>\n
Some of us here can possibly relate to that!<\/p>\n
But when they finally arrived and settled down,
they insisted that their God settle down too <\/p>\n
So they built him a nice, huge temple in Jerusalem.
And now “the God of their understanding” lived behind a huge veil inside their temple –
because that was all they were ready to understand.
See it is: “God as we understand him”<\/p>\n
And we need to remember: We really don’t really understand very much about him at all!<\/p>\n
And so as tonight’s gospel story opens, once again,
the people are remembering the story of how their God led them out of Egypt.
It’s the time they call: Passover
and so Jews from all over Israel are returning to Jerusalem
to celebrate the feast inside their great temple.
Jesus, the story says, is one of them.<\/p>\n
But what Jesus witnesses in the temple
is just how far the relationship between God and his people
has deteriorated over the years.
The Jews had always performed rituals & sacrifices to their God.
They believed God was entitled to the first fruits of all their labors.
And so, the very best of everything they produced,
they carried it to the temple and sacrificed it to their God:
If you were rich you sacrificed sheep & oxen
And if you were poor- doves and sparrows would do – or maybe just a pigeon.<\/p>\n
And so, in the courtyard, in front of the temple,
a huge trade had grown up catering to all of this.
Bankers were there exchanging money for the out-of-towners,
because only certain kind of coins were allowed in the temple.
The exchange rates were high – the bankers always took a hefty cut.<\/p>\n
And the animals to be sacrificed in the temple they each had to be “without blemish”
They couldn’t have any scrapes or cuts or bruises on them
If you traveled a far distance with your animals, that wasn’t very likely <\/p>\n
So the traders would gladly sell you “a perfect sacrifice”
But once again, they sold em to you at a pretty neat profit to themselves.<\/p>\n
This is the way things had been for a very long time.
People were going through the motions of having a relationship with God but the living spirit the father & child relationship that God had called for –
that had pretty much gone out of things.<\/p>\n
And there’s something else that happened along the way.
Many of the really poor among the people were being cut off
from ever worshiping God at all.<\/p>\n
And that’s because they couldn’t pay the heavy fees charged
for the sacrifices
or if you were a prostitute or a tax collector
your money was no good and so for you,
forgiveness through the temple-sacrifice-system was impossible.<\/p>\n
So while things were either dead or dying between God and his people the people themselves didn’t know any other way to journey with God.<\/p>\n
A new way was desperately needed
God needed to speak to his people Speak in some brand new way.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell, that’s who Jesus is
Later in the service we’ll read that: “God’s word has never been silent”
God always speaks to us but we’re not always willing to hear him.<\/p>\n
The gospel scene we have here tonight
it comes as a shockwave to the relationship the Jewish people had with their God.
Jesus’ action in the temple upsets more than just
the carts of the traders & the tables of the money-changers.<\/p>\n
He is upsetting to everyone:
All the people, and all their priests –
All the Romans and all the religious “ego-powers that be.”
But what Jesus is announcing is this:
God’s moving and he’s ready once again to reveal to his children more of who he is.<\/p>\n
Very quickly, some puffed-up egos ask: “But who gives you the
authority to do this, Jesus? Give us a sign!”<\/p>\n
Now scripture scholars tell us that the answer Jesus gives to their question
it probably didn’t come from Jesus.
The response we hear to their question,
are more likely than not the words of the early Christian
community affirming their own faith-journey.<\/p>\n
They place their own words into Jesus’ mouth and they say:
“Destroy this temple and in three days God will raise it.”
What those words of faith are saying
is real important to our understanding of the new relationship
that God is now revealing to his people.<\/p>\n
They’re saying:
Look! God has moved again!
God’s no longer found above a box being carried through the desert;
AND GOD’S NO LONGER living in the Great Temple.<\/p>\n
Now, if you’re looking for God: the early Christian community is saying:
Look to the Risen life of Jesus.
He’s ALIVE and now he’s living IN YOUR Very OWN HEART.
God is revealing himself he’s speaking
and he’s doing it in a way like he’s never done it before.<\/p>\n
Every time I preach a sermon here,
the question I try to keep asking in the back of my mind is this: So what?
So what does any of this have to do with drunks & drug addicts
trying to get clean & sober.<\/p>\n
And maybe “the so-what” for us tonight is this:
That every so often God makes a huge change<\/p>\n
in how his people understand and experience him.
If you’re a slave in Egypt, God comes to you as a liberator.
And when you’re ready to settle down in a new land,<\/p>\n
God’s perfectly willing to get out of his box and have you find him in a nice, big temple.<\/p>\n
But when the folks running that temple set up roadblocks
that keep his children from coming to him
When their rituals become more important than the reality of meeting God –
then God sends someone who’s not afraid to move heaven & earth,
along with a few cows, and sheep, and chickens,
so his people can come and be close to him once again.<\/p>\n
— And so now: what about for us addicts? —<\/p>\n
Maybe God is doing yet another new thing
and maybe he’s doing it just for us. Don’t put such a thing past him!
Maybe he’s revealing himself to us in a whole new way
A way that brings him to us, not in a box, and not in a temple,
but through our own weaknesses and through our own brokenness.<\/p>\n
The temple people had to have everything perfect
if it was gonna come before the presence of God.
If it wasn’t perfect, then it wasn’t getting in.<\/p>\n
Maybe like so many of our churches,
the temple people
created what might be called: a spirituality of perfection.
If you ain’t good, and you ain’t holy and unblemished,
then you ain’t invited inside to meet God.
No broken or blemished need apply.<\/p>\n
But what AA, and what the other 12 step fellowships have done,
is exactly the opposite
What they’ve done is, I think, exactly what Jesus does in this story.<\/p>\n
They break through the dead ritual –
and they invite us to come find the Living Reality within.<\/p>\n
The Big Book boldly shouts: “We’ve found the Great Reality We’ve found God,”
“And we found him in the very last place
any one of us drunks or addicts ever thought of looking for him.
We found him deep down within us.
We didn’t find him in our perfection
because we know we’re far from perfect
but we found him in our IM-perfection.
We found him in our most desperate need
when our false selves collapsed and
when we finally prayed:
Oh God if you’re there at all if you’re ever to be found in my life –
Help me now!’”<\/p>\n
When that surrender happens God reveals himself once again
sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly
but we’re promised that we will come to know him:
Know that he is with us now And that he will do for us
what we know we can not do for ourselves.”<\/p>\n
The Jews were pretty good at screwing up their relationship with God
and some of our churches have screwed things up equally as well.
Most churches have probably become
maybe the last place on earth we might ever stand up and be
honest about our need in front of God and everyone.
My name is Joe I’m a drunk and I’m a liar
Hi, I’m Susan I was raped by my father and I cheated on my husband
I’m Juan I’m a thief
I’m your new bishop from New Hampshire and I’m a gay man.<\/p>\n
Don’t you know the church authorities would want to put a stop to those things
in a New York minute?<\/p>\n
I think maybe tonight’s meditation hymn says it best: You asked for signs?:
The signs were sent.
The birth betrayed, the marriage spent –
Signs for all to see.
Can’t run no more with that lawless crowd
While killers in high places say their prayers out loud
But you – you’ve summoned up, a thundercloud –
They’re gonna hear from me.<\/p>\n
And if we listen real hard to tonight’s gospel, maybe we can hear Jesus saying to
the poor and to all the left-out ones in that temple scene:<\/p>\n
“Go ring the bell that still can ring Forget your perfect offering
For there is a crack a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.
May God’s Light come into each one of our hearts tonight –
May it shine through your brokenness and through mine
And may it carry us and guide us all on the recovery-journey
we’ve now begun a journey that ultimately leads us to our
Father’s home – deep inside our hearts. Amen.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2008 Bill Wigmore. Used by permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sermon John 2:13-22 God Steps out of the Box By Fr. Bill Wigmore (This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.) Well good evening once again & welcome. How’s everyone doing tonight? You probably don’t know this, but public speaking’s never come easy for me. Over the years, I’ve had … Continue reading “John 2:13-22 God Steps Out of the Box (Wigmore) – Bible study”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}