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Back to Sermon ArchivesMarch 15,
2009
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Hosea 1:2-3; 2:14-15, 18-20, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25,
John 2:13-22
“Love, O Love, O Foolish Love – The Proper “Woo-ship”
of God”
Foolish love! Love that does not calculate its success! Love that
is free to love no matter what! Love that refuses not to love, to settle for
anything other than love! Foolish love – “Harsh and dreadful love,” Dorothy
Day of the Catholic Worker movement calls it – hands-on, nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty
love – even love against love. It may be the more original, blessing, creating,
nurturing love we see by baptism this morning between parents and children.
It may be the less original, more human and falling, redeeming, persisting love
we hear from Hosea this morning between husbands and wives – even unrequited love.
God orders Hosea to marry a prostitute and to bear children together. God
rather flippantly wants Hosea will know in his own person how it is for God to love
the faithless people of Israel – the faithless people of the Church – the faithless
people of Reno and Sparks – any faithless people we care to name – God is exhausted
by loving us all! Nonetheless, declares God of Israel, “I will woo her!”
Hence, the proper “woo-ship” of God is love! In fact, all the commandments,
Jesus proclaims, may be practiced as two – First, loving the Lord our God with all
our mind, all our heart, all our strength, all our soul. Second, loving our
neighbor – our every neighbor – as ourselves.
God loves us with a desert love -- in covenant with all creation – the
beasts, the birds, the creeping things – the sparrows and the whales. God
loves us with a prophetic love -- with love and compassion for the sake of
rightness and justice. God loves us even with what sounds like an angry
love – smashing weapons, abolishing war – “so that all may sleep in safety.”
Imagine the numbers of women and children especially throughout the world today
unable to sleep in safety! God promises to a faithless people, “I will
bind myself in love to you forever.” We have loved one another like that –
whether children and parents, or husbands and wives, spouses and partners – even
pastors and congregations!!
We have loved one another through uncertainty and insecurity. We have loved
one another through ignorance and indifference. We have loved one another
through depression and despair. We have loved one another through denial and
betrayal. We have loved one another through violence and abuse. We have
loved one another even unto death – and then loved ourselves back to life.
Our Lenten guru Joan Chittister – who some are reading in women’s group, some in
adult class, some on-line – calls us to see in the rage and hear in the cry of the
prophet a helplessness of the kind “that stops the breath of the living at the bedside
of the dead” – a terminal helplessness. Have we not known of that?
Prophets are neither “avengers without love,” nor “lovers without accountability.”
Prophetic judgment and pastoral compassion go together – even as preaching and worship,
word and table, repentance and forgiveness go together. Chittister says, “The
prophet comes with a father’s zeal and a mother’s love breathing the word of God
and saying ‘I love you’ at the same time.” Prophets speak and act for a God
who has been betrayed by “foolish” and “careless” love – “betrayed beyond all the
boundaries of good sense and right reason.” God is a “foolish lover” – Must
be to love even us! God’s hurt does not diminish God’s love – yet God’s love
never discounts God’s hurt. With Jesus loves trumps even justice. The
consequences of Jesus’ love are taken upon himself at the cross. Only a suffering
love can heal. Jesus today calls us to count the cost of his healing love.
Like Hosea, Jesus faces a time (Is there ever NOT a time?!) when the temple,
the place of worship, is fully co-opted by the civil religious military financial
system. Joan Chittister calls it “politicized religion that puts the flag
of the country in the sanctuary and holy places. It is a politicized
religion that buys its tax exempt status with silence and holds prayer
breakfasts instead of protests. . . . It is a totally politicized church that
cedes the teaching of just war theory to the commander in chief of the armed
forces” – to ANY such commander in chief.
We are invited this Thursday to vigil all day in witness against our present
wars.
Notice Chittister calls us to be more than “critics” – who “stand outside a
system and mock it.” Sometimes we do that with relationships as well! We
stand outside them and point to the other person as the one and only source of
all the trouble! Rather, we are to be “prophets” – who “remain clear-eyed
and conscientious inside a sinful system [or relationship!] and love it anyway!”
Not sure it fits us precisely, but it is said that when someone wondered why
President Johnson didn’t get rid of odious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the
president said he would rather have Hoover on the inside whizzing out than on
the outside whizzing in!
Talking about “foolish love” – trumping justice! Chittister goes on to
say, “It is prophetic to love both church and country enough to want them to be
everything they claim to be – just, honest, free, equal –and then to stay with them
in their faltering attempt to do so – even if it is you yourself against whom both
church and state turn their attempts to evade the prophetic truth of the time.”
And it will be – it will be we ourselves against whom systems turn when we confront
them. Such is our foolish love brought to bear upon every part of our lives!
If we disdain the “political” part – where “political love” is needed – and who
can deny the political part of this gospel today? – we really disdain ourselves!
For in our “democratic” system – of, by, and for the people! – the political is
US!
“We cannot criticize what [and whom!] we do not love,” Chittister concludes.
We risk all in the hope “that what is worth loving can be loveable again. . . .
Prophecy is unrequited love gone mad with hope.” Is that not what Jesus is in
this story – an unrequited lover gone mad with hope? Hope to love a dead
system to life? Hope against hope the system will change itself – given
one last chance? For this is Jesus “attacking” the temple-table system of
his day. Animal-sellers and money-changers – no doubt by crooked
arrangement with leaders of both church and state -- corrupt the worship
intended purely for God.
If Jesus is not already headed irrevocably for the “foolish wisdom” and “weak
strength” of death on the cross as a traitor and threat to the system, this
episode seals the deal. In John’s gospel it does not even come at the end
but the very beginning of his public ministry – as if to cry out, this is what I
am about! Jesus’ goal is “the proper woo-ship of God” – worship based on
the love of God, not the greed of God’s people – the leaders of God’s people.
“Ways of the world,” as we say – not to mention “machinations of the
marketplace” – come between God and us, as between the Creator and created ones.
We act as if we are not made to grow in the image of God – as newly-shaped each
day as the one who is baptized this morning. We act as if we are made instead
to be systemically corrupted -- commodified, costed out, charged for, consumed.
We act as if our jobs and homes are to be bought and sold for the profit of third
parties. Our system claims it is part of the natural order of things that
some few of us just happen to have enough capital – enough accumulation of wealth
and its influences – influences on state and church -- to control all the terms
of transaction, taxation, and trade for the rest of us.
This system is what Jesus is challenging. We may not often consider our
worship as enacting a clear alternative to the madness of marketplaces.
But that is what Jesus insists. There are no “winners” or “losers” in
God’s “house.” Everyone is invited. There must be room and allowance
for all. Ultimately the “house” and “temple” of God are as diverse and
inclusive as all creation! Jesus attacks the system as one who
personalizes – internalizes in his own body -- the promise of God who creates us
all equally – with equal access to all the resources of God’s creation. He
takes on the temple worship at Passover – the busiest (most lucrative!) time of
the year. It would be like refusing to worship on Christmas or Easter!
Jesus is insisting upon “no more business as usual!”
No wonder we are never fully prepared for demands of the Lenten season.
We are asked to sacrifice of ourselves – not only materially but also spiritually.
We are asked to give up our pretenses to holiness –all our carefully cultivated
“churchpersonship!” We are asked if our worship and prayer and study and fellowship
flow from this passion of Jesus for justice and rightness in God’s house. Again
Jesus’ love trumps justice. Ethicist Beverly Harrison calls Jesus’ actions
here “a mode of connectedness” and “a vivid form of caring!” Precisely because we
are lovers – connected, related to one another, in compassion and solidarity with
one another – we care that the system works for all people.
Jesus’ example here calls us to structure our outrage prophetically.
Our intent is not to defeat and destroy the system. Our intent is to find
some real chance to heal it and make it new – even to restore it to its original
hopes and purposes. To structure our outrage is to put it into symbols –
into signs and gestures, word and worship, image and language – much as we do in
baptism today. And such as will be offered all day this Thursday –
concluding with a “human peace sign” at City Plaza at 5 PM!
This may be the only moment in all the gospels on which to rest any argument
at all that Jesus condones or countenances violence of any description. Otherwise,
Jesus, prophetically enough, is all about paradox – the foolish wisdom and the weak
strength of the cross, the “crucified messiah,” the “nonviolent resister” – dying
before ever killing, healing before ever hurting – even when armed guards come for
him in the garden – even when he is nailed to the cross. Jesus sees his own
body as taking the place of the temple – and we are the body of Christ! That
is why love is the proper “woo-ship” of God! Jesus is not concerned about
where and when and how we worship – our sectarian feuding and fussing. Jesus
is breaking his body for the healing of ours – and calling on us to follow him!
To become his Body filled with his Spirit – temple, sanctuary for healing the world!
Jesus cares only to love at all costs. Maybe in the end it’s the only
way God finds to love – being God to such faithless people as we – at our best!
He will not preach or practice violence to anyone. Why does Jesus here
fashion “a whip of cords?” For what purpose? To attack any person?
No, but to liberate the animals! To drive out the sheep and cattle so
uselessly slaughtered as sacrifices! Especially for the wealthy who can
afford the larger animals – and for the priests [and politicians!] who live off
the wealthy.
Jesus does not attack the animal-sellers and money-changers as persons.
Rather, he knows where they will hurt the most – he goes after their money!
He pours out their coins and overturns the tables – the places of marketing
– where they profit off the worship of God. Even more specifically, Jesus
focuses on those who sell doves, the smallest and cheapest of animals to
sacrifice [not to mention the sign of the Holy Spirit!] – because those sellers
are all the more oppressing and exploiting the poor and those who can least
afford it.
Jesus here engages in a pivotal act (at the very beginning of his ministry) of
creative nonviolent direct action – of resistance in love to entrenched
powers and principalities – to systems and structures of both church and state –
to save us and free us, and heal us and make us new. One commentator calls
this action “a dramatized social exorcism with broad social implications.
It is the enactment of our baptismal vows – “to renounce the spiritual forces of
wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of our sin!”
Little children still lead us.
In 1972 -- just before our first appointment – the congregation where we were
student pastor on the northside of Chicago sent a delegation on the “Holy Week Pilgrimage”
to Harrisburg, PA – to carry out prophetic, symbolic, nonviolent worship and action
in behalf of the Harrisburg Seven who destroyed draft files as a call to end our
war in Vietnam. As they traveled our delegation made up words to a tune
you might recognize and join in –
Did you ever hear of Jesus?
Was a good friend of mine!
I never understood a single word
he said.
But I helped him drinking his wine.
Yes, he always had some very fine
wine.
Singing, joy to the world!
All the boys and girls now!
Joy to the fishes in the deep
blue sea – Joy to you and me!
So let’s love and serve the people
– Sisters and brothers all!
We’re the high night-flyers and the
rainbow-riders.
We’re the fools for God and having
a ball!
Yes, the fools for God and having
a ball.
Singing, . . .
Amen.
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