Lent is a good time for confession and self-reflection. Stories like our scriptures today remind us to stop a moment and take a good deep look at what we are doing in our lives. Is it Christian? Is it Faithful? Is it Holy?
Jesus comes storming into the Temple on one of the most holy holidays of the year, Passover. He picks up his whip and gets going. He threatens to destroy the Temple. What a public relations disaster! Can you imagine what would happen if I waltzed into a basilica or the legislature and tried to do something similar? Jesus got off pretty easy, he didn’t get tazered or tackled or even arrested.
I felt a similar surge of anger, or what I imagine was a similar anger last week when someone quoted C. S. Lewis to bolster their message that masks and curfews and vaccines are destroying their right to a turkey dinner in a restaurant with 30 of their closest friends and family. I felt anger not because their message has changed or that they are completely disregarding the science or dismissing human suffering. The straw that broke my camel back was that they dared quote C. S. Lewis to justify all this conspiracy spreading!
So naturally, I dived into my collection of Lewis, looking for the passage where he talks about doing what’s best for the neighbor, so if a Catholic and a Protestant worship together, the Catholic would not make the sign of the cross out of respect and consideration for the Protestant, and the Protestant would make the sign of the cross out of respect and consideration for the Catholic.
I didn’t find it. But I did find a lot about what Lewis says is the deadliest, most tempting sin of all, Pride. If I go out to do righteous battle with folks who are carrying tiki torches, and I feel a sense of pride in my skill at arguing, or I feel good about how smart I am or even more subtly, I feel happy in how right I am, I am slipping into the sin of Pride. Who am I to think I can charge in like Jesus did, whip in hand and change the world with my passionate facts thrown at their heads, hoping they will flee like the money changers and make the Internet safe for logic and common sense? Sure Jesus did that, but I’m no Jesus!
When we set ourselves up as the experts, as the ones with the right answers, and even worse, we pick up our whips made up of facts and opinions and research and set off to beat people over the head in hopes of purifying them, we set ourselves up for the temptation of becoming Proud and Arrogant. That sounds distinctly unChristlike. But it’s so tempting to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong. That I have the right to whip and beat you until you agree that you are bad.
Some of us use big whips, we argue and bluster when there is a crowd listening to us, we have a microphone and a DJ music system to make sure everyone knows what we are saying. Some of us use small whips, little digs, little criticisms, little put-downs, little complaints and we do it more often. Someone called it ‘nibbled to death by ducks’, another called it the 5 emotional cancers that can destroy a community slowly from the inside out:
Criticizing, Complaining, Comparing, Competing, and Contending.
These whips come from a sense of my own inadequacies, my own lack of confidence and are not what God wants for me. That is what Paul would call the wisdom of the world. The world believes that we live in a dog-eat-dog society, that we have to be the wisest, smartest, richest, toughest people in order to survive and criticizing others, complaining about them, comparing our possessions or our children’s accomplishments somehow makes us better than our neighbors, that’s the wisdom of the world and Paul says it’s the kind of wisdom that leads to ruin, it destroys lives and even civilizations.
The foolish wisdom of the cross is the real power of God, that God’s wisdom is not in competing to be the best or the smartest person in the room but to be found in small acts of kindness, love and sacrifice. We are called, in fact, to put down our whips lest we also lose our way.
Sure, Jesus whipped the Temple clean, but it didn’t last long. There was a system in place that had evolved out of the people’s need to find a guaranteed connection to God. Pure sacrifices, safe coins without blasphemic images of Caesar on them, anything that would help people feel connected to God. That system snapped back as soon as he left the building.
Jesus picked up the whip because he truly loved his community and he loved God and he loved his disciples, but it wasn’t enough. It would take something more dramatic than the whip to shake up people’s addictions to purity and encourage them to rethink their relationship with God. It would take the cross.
We are called to reflect very carefully before we pick up a whip. As Jesus said later in this same gospel, “you who are without sin may throw the first stone.” Too often we think we have the right to change our churches but while the passion may be appropriate, the whip wielding can lead to spreading the cancer, not healing the congregation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it this way, “Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.”
Jesus transformed the community through the cross, not the whip. We too, are called to lay down our whips and our pride, and open ourselves humbly to the power of God working in us in love. Love in the end, is the only power to clean the temples of our lives.
Help us God as we build a community of thriving, loving and courageous people of faith, filled with your foolish wisdom. Amen.
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