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STOP! In the name of Love! Before you break God’s heart, Think it over… Did you hear Jesus in that story? He got really angry! He looked around the temple and saw a shopping mall. “Stop!” he cried out. “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace.” And what a mall, what a marketplace, what a marvelous place it was! King Herod had been restoring this temple for years, and it was beautiful. But all the money in the world didn’t make that beautiful temple or what was going on it sacred or holy. All that buying and selling was, of course, an easy way to meet expenses. The temple tax had to be paid in temple coinage. That’s why the moneychangers were there. But the temple authorities – all those whom John the gospel writer calls “the Jews,” all those religious leaders who created that tax system in the first place – they should have known better. “Stop!” Jesus demanded. It reminds me of the Michael Keaton movie called “Clean and Sober.” In one scene Keaton, an out-of-control drug addict, is told he cannot have what he wants. His counselor, Morgan Freeman, asks, “Do you know the one word an addict hates to hear?” He doesn’t answer. “The word,” his counselor says, “is No.” Stop! No. Sometimes, parents need to say these words to children. And sometimes, children of God need to hear these things. God says “stop” and “no” to synagogues and churches. God says “stop” to religious leaders (even vestry members!). STOP! In the name of Love! Before you break God’s heart, Think it over… God even says “no” to preachers and priests. Preachers, if they are honest with themselves and with God, do not like this passage we just heard. Why? Because it raises all kinds of questions. Is Jesus talking about our Stewardship program? Our church’s focus? MY leadership? Is Jesus questioning my purpose? My call? Is Jesus speaking to me, to us…again? These are not easy questions to hear, let alone answer. How, I wonder, do we as a church stop and take a good look at ourselves? How do we as a church merely reflect our culture? Just in case we don’t think we need to do that – stop and take a good look at what we are doing – we are reminded of how important it is to do JUST that with a little, five-week season called “Lent.” By the way, how is your Lent going? How are you doing with your prayer, your fasting, your self-denial? How good are you and I at taking a good look and seeing what God wants us to stop doing? How east is it for you and me to “just say ‘no’”? The great spiritual writer Frederick Buechner says that “There is no better proof for the existence of God than the way, year after year, (God’s)…friends treat God.” How are we treating God? How are we treating each other? We DO need to stop in the name of love…and think it over. But how? How will we know we have stopped, turned around, looked honestly at our behavior and even ourselves and started all over again? One way, both ancient and modern, is to use the Ten Commandments. We have heard the Ten Commandments twice this morning: once in the beginning of our worship and again as our first lesson. Let that be a lesson to us: sometimes, we need to hear the really important things in life more than once. Sometimes, we need to hear the really important things in life more than once. So, when we take a good look at ourselves using the Ten Commandments, we might think, “Hey, I’m actually doing pretty good. I haven’t done lots of these things.” Well, whenever you or I think we’re doing just fine, we can stop in the name of love…look at Commandment # 4…and think THAT one over. When we count the number of words or the verses that “unpack” it, the fourth commandment is the longest one. It seems there is no other commandment that needs more explanation than this one. “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” In other words, stop. Stop WORKING all the time. Stop DOING all the time. We need help knowing when to stop working and doing - in the name of all that is holy, in the name of love. What might all this mean for us busy 21 st century Christians? I have made some copies of two handouts about keeping the Sabbath. They’re on one page to save some trees. You or your family might like to take one of these handouts with you today. Feel free to take one after worship today. I’m putting them on the altar, so that we’ll remember just how important the Sabbath is to us and to God. In the beginning, God worked very hard to create, for six whole days. But on the seventh day, God rested. And we need to rest from our labors, too. This week I was talking with Rixie Hoult about the fact that, at the end of this school year, she will be resigning from her position on our staff as director of children’s formation. Now, relax: Rixie is not going anywhere. She still wants to be an important part of Christian formation for our children and youth. But this week, she said to me, “this summer, just for once, I want to play with my children, while I still can.” I said, “Rixie, would you consider something with me? Would you pray about being our official Minister of Play? We need a Minister of Play at All Saints’!” We need ministers of play and ministers of rest. We need ministers of Sabbath, who will teach us how to rest and how to play and how to stop (in the name of love) our working-all-the-time ways. We need ministers of fellowship, who show us how to have fun and not take ourselves so seriously. By the way, if you were here two Saturday nights ago (for the annual youth-sponsored spaghetti dinner and talent show), you know how much fun and how playful it was! The people who performed had to work hard on their “act,” but once they got up in front of us, they created some Sabbath time, full of play and rest and good, old-fashioned belly laughs. What does it mean to be the church? It means to have a ministry in which we can play. The church needs godly play and talent shows and fellowship, food and fun. It means to have a ministry in which we pray, in both familiar and new ways. The church needs common prayer and silent prayer and noisy prayer. In other words, to be the church means to have and to nurture a ministry of Sabbath. Our church needs to teach us ways to stop in the name of God’s love, to just say no to what destroys our church and our lives, and to say yes – to pray, to play and to keep our own selves, our bodies and our spirits, our temples healthy and holy and happy. So…shall we? Shall we just say yes today? Shall we play and pray and find some Sabbath rest and renewal, each and every week, like God does? STOP! In the name of Love! Before you break God’s heart, Think it over… The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg |
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