This Gospel reading, it’s a pretty shocking story isn’t it? Are you shocked by it? It’s quite astonishing what happens. Jesus goes into the Temple and turns the whole place upside down. He upends the tables, pours money everywhere. He makes a whip and uses it to drive out the stall holders, the cashiers, the animals. Absolute chaos Seriously – think about it for a moment. Put yourself into that scene. Picture the tables being overturned. The animals and people being herded out of the temple by a man brandishing a whip. Honestly, the more we think about it, the more shocking this story becomes.</span> What’s more, those stall holders and cashiers were not breaking any laws - nothing in the Law or Scripture that said they couldn’t be there. In fact what they were doing was supporting the worship of God in the temple. People came to the Temple to make sacrifices – remember Mary and Joseph taking Jesus as a baby to the Temple and buying a pair of doves to sacrifice? The money changers too – the rules were that you couldn’t offer money in the Temple which had the face of a Roman god on it, which seems reasonable, so the cashiers were there to help people make an offering. The story is full of shocking details - but this time when I read it, I was shocked by something else. I was shocked by the response of the people there When all this kicked off, the Temple people didn’t try to wrestle Jesus to the ground, they didn’t try to arrest him – which we know they could do.They came to him and said “What sign can you show us for doing this?" “What sign can you show us for doing this?” They were a people of great faith. When something like this happened in their Temple, their first thought was to assume that God was at work. “What sign can you show us for doing this?”</span> Or in other words “How did God tell you to do this?” “Where in Scripture is your justification for this?” “What kind of miracle is going on here?” “How do you know that God wants you to do this?” That’s curious, isn’t it? Someone comes into the Temple, overturns everything that is going on there, creates absolute pandemonium – and they assume that God is at work and take it in their stride. They are not worried about the chaos. They don’t seem stressed at all - until Jesus answers their question. It’s curious that what bothers them isn’t the actual drama that Jesus has just enacted, the destruction he has already brought about.What bothers them is his apparent claim that if the temple were destroyed he could rebuild it in 3 days. Now you know and I know, because we’ve read the end of the story, that Jesus was talking about himself – was saying that if they destroy him, he would return in three days. We know as well because the gospel writer helpfully points it out to us. But the people there don’t know that, they assume he is claiming that he could rebuild the temple in three days – and that they do care about Whips, animals, overturned tables – not so much. Making claims about the Temple – that is what bothers them. They argue with him there and then, but more importantly, we know that Jesus’ claim – however much they misunderstood it – sticks in their minds, gets talked about, because it’s what the false witnesses said about Jesus when he is brought to trial before the High Priest. The people there, they don’t care that Jesus overturned the tables and threw out the traders - they care that he disrespected the Temple We know, of course, that they are wrong. <span style="font-size: 1rem;">We agree with Jesus that the money changers and the traders were wrong. And yet, if we are honest, what Jesus does in the Temple, the chaos, the destruction, the whip, all those things bother us much more than what Jesus says. And if this were to happen today - if someone were to go into St Paul’s Cathedral, say, and upend the cashier desks, crack a whip and throw everything off the shelves in the gift shop and then say that St Paul’s should be bulldozed, we’d be a lot more shocked by the destruction of the gift shop than any opinion about the building. But what if we are wrong? We live in a capitalist society, we tend to overvalue business and money and retail opportunities and, if we are honest, to undervalue church. So it might be that we have something to learn, not just from Jesus, but from the people interrogating Jesus. They get so much wrong – but perhaps they are right about this. Perhaps they are right to see that the Temple itself is more important than the traders. I’m pretty sure we get this wrong most of the time. I’m pretty sure we place a much higher value on the economy than on the church, on business than on faith, and that’s something for us all to think about Because it comes to something when actually our response to Jesus is worse than the response of the Jewish authorities in the Temple, when we are more shocked by Jesus than they are. Maybe it’s time to let Jesus overthrow some of the tables in our lives. Amen.
<span style="font-size: 1rem;">I hope and pray that your Lent has got off to a good start, whatever that looks like for you this year.</span>As you know, our Lent focus this year is on the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four and it is perfectly possible to get through the whole book by reading a brief passage every day in Lent. In this mailing is the next booklet which includes the reading for each day next week in a short prayer service – you can read and pray at home, alone or with your household, or you can join us on Zoom for Morning Prayer each day at 8am - details on how to join are in the Notices at the end of this letter.Our Sunday readings are not part of this schedule, so today we get a reading from Mark which is out of synch with the rest of our readings. It is, however, fully in synch with Lent. ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,’ Jesus tells us – a timely reminder at the beginning of Lent, our season of fasting, prayer and charitable giving.This Lent, like last year, is being shaped by the enforced self-denial of lockdown, and I am not going to judge anyone who feels that they have given up enough already, without having to find something else to give up for Lent. Similarly with charitable giving – some of you, I know, are facing significant financial hardship this year, having lost work. Lent doesn’t ask more of us than we can bear.But for everyone, Lent is supposed to be a challenge, and yes, even in these difficult days, it is supposed to be an additional challenge. It is a time for prayer, a time to be still in God’s presence, to come to God not just with requests but with regrets, in penitence. It is a time for lament, to grieve over our distance from God, and also to grieve over the difficulties we are facing – because God is with us, come what may. And for those of us who still have money to share, especially to those of us who have benefited financially from the lockdown because of fewer opportunities to spend, it is a time to give generously, to charity and to church.In our Gospel reading, Jesus reminds us that being a Christian is not an easy thing, that if we are to follow him we must, like him, make sacrifices. He calls us to love God and to love one another, to deny ourselves and to follow him with boldness. I pray that this Lent, by turning our attention to God and what God asks of us, we might be able to make these sacrifices with love and joy.With my prayers - Mother Anna
“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” In the name… We are in the wilderness. There’s an argument that we are always in the wilderness. That being separated from God, stuck in this earthly reality until the coming of the kingdom, until we can see God face to face, that this life is the wilderness. It’s a fair point. But the wilderness I’m talking about is Lent. Lent – like Jesus, we get 40 days. Like Jesus, we get tempted. Like Jesus, if all goes well, we resist that temptation. And maybe, like Jesus, at the end of our time in the wilderness, there is a chance we might also emerge with a clearer sense of what it is we should be doing, a clearer understanding of who we are and what God wants from us. The wilderness is an interesting place in the Bible. Landscape in the Bible is often full of meaning and significance – last week I preached about mountains and how mountains are often the setting of encounters with God, and the wilderness is also significant. The wilderness is a place of danger – we see that in the wild animals that Jesus faces in his time there. It’s also a place of hardship – John the Baptist wasn’t eating locusts and wild honey for fun, that’s all he had. It’s a place where people lose their way – remember, Moses and the people of Israel spent 40 years lost in the wilderness. Israel is quite a small place – under normal circumstances I don’t think it would be possible to get lost for 40 years - something strange was going on in that wilderness. The wilderness – it’s a hard, dangerous and confusing place. And it’s the setting for spiritual conflict. Jesus encounters Satan. The Israelites lose heart, lose faith. John the Baptist living in the wilderness, challenges everyone who comes to him to repent. But, even though it’s a place of spiritual conflict, of hardship and challenge, it is also a place where we find God. It is from the wilderness that the prophets proclaim the coming of the Messiah. It is in the wilderness that God speaks to Moses from the burning bush. It is in the wilderness that God works miracles for the people of Israel, feeding them, going before them in a cloud of smoke, bringing fresh water from the rock. And Jesus in the wilderness is waited on by angels. Time in the wilderness is important. Lent - it’s not just about giving up biscuits. It’s about the wilderness, the same wilderness faced by Jesus and John the Baptist and the people of Israel. It is – or it should be – a time of hardship. A time of spiritual challenge. A time of temptation – yes, the biscuits – but more, a time when temptation leads to faith, leads to relying on God, leads to the ongoing, everlasting miracle that God works by finding us, leading us, protecting and keeping us and, ultimately, saving us. So my friends, and I say this with love, let me wish you a difficult Lent. Amen.
Today’s readings: 2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9:2-9Things happen up mountains in the Bible. Big things. Important things.In today’s Gospel reading we heard about the Transfiguration, that moment when, witnessed by Peter, James and John, Jesus is transformed, filled with God’s glory and blazing white, side by side with Moses and Elijah. And it happens up a mountain.But it’s certainly not the first time that we hear of people having important encounters with God up a mountain – the Old Testament is full of significant events taking place on mountains. Noah’s Ark, at the end of the flood, landed on a mountain. Abraham took his son Isaac to the mountain of Moriah, ready in his faith to make any sacrifice to God, but instead, there on the mountain heard the voice of an angel saying he had proved his faith.Moses, in today’s Gospel on the mountain with Jesus, was no stranger to holy encounters on mountains. He spoke with God on Mount Sinai more than once and was given the 10 Commandments there. In fact, God appeared to the whole people of Israel on Mount Sinai – and they hated it, they were terrified and begged Moses not to make them go through that again.And this isn’t Elijah’s first big moment on a mountain either – it was on Mount Carmel that Elijah did battle with the priests of the Baal, calling down God’s fire on his altar, and it was also on Mount Carmel that he prayed and God ended the long drought that had afflicted the people for 3 years.So in the Bible mountains are places where God reveals Godself to people, where God speaks to people and answers prayers, where they see something of the reality of God and it leaves them, like Peter, James and John, like the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, absolutely terrified.A couple of weeks ago, you might remember, I was talking about thin places, places where something of God’s kingdom breaks through, places where we find it easier to feel God’s presence and hear God’s voice. I was talking about churches, but it’s clear that in the Bible, it’s mostly mountains that are thin places. It’s on mountains that God reveals Godself.And that is what is happening here in our Gospel reading. In this thin place, up this mountain, the glory of God breaks through and the disciples see Jesus differently, like a glimpse through a window into a different reality, where Jesus stands at one and the same time in God’s kingdom, with Moses and Elijah by his side, and in the world of our reality, with Peter, James and John.No wonder they are terrified. No wonder Peter starts babbling daft ideas about building tents.You and I are unlikely ever to have this sort of encounter with God, though of course, we can still experience the presence of God, still find ourselves closer to God in the thin places. Admittedly, those thin places are harder to access right now – in a lockdown there are no churches to go to, no mountains to climb. But we can still encounter God. We just need to make a thin place in our lives.In fact, a thin place in our lives is coming anyway. Lent. It starts on Wednesday and it is a time for us to be more intentional about our relationship with God. It’s a time for more prayer, more time with the Bible, a time to be quiet with God, to listen for God speaking into our lives.And in fact we do have a metaphorical mountain to climb, because we have set ourselves quite a task, to read the whole of the Gospel of Mark as part of our Lent practice of prayer and scripture.So I pray that Lent will be for all of us a thin place, a time of encounter, of drawing closer to God. A time when God reveals something of Godself to us, though I’d like it to be less terrifying than this encounter. And I pray that when Easter comes, we will all be transformed, filled with God’s glory as we celebrate the risen Christ. Amen
