Sermon for March 7, 2021 – Third Sunday in Lent

“Focus on the forest – the trees will sort themselves out.”

Let us bow our heads in prayer.  Holy and gracious God, we thank you for the gift of your presence in this time and place and within each one of us and in the locations we are.  Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

Well if you were to ask me, at the beginning of this sermon, to tell you in as few words as possible what today’s sermon is all about, I would probably say this, “Don’t miss the forest for the trees!”  It might be a bit of a surprising response, but let me explain.  For us particularly, here at All Saints, ‘Focus on the forest’ – the trees will sort themselves out.  In other words, a call to us to stay focussed on the big picture and then all of the details will fall into place.

I want to focus primarily on the Gospel Reading this morning, but let me touch first of all on this First Reading from Exodus – the giving of the Law, or the 10 Commandments.  I don’t know for you, but I think for most of us raised in the Church, we’re pretty familiar with the 10 Commandments.  I can still remember them being on the wall of the Sunday School classrooms in the parish in which I grew up.  And I think most of us were taught that the 10 Commandments represent how God expects us to live.  Or you might say ’10 Rules for Christian moral living”; or even just moral living period. 

But we tend to focus on the individual commandments – especially the “sticky” ones in, say, the last half a century or so.  ‘Keeping the Sabbath.’  Most of can remember when decisions were made in society to allow movie theatres and bowling alleys to open on Sundays.  I can still remember trying not to work on a Sunday (unless, of course, I was leading a church service) but I do confess to sometimes doing what I called ‘recreational lawn mowing’ on a Sunday afternoon.  And then the more difficult commandments, like ‘Thou shalt not murder.’  What about wars, or abortion, or medically –assisted dying?  All of these things we have had to work through. 

Now I’m not saying that the individual commandments are not important – of course they are. But we need to ask ourselves what is God’s giving of the ’10 Words’ (as the Hebrew states them) all about?  In other words, what’s the ‘forest’ in the giving of the commandments?  The context is Mount Sinai.  God has empowered Moses to lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt (what we refer to as the Exodus) about 3500 years ago.  And God is now wanting to form them into a single entity – the People of God – and to enter into a special relationship with them.

So they need a common ‘code of living’ to be in this special covenant with God, and these ’10 Words’ from God describe that covenant life.  Later, they’ll be summed up in the two Great Commandments – to love God, and to love your neighbour as yourself.  That is focussed on the ‘forest’ – the individual commandments are like the ‘trees.’  The ‘forest’ is about a special people living together in a particular way with God and each other.  Eventually, Israel would learn that they were to be an example to the rest of the world – “the nations” – on how people were to live with their Creator.

Now, let’s move to the Gospel Reading.  Just to recap the story a little bit – John places this encounter of Jesus in the Temple early in his ministry – the Synoptics place it much later.  But it’s about the Temple in 1st century Jerusalem, which really was the centre of the great festival-events in Judaism.  Now the people, when they came to the Temple to worship, needed to buy animals for the sacrifice – hence cattle, sheep and doves being there.  And only Temple money currency was accepted so therefore, there had to be money-changers to make the necessary conversion from one currency to another.  So you might say, “So what’s the problem?”  Well in the other Gospels, the Synoptics, we learn more of what Jesus was upset about.  He quotes Isaiah’s words from God, “My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations.”  But in this outer court there is all this buying, selling and money-changing going on.  The problem is that this was the only part of the Temple where the non-Jews, the Gentiles, were allowed.  It’s the only place where they could experience the Temple as a house of prayer and instead it’s become a marketplace.

So you could say that the people of the day were totally absorbed in the ‘trees’ of Temple worship – the various artifacts and transactions that were associated with that worship, and they had lost sight of the ‘forest’ – the whole purpose of the Temple – communing with God in prayer.  As a result, they were totally excluding outsiders from being drawn in to prayer with God.  There was nothing inviting for these outsiders to come in and experience God.

But there’s a second part to this encounter as well that’s just as important.  Naturally the Temple authorities were very upset with Jesus and his actions!  They ask Jesus to “show us a sign” to justify this behaviour.  It’s like saying to him, “Show us some credentials of just how special you are that you think you can do this!”  Jesus’s response is very odd.  He says, “I will destroy this Temple and in 3 days I will raise it up.”  The Temple authorities, of course, are focussed on the ‘trees’, which is the Temple building itself and what goes on in that outer court – not so much on the focus of the worship of God.

Jesus is referring not to the physical Temple but to his body – the new Temple.  For He will be the place where people will actually abide with and worship God.  You might say a new ‘forest.’  Now after Jesus’ resurrection this became clear to the Christian disciples.  In fact, it’s beautifully describes for us in the 1st Letter of Peter, in the 2nd chapter.  We read these words, “Come to him (Christ), a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house (or temple), to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”, just like the old stone Temple.  But now it’s living and breathing, and all of us joined together with Christ are that Temple.  A couple of verses later this is said to the members of that Temple, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”  Those are exactly the same words that were spoken to Moses and the Israelites gathered at Mount Sinai receiving the 10 Commandments.

And what are we to do being part of this living Temple?  The passage in 1st Peter continues, “in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”  THIS is the purpose of Christ’s Church.  This is what people outside of the Church are to experience of God’s love and truth.  How easily we, who are inside the Church, get caught up and preoccupied with all of the little details – whether we’re doing this in a traditional or a contemporary way, or whether we’re doing it in the way we’ve always done it, or whether it’s something new or novel.  That is focussing on the trees!  The ‘forest’ is: how best can people experience God’s love in Jesus Christ through their experience of us collectively?  This is why the possibility of (at least some of us – a representative group) being able, when it’s safe, to gather together for Sunday worship is so important!  We become a living, breathing, example of the Temple of the Risen Christ.

Today, for this congregation, is our Annual General Meeting.  And it’s coming on this critical cusp of moving into a new chapter as the members of All Saints Church.  As I wrote in my report for the Congregational Meeting “Called out of exile …into a new future”, we are being called to keep our focus on the ‘forest’ – to be a living Temple that reaches “out to the those who don’t’ know, who have not been part of All Saints; and engage them in such a way that they discover and receive the grace of God in Jesus Christ in our midst.” [Interim Priest’s report to 2021 AGM]

The details of how we operate, or what we do together inside (the ‘trees’) are only relevant and important to the degree that they contribute to the ‘forest’ – our collective impact beyond ourselves on those in the community, and those we encounter in our lives. 

As we move forward in the coming year, we must do more than simply “restore” things for ourselves – that’s focussing on a few trees.  We must allow the Spirit to “reshape” us for the world beyond our walls.  That is focussing on the ‘forest’ – God’s amazing call and purpose for us!  Amen.