Kendall Brown's Notebook page 9
On Trust
By Kendall H. Brown
March 23, 2003
John 2: 13-22
Exodus 20: 1-3, 7,8&12-17
If nothing else, Jesus’ temple temper tantrum must have made a deep and lasting impression on his disciples and followers. Apart from the major scenarios of his ministry, like the crucifixion, the cleansing of the temple is the only incident from Jesus’ ministry that is reported by all four Gospel writers.
Reading the rest of the story, one might wonder why Jesus hadn’t pitched a fit somewhere else along the line. The disciples were such slow learners, they would have had any other teacher pulling his or her hair out on numerous occasions. The Scribes and Pharisees were irritating bummers who had a knack for constantly striking the wrong nerve with Jesus. Jesus began his ministry with a visit in the wilderness from the Devil, who was just plain asking for it. Jesus favored people with miracles, and they couldn’t show their appreciation by honoring his simple request to keep their mouths shut for a while.
The Gospels are full of moments in Jesus’ ministry when he had opportunity to let fly. Why is it that only in this temple scene do we see Jesus seeing red?
I think the temple was the place where Jesus lost it because what was happening there was just plain too close to home for him. The temple was the place in the religious system of Jesus’ day where the holy and the earthly intersected. The temple was holy ground. It was a place for the whole people to be what the burning bush had been for Moses, or Mt. Sinai had been for the Israelites in the wilderness, or what the Transfiguration had been for Jesus and his closest friends. All the people had to do was keep the temple pure and holy. The only response that Jesus could have for this failure was anger.
Jesus’ disciples were not the only ones who stood up and took notice about this scene. The religious leaders also took notice. They asked a question that was not unreasonable. They asked, “By what authority do you do this?” That question can be translated in several ways. “Who do you think you are?” That is a question that uppity action often elicits. Another very good translation for the question is, “Who made you boss?” We have a couple thousand years of theological reflection that give some answer to that question which were not immediately visible to the temple authorities. “Who made you boss?” was not a bad or unexpected question.
As we search for the inner meaning that might be found in today’s lessons, I think we can push the authorities’ question to one more level. By asking, “How did you get to be boss?” the authorities are saying, “Why should we trust you?”
Now we might be approaching the reason for Jesus anger. Often anger has its start in disappointment, in just plain being let down. Jesus’ disappointment in the lack of trustworthiness of the religious leaders was beyond repair. God had trusted them with the simple task of keeping a few acres of earth in the temple area holy and sacred. Even that couldn’t be done.
The sacrilege called for more than a reminder, a sermon, or a discussion group, or formation of a committee. The sacrilege could only be addressed by a cleansing and that is exactly what Jesus’ did.
Jesus’ also pointed out that God would go beyond the cleansing to an out and out replacement of the whole system. The temple would no longer be the sacred space where earth and Heaven intersect. Jesus himself would be the new temple and his sign would be a cross. The cross is a symbol of this intersection, this new temple. There is the long vertical shaft standing for heaven intersecting with the horizontal beam standing for earth.
All that would be required to enter this temple in Christ himself is a new heart. The Jerusalem temple required the keeping of all sorts of rules, regulations and customs in order to come into the sacred presence of God or benefit from God’s presence.
The new temple in Jesus only required a new heart that trusted in Jesus and led one to be trustworthy by Jesus.
Trust, trusting and trustworthiness are closely tied to that which is holy. Trust is what the 10 Commandments are all about. The commandments are much more than a system of rules to keep in order to be perfect and pleasing to God. The commandments are more than just the basics of behavior that must be maintained to keep the peace.
All Ten Commandments are alike in that the breaking of any commandment is not only a violation of the commandment, but also a violation of trust. Lying makes waste of the trustworthiness of one’s words. If others can’t believe and trust what you say, there is little about you that can be trusted. Adultery violates the trust of intimacy. Stealing and coveting violate the basic trust needed between members of the community. Honoring parents makes children trustworthy to their parents.
Killing violates trust in different ways. Killing violates God’s trust in us to honor the sanctity of life and violates the trust we have in each other to, if nothing else, at least respect each others basic living and being.
It is in our trusting God and trusting each other that makes life holy. Something that I experienced in ministry made me appreciate profoundly how closely bound trust and holiness are.
A long time before I became a minister, there was something that I had learned that ministers never do. I had learned that you have to be a fool to break this rule and indeed it was, and still is in many places, a rule or a commandment of the highest order. That unbreakable regulation that I had drummed into me was that when ministers are thinking about moving to a new parish, they don’t mention a word of those plans and thoughts to parishioners. Discussion, even a hint, is strictly verboten.
There is some wisdom in that line of thought. Generally speaking, persons of responsibility in any institution need to keep thoughts about career changes confidential if for no other reason than to maintain a working and workable position until it is time to make the change.
But confidentiality is one thing, and total secrecy is another. And trust and secrecy really don’t have much to do with each other and when one is present, there is little room left for the other to be present.
The commandment I had learned was that for ministers even thinking about career options should be a secret as far as parishioners are concerned.
I operated under that rule for a couple moves in the early years of my ministry. Not a soul in the church knew what I was up to. I asked a few people to contribute to my profile with the standard UCC line, profiles are supposed to be updated every four or five years as a matter of routine and I would appreciate your contribution to this process for me.
I went out, did my thing in the search process, received a new call and then walloped my old congregation with the surprise of my resignation.
Each time I did that, I was left with the proverbial bad taste in my mouth. It didn’t seem right and the lack of rightness in it all for me was the lack of trust going on between me and my parishioners as I entered the UCC Search Process.
I decided that I was never going to do it that way again. And then I ended up in a pulpit for 22 years trying to find another way. I finally did, I found the way of trust.
When I began to wonder about how much longer that pastorate should go and started to agitate in my heart about moving on, I decided to include parishioners in the process. It began with informal conversation and discussions with a few. Then the group grew to include those who contributed to my profile knowing why they were being asked. There were parishioners who took Cheryl and me to the airport when we left for interviews and met us when we came back. There were parishioners who shared reading some of the church profiles I was receiving and who laughed, cried over others and said, “You are crazy if you go there,” over others. There were parishioners on every major board and committee in the church who know what I was doing and who simply quietly stood by until the day came which we all knew would come sometime. There were about twenty parishioners in that group. I let each one know who the other 19 were because many of them were friends of each other and I didn’t want them thinking they had to keep secrets from each other.
Amazingly, this group of twenty parishioners completely kept my confidence for nearly two years.
I experienced something in the search process that I had never experienced before and had even been told that it was impossible to experience. What I experienced was trust and how holy trust can make life. I didn’t live by the rules, but let a new rule, the rule of trust live in my heart.
Because of that trusting experience, and maybe a few others, I have a deep respect for how competent and trustworthy United Church of Christ people can be. I wouldn’t want to go back to just living by the rules. Everything that the was going on in the temple that Jesus cleansed, and then out and out replaced, was according to the rules and by the book.
The religious authorities said, “How can we trust you if we can’t respect you?” Goodness knows, no respectable Jewish rabbi acts the way Jesus acted.
The authorities had it backwards as we so often do.
Trust is the door that leads to respect and holiness.
My Lenten theme this year has been “no longer strangers.” Trust frees us from being strangers to each other. We can be in each other’s faced and space day after day and still be strangers to each other. Trust opens the door to respect and knowing each other at levels, that as long as all we are doing is following the rules, we can only hope might exist.