So I'm working with this John 2 text for youth group tonight. It hit me new this time around. On the one hand, I'm dealing with the juxtaposition of this text to the miracle of turning water into wine. On the other, I feel like I've been deeper in the ways that we sell sacrifices in the temple than ever before in my life.
What would Jesus do with our church? There is so much hope in his fermenting water, keeping the party going, encouraging the union of this couple at the wedding. But then he breaks into the temple and starts throwing money, animals, maybe even people around. Josh (my roommate) commented tonight that it seems like every episode in John (and all the gospels, for that matter) has the same point: Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is God Incarnate. Jesus is the Revelation, the Word, Life Eternal.
On Sunday morning this week, we went over Jesus walking on the water in Mark and it is interesting because the text says that Jesus was "passing by" the disciples as they were straining at the oars. He went to help them, but then he just decided to pass on by. Was Jesus being coy? Or was he tired of helping people--he just helped 5,000 men (not counting women and children)! Maybe there's a better answer. Jesus passes by, the way the Angel of Death passes by at Passover, the way God passes by Moses in the cleft of the rock, the way God passes by Elijah in a whisper. Jesus is revealed as the great I Am. In a minor Sea of Galilee squall.
I sometimes wonder if church has anything to do with revelation these days. Are we concerned about revealing the nature of who God is? Do we have it in our hearts to let God reveal God's self in us even as we seek God outside of ourselves? My good friends are searching for a church in the Riverside-Loma Linda area and one of them found herself crying at the emptiness of one of the Nazarene churches they visited. What is the goal of our liturgy? What is the purpose of our free-form worship? Why do we come to the altar and ingest the body and blood of Jesus? What do we do with our time, our interests, our desires? Is it all just a spinning into nothing or is it a search for revelation, for encountering the revealed, passing-by God?
In our encounters, we reflect.
Jesus throws the people out of the temple who have abandoned the thought that God is to be revealed in the temple and have come to use it for other purposes. I remember once at work when a young, confused man came into my office and we talked about his sexuality. He was pretty convinced that he was gay and wanted to know what to think about it. I told him to read John 15 and then we could talk. If he felt like he could remain in Christ and still be gay, then we could start to have a conversation but this whole talk of homosexuality, of capitalism, of feminism, of whatever you want as an issue to be dealt with by scholars and leaders, judged on a spectrum of what the Bible "says about it" leads us into artificial ways of thinking. Even the Scriptures are revelation. Maybe our first question ought to be, "How is Christ revealed in it?"
God is revealed very poorly in exploitative practices, when the marketplace controls the worship place. I'm still really unsure about how God is revealed when two men or two women have sex with one another--committed or not. God is revealed clearly when Jesus climbs into the boat, the winds of opposition dies down, and discipleship takes place. This I know.
These are just some thoughts. Peace and grace.
