St. Paul's Episcopal Church

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
425 Cleveland Ave SW
Canton, Ohio 44702
Phone: 330-455-0286
Fax: 330-455-9818
E-mail: office@stpaulscanton.org

3rd Sunday in Lent
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH
Exodus 20:1-17, John 2:13-22

March 15, 2009
The Rev. Barbara Bond

Getting Down to the Essentials

Yesterday, about 15 of us gathered for a quiet day to consider the issue of Simplicity. We quickly discovered it was more than getting rid of a few possessions. It was about close encounters with God.

Many of us yearn for a simpler life. When I was featured in a Boise, Idaho, newspaper article in 1995 that described my then-simple life, I was approached by many people yearning to emulate me. They wanted to clean out their closets, have yard sales, clear the clutter out of their homes. As our Quiet Day group discovered, that is only the beginning.

We considered our cluttered lives from many aspects. “Too much stuff” was just the first step. The second step was very positive: about creating sacred space for our relationship with God – this is about real, physical space; and we all imagined how we could do that in our own homes. The third step was about Time – how Time gets away from us, how we speed up our lives at a frenetic pace, often rushing past the important things. The final issue was Activity: how we overburden ourselves with too much to do, cluttering our lives with activities that are not life-giving nor soul-nourishing. In the end, it was all about priorities: deciding what is important, whether that be possessions or activities. It was about getting down to essentials.

God delivered a message by way of Moses that was about getting down to essentials. We call this message the Ten Commandments, or the Law. Ten rules to live by, ten essentials to a holy life, ten rules for behavior. Number One is to love God more than anything, and Number Two is to love your neighbor as yourself. When Jesus reiterated the commandments, he said these two were the most important, and all the others followed from them: love God, and love your neighbor. That’s getting down to essentials.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is getting down to essentials again. He comes upon the holiest place in Israel, the great Temple in Jerusalem, which has been the focal point for Jewish worship for about a thousand years. When the Temple was destroyed by invaders five hundred years before, it was quickly rebuilt, and the Temple during Jesus’ time was huge and glorious, enlarged by King Herod the Great. Jesus calls it “my father’s house.” Its primary function was praising God and offering sacrifices to God. Unfortunately, the practices had developed peculiarly, to the profit of many entrepreneurs. You want to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving? Then buy the bird, or the lamb, or the goat at exorbitant prices, and the priests will sacrifice it for you. You want to pay your Temple tax? Put your money right here. And your Roman money is not good enough – exchange it for Temple money. The Temple was starting to look like a marketplace, and Jesus was furious. He literally threw out the entrepreneurs, an action that is sometimes called “cleansing the Temple.” He was trying to get down to the essentials – praising God, not selling prayers.

It throws some light on our Quiet Day considerations – how easy it is to clutter up our good intentions with the distractions of everyday life, often with the enticements of the marketplace. Such crowding and cluttering can crowd out our relationship with God.

As we were considering that on Saturday morning, I received a phone call, informing me of the death of our former Senior Warden. Ed Cox was 69 years old and had succumbed to illness with frightening speed. Our discussion of use of time took on a different cast, as we mourned the loss of our friend and contemplated the swift passage of life. I also heard about the serious, life-threatening illness of a friend, and that increased my concern about time. I wondered if I were using my own time wisely. Faced with illness or death, could I say that I had used my time on earth to the glory of God and to the service of others? Am I using my time to nurture my relationships with God and my neighbor?

That is getting down to essentials. We have standards by which we can judge what we do, about how we spend our time and resources. Jesus was always trying to get our attention on this issue – his parables frequently asked the question: “Your money or your life?” In this generation, we might ask, “Your IPod or your friends? “Your collectibles all over the place, or empty space for sacred experience?” “Your busy schedule, or time with your loved ones?”

Lent is the season for these questions: for getting down to essentials, to love of God and our neighbor. Perhaps our own interior Temples need some cleansing too.