Reality Check sermon

Ten days ago, the temperatures approached 60, the grass was green, daffodils and tulips were beginning to sprout. This morning our homes and Village are blanketed in a layer of snow. SPRING in Central New York. One of the writers for the Paper, described that those two days, a week ago, with a high in the 50s and low 60s were our Spring and Summer and now we are back in Winter again, when according to the Stars and Seasons, Winter does not end until tomorrow.

Late this week, homeowners in this Village and Township went to their mailboxes and discovered that the property they live in was in some cases worth less than they thought, and in many cases was worth a great deal more. That the home that was bought for $60,000 or 100,000 or $160,000; was now worth $300, or $400 or $500,000, or lakefront several million dollars. All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with how well you vacuum, or how lovely is our home, but a simple comparison to properties in other parts of the City, other parts of the State, and to other States. In the end, these values are all Monopoly money, with no estimation of what “HOME” means to any of us.

Today, I am healthy and strong, in the prime of life, tomorrow tests come back saying I
have a Cancer, part of my life is fighting against and killing the rest of me. I undergo radiation, and surgery and chemo therapy, food no longer has flavor, strength just is not there, I have a name for death, for my death, and then suddenly, as quickly as it came, I am told the cancer is gone. Can I believe it? How do we describe the meaning and value of “LIFE”?

A child is born. The most basic and common of biological events. Yet, in that moment, our lives are forever changed.

In the Enlightenment, the assumption was that there is a universal truth, one universal reality, we could all eventually know and understand.
Today, we claim to live in Post-Modern Times, recognizing that women and men are different, our experiences and cultures and circumstance of our lives cause each of us to witness life differently, so everyone’s reality is unique to that person. The problem we each struggle with is the disconnect between our lives and everyone/ everything else.

We imagine ourselves, as separate, the Center of our existence, searching for our fulfillment.
Imagine, what reality could be, if we accepted life different. If we were not cynical, or pessimistic, if we did not try to convince ourselves and the world we are better than we are. If we did not lie, if there were no hate. If we understood ourselves in relationship to God, as the Center of the Cosmos, with nothing of comparison, no desire for Wealth, or Prestige, or War, no desire for Lust, no desire to impress our neighbors, or to have what they possess. A desire only to love God, to love one another, and to love life.
What if routinely, as routinely as we take vitamins, as routinely as we exercise, as routinely as we turn on the television, we could stop from all we routinely do, to reassess, to Check Reality. If we assumed, we are not perfect, and we do not have to be, but we could know what is right, and we could stop periodically throughout life to adjust reality.
Our Scriptures this day describe a REALITY CHECK, where what we thought we knew, what we took for granted, suddenly means something totally different to us.
Jesus went to a wedding. How many of us have ever gone to a wedding, not as Bride or Groom or part of the Bridal party, but simply gone as a guest, a friend of a friend of family? Suddenly, someone realizes that the wine is gone. In a time of LIMITED RESOURCES, SCRACITY, human temptation is to question “Where’s Mine?” Instead, Mary calls her son to attend to everyone else’s problem, asking “What are you going to do?” Rather than questioning, the fairness, or the cost to us, this parent’s REALITY CHECK to their child is “GIVE OF YOURSELF”. “What can you share? What do you have to offer?” Would that as parents, instead of pride and defensiveness and vicariously living through them, we could each tell our sons and daughters, “Here are the problems in our Community, do something.”

The next day, Jesus led his family and his disciples to Capernaum, then at Passover goes up to Jerusalem. He enters the Temple at Jerusalem, the holiest place for Sacrifice, prayer and the worship of God, in the holiest City, at the Holiest Season of the Year, and up and down the aisles are set booths for tax collectors and money changers, behind these are livestock, Bulls and Heifers, Sheep, Rams and Goats and Lambs, cages of Doves, Pigeons and Sparrows.
Imagine the smells and sounds, and crowds and commerce in this House of God.

The Religious Law was to bring for sacrifice an unblemished offering. So not unlike the State Fair, animals we be brought to be judged, judged as worthy of being an offering for atonement of your sins, reconciliation of your life’s worth. If unacceptable, you could trade your animal for another sacrifice and pay the difference. But the money for purchase of a sacrifice could not be common currency of the Roman Empire, or the Greeks, this is money for purchase of a sacrifice in worship, so must be bought with Temple currency. You don’t have Temple currency, then for a fee you can exchange your money. But, as you do, and as you sell and buy your sacrifice, there is a tax assessed.

This, was the setting for the Ark of the Covenant. This was the Temple too Holy for King David to use his hands to build, because he had been too profaned by war. This was the Temple of King Solomon, destroyed and rebuilt. Eight years ago, it took us a full year of construction to build the Offices, Classrooms and Meeting Spaces of this Church. Three years ago, it took three months to build the Organ Chambers, three months to assemble the pieces of the Organ, three months to voice the Organ for this Sanctuary… Imagine the reverence and pride, they felt for their Sanctuary, which had take 46 years to rebuild.

And Jesus, has the reverence, the integrity of faith, to make a whip of chords and drive everyone and everything out of that place. Would that we each could see the Church, NOT as a Tax Right-Off. Not as a place of Religion and Tradition, a building and program. But that the TEMPLE OF GOD, the Temple of our Sacrifice for the wrongs of our lives, was our own body, our own life, given to God. That would be a sacrifice worthy of our sins.
As we mentioned at the Lenten Supper last Wednesday…Irenaeus, at the end of the Second century challenged Reality. Marcion had been teaching that the Old Testament has no validity now that Christ has come. While others, believed the Messiah still was not here. Irenaeus’ gift to the Church, was in describing that the Old and New Testaments both are needed, and that the core teaching of all the Old Testament was the Gift of the 10 Commandments. Not only the Laws themselves, but their gift by God. This was not Hamurabi’s Code, or the Independent Appraisers’ Assessment, like Noah’s Rainbow never again to destroy the Earth; like Abraham and Sarah’s child as proof that God is not yet finished with us; the 10 Commandments are a gift and Promise from God, that God will be in relationship to Creation.

The wonder of the Decalogue, the 10 Commandments, was for the People of the Exodus. They had known Pharaoh, who enacted Laws at whim, Laws that punished, Laws that created Classes among peoples, Laws that made Pharaoh into a God. We nostalgically recall the Crossing at the Red Sea as a Miracle, where Moses and the People were set free. The full text describes the Crossing at the Red Sea as a War between YHWH’s love and Pharaoh’s technology.
After the battle was over, the shore was filled with the broken bodies and broken weapons of Pharaoh’s army. The God who had erupted on Creation at the time of Noah, the God who had decimated the Pharaohs of Egypt, now called the people to God’s Holy Mountain to establish the Laws of their relationship. But instead of a long list of Laws, what God gave through Moses was a simple straightforward PHILOSOPHY of life.

1. HAVE NO OTHER GODS
2. WORSHIP NOTHING ELSE BUT GOD
3. DO NOT TAKE GOD’S NAME FOR OTHER PURPOSES
4. HONOR THE SABBATH
5. HONOR YOUR PARENTS
6. HONOR LIFE and Do Not Kill
7. HONOR MARRIAGE and Do Not Commit Adultery
8. HONOR ONE ANOTHER and Do Not Steal
9. HONOR THE TRUTH and Do Not Lie
10. HONOR YOUR COMMUNITY, Do Not Covet

What would reality be, if instead of worrying about property values, and job security, instead of worrying about what the neighbor’s think, or why we cannot have what they possess, if we followed this foundational code of life? Love God, love one another.