I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore...
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” As I rolled this week’s gospel around in my mind, allowing it to percolate through my synapses toward sermon preparation, the image that kept recurring was that of Howard Beale, as played by actor Peter Finch in the film “Network.” In that 1976 film, writer Paddy Chayevsky skewered the media, but his morality play actually illuminates a much broader theme, dealing with the total dehumanization, commercialization and economization of American life. By “economization” I refer to the trend to express all values in financial terms, the assignment of a dollar value to everything, and a concomitant trend to trivialize as naïve any ethic that seeks to resist this trend.
In the film, newscaster Howard Beale, given two weeks’ notice for lousy ratings, experiences a breakdown and threatens to commit suicide on the air. Given an opportunity for a more dignified goodbye after his disturbing outburst, he instead uses the time to rail against society’s ills. His ratings soar, and he becomes the centerpiece of a new show focused on his populist ranting. When this show, too, begins to decline in the ratings, the corporate powers-that-be arrange to have him shot to death, assassinated on the air. The last scene in the movie is a wonderfully cynical montage. As the narrator comments that Beale was the first man ever murdered because of bad ratings, an array of televisions play newscasts reporting the incident matter-of-factly, intermixed with the noise of commercials. The film won a slew of academy awards. It was considered groundbreaking in its time, but it turned out to be shockingly prescient, considering that we didn’t dream that media featuring the likes of Howard Stern, Don Imus, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh could ever become reality. Those of us raised on the journalism of Eric Severeid and Walter Cronkite find it hard to understand that we would have to rely on Court Jester John Stewart, interviewing CNBC’s Jim Cramer, to provide the defining journalistic moment of the current financial meltdown. The budding ecology movement and problems of economic justice of 1976 seem almost quaint next to the environmental and economic crises facing the world today. The state of the planet today gives Jesus’ anger in the Temple real piquancy.
This week’s gospel gives us a fascinating glimpse of a different facet of Jesus, one that may give us pause, but which may also give us a certain inspiration. The story of Jesus’ rampage in the temple appears in all the gospels. In all but John, it comes at the end of the story, when Jesus enters Jerusalem before being crucified. One can imagine Jesus being a bit edgy at this point in his ministry. John places the event at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Shortly after baptism, and right after the wedding at Cana, he flies into a rage and trashes the forecourt of the Temple. The placement of this event at the end of Jesus’ ministry in proximity to his death in a sense softens the event, while placing it at the beginning places source of the anger in high relief. We are invited to consider the message that Jesus sent with his anger as being part and parcel of his teaching throughout his ministry, not just a dramatic one-off under stress at the end. Sometimes when reading the gospels, it is hard to understand how what Jesus was doing scared the agents of Empire so much that they found his death to be a necessity. Imagining the message exemplified by his acts in the temple as a continuous thread in his teaching makes it clear: his message was an unambiguous challenge to the established order of things. He had to go.
So. Instead of asking WWJD, “what would Jesus do,” our question for today is “What would Jesus be furious about?” which is where it gets interesting.
Today, our Older Testament lesson highlighted the core of the Mosaic law, the ten commandments. Jesus didn’t enter the temple raging about the ten commandments, attacking thieves for stealing, adulterers for their fornicating, soldiers for their violence, or children for dishonoring their parents. No, Jesus storms into the temple, whip in hand, and crashes about denouncing, well, denouncing the religious for the economics of their religiocity.
The temple was the place where people went to worship, to experience their relationship with God. And Jesus enters the temple at the Passover, a time of critical religious observance. The temple functionaries, from the high priest right down to the lowliest cleaner-up of pigeon guano were all really there for the same reason: to meet the needs of the worshipers, to help people with their worship. You couldn’t put Roman coins in the temple offering box, it had to be Jerusalem shekels, so if you came from out of town you needed to deal with the money changers. (and of course, the many who had no coins at all couldn’t even enter.) But, the tables of the moneychangers provided a needed service. If you wanted to offer God an unblemished lamb or a bullock or a turtledove, as scripture required, you had to buy one- it made sense to have the livestock traders handy. All could be justified as necessary, as providing a service, helping people worship God appropriately.
Ouch! This is Jesus turning over my table. This is not somebody else’s problem, this is us. This is Jesus banging in here, kicking this pulpit over, tipping over the font, and flinging our Book of Common Prayer out the window. Jesus is mad about the way we try to domesticate God, the way confine our faith to church, and turn church activities into another item on our “to do” list between grocery shopping, servicing our car and pilates. He is appalled that the God of love, compassion and power beyond imagining, is diminished to the level of a business transaction. Vending machine faith: put a little money in this slot, and we’ll dispense a little dose of the divine to make you feel good. We come into the faith service-center empty on Sunday, and get topped up with enough energy and inspiration to make it through the week. Are clergy just dispensers of a product, hawking the wares, trying to keep up the market share for a particular brand while offering you something you are looking for? We’re all complicit in the transaction.
I see this so clearly in myself. I hunger for an meaningful encounter with the Holy Awesome God of the Universe, but when the rubber hits the road I find myself disturbingly ready to preach about a “three point plan for spiritual wellness” that offers to help us “touch base with our spirituality.” Not to plunge headlong into it, or abandon myself to the God of the burning bush, or, for that matter, take sides with the one who bursts into the church, whip in hand, overturning tables and driving confused animals up the aisles.
Which brings me to the ten commandments. God’s covenant with humankind was not given to us because the commandments are the most reliable means to help us get what we want to satisfy our own selfish desires. They are intended to expose our weakness, to remake us into God’s people, dedicated to make God’s vision for humanity a reality.
Jesus is not a very satisfying guru for those who are after nice, acceptable, feel-good religion. What we are called to do as Christians is to hand ourselves over, body and soul, to the God of the Universe, to the often frightening and all-consuming God, the one who calls us to ultimate table fellowship through his Son, to turn the mercantile vision of the world of scarcity into one of radical abundance for all people. This is a table to approach with reverence and awe, not with a mere nod of familiarity. When we ask God to pour out God’s holy spirit on the bread and wine we share, and to pour it out on us that we may be the body of Christ, just what do we think we are asking for? Do we just mouth it without seriously considering the implications? Do we really want that Holy Spirit to infect us? If the Spirit does come to us in all-consuming fire and motivate us to be Christ in the world, there is no turning back. All our worries about whether to pursue a master’s degree or a doctorate, whether we can afford a new car, or whether to seek a new boyfriend or girlfriend or a new job pale in comparison. The personal implications of the economic crises on our own 401(k) are minimal in comparison with the havoc being wreaked on all of creation by the forces of empire and shortsighted economics of scarcity and greed.
Looking around the world today, reading the papers, seeing the newscasts, we should be mad as hell, but that righteous anger has been trained out of us. Jesus’ example in the temple is thus an important example. And expressing such righteous anger, speaking truth to power, can be unpleasant, but it is utterly necessary. As Jon Stewart said at the end of his interview of Cramer: “I hope that was as uncomfortable to watch as it was to do.”
We complain about inequality and financial rapaciousness, about global warming and economic meltdown, but we must fact the fact that the forces shaping these problems are selling to us what we ask for. We can’t respond to the enormous problems facing us by saying “Oh dear, how dreadful, but what can I do?” We need to get good and angry, and then use that anger, in a loving way, to effect change. Anger may help us expose and express the wrongs around us, but anger is not how we solve them. Jesus makes our job tougher: we must eschew violence, we must love the opposition, and try to love a new world into being. Ultimate love, not ultimate fighting.
When we pass the Eucharistic bread, it is really like passing a live hand grenade, because if its transforming power really takes we must say goodbye forever to our wan and sensible religion. When you hold the bread in your hands, you are holding the most volatile and mysterious power in the universe. And you can’t take that lightly, because if your hands become the hands of Christ, they could find themselves doing amazing, life-changing things.
Before us is a God who offers everything, who sacrifices everything~ but God will crash the tables over rather than accept less in return. Are we ready? As Christians we are called to be angry about what Jesus would be angry about, and to do something about it. And the way to act lies not in mimicking the violence of the powerful, but through love and sacrifice, shown to us in the ultimate form on the cross.
Amen.
The Rev. Colleen K. Sterne
March 15, 2009 (3 Lent, Year B) St. Michael’s
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2: 13-22
