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Sermon - Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (B) - 30th August 2009
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30am - ST AIDAN’S PATRONAL FESTIVAL
Over the years, new churches have sought to choose out a hero of the faith for their dedication. Then, annually they typically celebrate a patronal festival where the stories of the hero saint are rehearsed and sometimes, almost basked in. Many of you have been here at St Aidan’s for many years and would surely know more about St Aidan that I do. I thank you particularly therefore that you are entrusting the sermon for St Aidan’s Day to me.
While today it is right and proper for us to recall St Aidan and rejoice in his exploits and character and give thanks for his life and work, it would be a pretty shallow way to celebrate if we did not try to learn something from him to nudge us forward in our commitment to God, in our sanctification, in our church life, so that the coming year can reflect growth, both personal and congregational. To that end, I would like this morning to reflect on both the gospel reading where we have the telling of a well-known incident in the life of our Lord and on the life of St Aidan.
Our gospel reading is from St Matthew’s gospel, but it is interesting to note that this incident, told ever so briefly, is recorded in all four gospels.
- In Matthew, it comes straight after the telling of the sending of the disciples to fetch the donkey and to tell the owner “The Lord has need of it.”.
- In Mark, it follows the donkey episode, but not immediately. Mark actually says it was late, so they went to Bethanyrather than into Jerusalem and to the Temple. It was next day in that version that they went to the Temple and this story occurred, with the episode of the withering of the fig tree on the way.
- Luke, always human and compassionate, has the donkey episode, then the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then Jesus weeping over Jerusalem before this so called “cleansing of the Temple”. It is after that that, we see the chief priests and the leaders and teachers of the law trying to kill him. With minor variations, these three gospel writers locate the episode chronologically in much the same place, late in Jesus’ ministry and actually leading to his death.
- John’s gospel, we think, is a composite work that emanated from a community who enshrined in writing the main events of Jesus’ life and reflections on Jesus’ teaching to safeguard their understanding of the Christian faith. In John’s gospel, most of us are aware of the amazing introduction “In the beginning was the Word”. We are also familiar in chapter 2 with the telling of Jesus’ first miracle, the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast. And then, chapter 3 is the familiar story of Nicodemus coming to him at night, for fear of the Jews and being told that he must be born again. I had not noticed before I sat to prepare this, that the episode of driving the stall holders from the Temple is slipped in after the miracle at the wedding and before the visit of Nicodemus. Is it early in that gospel to give it some importance? Does getting it right about worship and the temple relate to entering the kingdom by being born again?
The other gospel writers could have included Jesus weeping over Jerusalem as he looked over it before going in and cleaning up the Temple, but they didn’t. Perhaps Gallilean boys did not cry and they were embarrassed to say that Jesus shed tears over Jerusalem.
At the end of the episode, the narrative gospels indicate that the rulers were then set on killing Jesus. In John’s gospel, the episode was for the Jews, a reminder of the scripture “Zeal for your house will consume me” and they demanded of Jesus “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Perhaps they were seeking some justification for what Jesus had done in the Temple rather than just becoming furious and bent on killing him.
Probably the stories all have some elements of an accurate narrative about them but no one telling of it has them all.
So, what do we make of the episode as we have it today in Matthew’s gospel? It certainly seems out of character for Jesus to be so angry and in a calculated way to actually grab up rope to make a whip and then use it in such violent and threatening behaviour. It is at best rather uncomfortable-making!
How do we interpret this? I have to say, I initially feel rather sorry for the stall holders. It would be fair to say some would have started out providing a service and probably making an honest and honourable living. At the Passover, the historian Josephus says that as many as four million people came to the Temple in Jerusalem from all over the known world. Some put it at a million, but imagine Jerusalem and the Temple expanding to contain even a million people. Not only bigger than Ben Hur, but bigger, in comparison, than our Sydney Olympics. For some, it would have been impossible to bring with them the requisite lamb or a pair of doves for sacrifice, so in theory, the sellers were providing a necessary service for the pilgrims.
All males over 20 years had to pay a Temple tax annually at this time of year. I guess it means effectively each household represented had to pay the tax. The requisite money was a silver half shekel, and no foreign money was accepted as valid currency for this Temple tax. Up to a certain date, you could change your money outside the Temple, but after that date, only silver Temple coinage, available from stalls inside the Temple precinct was accepted. So, if you had not paid your tax in time, if you were coming from afar, you would have to change your foreign money within the Temple area and so you could easily be ripped off with really a terrible exchange rate. It is plain to see too, how easy it would be for the temple inspectors to look at an animal brought for an offering and to declare it to be blemished, in order to increase the sales at the Temple stalls. Foreigners were virtually over a barrel in having to buy there and so the sky could be the limit for the price charged. While we can surmise that it would have been easy for the stall holders to make exorbitant profits and eventually see what they did as pure commerce rather than Temple service, we know that the family of Annas the high priest, virtually had control over all the stalls. Sounds rather like theTemple mafia! Some thirty years after this event, an infuriated mob robbed the Temple booths and dragged the sons of Annas to their deaths. So there is some evidence that others too were angered as Jesus was.
Where then did the traders cross the line? When did they stop providing a service for people to engage in worship according to the rules and traditions and when did they start ripping people off and ignoring that the Temple was, as Jesus said to them: “ a house of prayer for all the nations.” And then he added “But you have made it a den of robbers”. Ultimately the stall holders were not contributing to the worship of the Temple nor to the proper conduct of the Temple courts as a legitimate place for socialising and worshipping. Some scholars interpret Jesus’ action much more radically, in saying that what he was berating them for was for the whole sacrificial system. If indeed that was his intention, we note that his own sacrificial death shortly afterwards put an end once and for all to that system for us.
Let me now leave aside the cleansing of the Temple and move to a brief consideration of St Aidan about whose life we actually know very little. We do know that he lived and worked in the early 600s. An Irish monk, called from the well placed community on the island of Iona which is now Scottish, he was strongly committed to bringing the Christian faith back into Northumbria and was well supported by King Oswald in doing so. Contemporary sources say he was mild and gentle, that he had a passionate love of virtue. The Venerable Bede speaking of Aidan says “He cultivated peace and love, purity and humility; he was above anger and greed and despised pride and conceit. He set himself to keep and teach the laws of God and was diligent in study and in prayer. I greatly admire all those things about Aidan.” We too no doubt admire those qualities in him. But there is more… It was not an easy task that he took on. He was an NESB boy. Non English speaking background. He faced the difficulty at first of often needing a translator to translate from Irish to English. Bishop Corman, his predecessor sent to convert these English, was a spectacular failure and was recalled because the Northumbrians were said to be too uncivilised and stubborn to be converted. For all that commentators speak of Aidan’s gentleness and mildness, there was a feistiness about him and he seems to have been a good operator and strategist. He said quite critically of his predecessor’s failure: “They might have responded better to a gentler approach”. When the king gave him a gift of a horse so he did not have to keep walking around, he gave the horse to a beggar who he said needed it. That was a brave thing to spurn the gift of your king! The society to which he came actually had people sold into slavery. He is on record as having ransomed such people to secure their release and freedom – another confronting act towards the rich and powerful in the community. He walked the streets and lanes talking the faith with those he met. He gossiped the faith, he chatted about it to everyone he met. Instead of wanting to cling to leadership and position, he took in 12 local youths to train in his monastery with a mind to ensuring an English succession of leadership in the church in the region. It is always easier to go with the status quo and it would have been simpler surely to have brought in more Irish monks to the succession of leadership. So this was a strong and courageous move to train up the locals and younger people at that! He also had the discernment to call Hilda to become abbess at a time when she was going to go abroad to a convent where her sister was, Hilda the woman from whose abbey five men became bishops. Aidan strikes me not only as a godly man, but a very modern man of insight and of foresight for the faith in Northumbria.
From the life of Aidan and from the episode of Jesus cleansing the temple as it has been called, there are real questions raised for us and the way we go about church life. Let me try to raise a few of them for your consideration.
If Jesus was trying to put an end to the whole sacrificial system of the temple, what practices or traditions here at St Aidan’s might Jesus want to overturn to enable us to move in a fresh and revitalised direction? That’s a confronting question isn’t it?
Let me tell two stories about Christian groups having to rethink…
In an Ashram in India, the leader had a cat the yowled during prayers and so he took to tying up the cat out of the way at prayer time. Then the leader died and a new leader was inducted. He knew that the cat had to be tied up during prayers and so he faithfully tied up the cat each day. Then finally the old cat died and the community bought a new cat. Each day at prayer time, the leader tied up the new cat, a cat that did not yowl, because the leader knew the time-honoured ritual of the community that the cat be tied up at prayer time.
I wonder if we are unnecessarily tying up some cats and seeing it as a sacred duty?
Did you hear the story in the news last Monday night about the two southern Baptist congregations that have been segregated for the whole of their history but have now united. The black congregation needed a bigger space to meet for worship; the white congregation was aging and needed some young people in their midst before their congregation disappeared through natural attrition. The impact of the financial crisis exacerbated both their situations and impelled them to unite. What did they then do? They then went back to scripture and told people that the scriptures talked about unity. They had ignored those very scriptures or at least not reflected on them and applied them in their own situation till external events forced them to act. Will St Aidan’s try to go back and look courageously at our core Christian teachings to try to be open to where God wants to lead. God must be leading somewhere, not nowhere, nor in ever-diminishing circles. We must constantly and prayerfully be open to being nudged by God to think afresh about how things are done and then to act in response to that leading.
It is not too hard to picture Jesus in our mind’s eye, going into the Temple and hurling things around. Can we picture Jesus, our God in human form, coming into this service or to morning tea afterwards…? Is there anything that would really stir him to anger about what we are doing or what we are failing to do? What do you think we might change if we knew he was coming … if he was coming for a one-off visit or coming to join the congregation?
Are we gossiping the Gospel to those around us as Aidan did, or are we simply gossiping? Do we keep to ourselves and stick with safe, boring, comfortable, non-confronting conversation that does not enable anyone to grow?
We cannot have such a confronting gospel reading for our patronal festival and not allow ourselves to be confronted by it and inspired by the life of St Aidan.
May we go forward, challenged and inspired, by the challenge of Jesus and the inspiration of St Aidan. May it be a happy St Aidan’s Day, the bringer of growth for us all personally and for our congregation, so that next St Aidan’s Day, we are able to offer to God a good year’s work in his service and our heartfelt thanks for his transforming presence in our midst.