Third Sunday in Lent

Grace be to you and peace from God our father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Ten Commandments. Most of us have heard of them. Some of us can name them all. I am glad we have them as one of our Bible readings this morning so we can look at them a little more closely.

The Ten Commandments were given to the people of God after they had escaped from slavery in Egypt and before they got into the Promised Land. They were camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Their leader Moses went up the mountain to talk to God, and God gave them a bunch of rules, including these ten.

What I had never really thought about until I read a commentary on it this week is the context in which these commandments were given. If I thought about it at all, I pictured it as God's rules if the people wanted to be his people. They would almost be like a code of conduct before you can rent an apartment or a pre-nuptial agreement before you get married: If you agree to these rules, then we can have a relationship.

However, the actual situation there below Mount Sinai in the desert was different. The people were already God's people. He had made a covenant with their ancestor Noah; we heard about that two weeks ago. He had made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants; we read about that last week. So, these people of Israel are already God's people when they camp at Sinai, and have been for a long time. God had already pledged his love and support and blessing and faithfulness to them. When God fights with Pharaoh about the release of the Hebrews, what does he famously say? “Let my people go!”

 So when God hands down the Ten Commandments, God and the people of Israel have already enjoyed a long relationship with each other. In particular, the people who are gathered there at the mountain have just experience God's power and providence at its best: The exodus and liberation from slavery, the crossing of the sea in a miracle beyond belief, water in the desert, daily manna, and help against hostile tribes. God has been good to them.

It is at this point, after all those wonders and miracles and signs of love, that God gives Israel these ten rules to live by. They are not the conditions on which the people are allowed to call themselves God's people, and if they mess up they are out. Rather, they are a guide for how the people are to live in response to God's amazing deeds for them. What does it look like in daily life to be a beloved child of God?

Yes, daily life. Isn't it interesting that of the ten commandments, 3 deal with how we live towards God and 7 with how we live towards other people? God desires his children to make God their only God, to respect God’s name and not abuse it, and to keep one day a week as a holy day of worship and regeneration.

The rest of the commandments deal with the challenges of living with other people. Honor your elders. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not break up marriages. Be honest. Don't be greedy or jealous. These are all rules we are to follow in our daily lives. This is about how we treat our family, our neighbor, our co-worker, our boss, the cafeteria lady, the janitor, the CEO, the police officer, the car mechanic, the obnoxious guy two houses down who always revs his engine, the hot chick across the street, the classmate who wants to copy your homework, and on and on.

These rules are about living as the child of a generous and loving God out in the world. God wants his people to be a holy nation that would be a light to world and would attract other nations to come and learn about this amazing God who had set them free. And they were to do that by respecting and spending time with God, and by living in a godly way in the real world. Through the lives of the people, God would be out in the real world, transforming it with grace. God would be out of the box.

That God has come out of the box is also the theme in the story of Jesus chasing money changers out of the temple.

A bit of background about the temple: By the time of Jesus, the temple in Jerusalem was the place where the nation worshiped. It was where the High Priest resided and connected the people with God. It was the only place where you could bring the various sacrifices demanded by Jewish laws. It was hugely important.

The temple was were God was. And if you wanted to worship God, sacrifice to God, hear God's word of forgiveness, you had to go to the temple. Oh, and you had to be Jewish to go there. Non-Jews had to stay beyond a balustrade on the platform, by the threat of death. Women could come a little closer to the temple's courtyard; but only Jewish men could go into the temple, only priests could go to the front of the temple, and only the High Priest could go into the Holy of Holies, the chamber where heaven and earth were thought to meet.

So access to God was organized and restricted.

Along comes Jesus with his whip. He is aghast at the marketplace atmosphere he finds in the temple and throws the merchants out. The authorities don't like this. But what really threatens them is what Jesus says next: Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Gospel writer John helpfully adds that Jesus is talking about himself, his death and resurrection.

What Jesus is saying here is that you can tear the temple down because from now on you can find God's presence in Jesus Christ. You can forget temple walls and court yards and sacrifices; in Jesus Christ, God has come out of the temple to meet the people where they are. God has come out of the box. God is in the real world.

The story of Jesus' chasing the money changers out of the temple appears in all four gospel accounts. In the other three gospels, the story comes at the very end, and it is the reason that the authorities finally decide to get Jesus arrested and killed.

John, however, puts the story right at the beginning. After the baptism, the gathering of the first disciples, and the wedding in Cana, this is the first really public thing Jesus does. It's the opening salvo: God is in the world in a new way; God is out of the box; come along and see what amazing things can happen when God meets his people out in the real world.

The challenge for us is: Do we see God out in the real world? Do we expect God out in the real world?

A few years ago, the Washington Post did an experiment: They wanted to see if people would recognize a good thing if they encountered it in an unexpected place. So, they asked world-famous violinist Joshua Bell to play in a Metro station with his violin case open in front of him. He played amazingly difficult pieces, on a violin worth 3.5 million Dollars.

And nobody noticed the quality of what was going on. At the end of a few hours, he had collected tips worth $32.17; that's less than the cheapest ticket to his latest concert. People did not expect a world-class violinist in the Metro station, and so they didn't know what they were experiencing.

Are we making the same mistake with expecting God's presence? I am afraid we are always tempted to put God in a box again. The people of Israel at Mount Sinai experienced God out of the box and learned to expect God's presence in the way they went about their daily lives. Then, over the next few centuries, worship became more and more formal, and more and more restrictive, until God ended up in the box that was the temple, with only certain people allowed to visit him there.

In Jesus Christ, God left that box once again. God walked the countryside, healed people, changed lives, and invited absolutely everyone to bask in the presence of a loving, generous God.

I am afraid that we believers are always in danger of putting God back in the box. We are not so much doing it by restricting access: Anyone is welcome here, and we have made great strides in making our worship easier to join and to understand.

The way we are putting God in a box is by only expecting to meet God here, for one hour, on Sunday morning. This is God's house. This is where we meet God. This is where we hear the word and receive the sacraments and worship God because this is where God is present. And then we go out into the real world and go about our busy lives and forget that God is there, too.

A few years ago, Calvary’s Bible study group discussed the Apostle's Creed, the creed we recite here every Sunday but don't think about too much. In one of our meetings, the curriculum asked us to do an interesting exercise. We were asked to think back what we were doing the previous Tuesday at 2 PM, the previous Friday at 8 PM, and the previous Sunday at 11:00 AM. We were challenged to be specific; not just “I was at work” but “I was working on this project.”

We then shared what we had been doing and the group examined which person of the Trinity we had experienced at those times and how. The results were amazing: We discovered that God the Father and Creator and Lord of the Sabbath had been with us through blessing us with rest, feeding us with food for body and soul, and liberating us from snow through the kindness of neighbors. Jesus Christ had been active by calling us to be disciples, by sharing his body and blood in holy communion, and by healing a loved one. The Holy Spirit had blessed us with family and caring neighbors, gathered us for worship, and inspired us at work.

It turned out that God was all over our lives. At work, at rest, at church, and everywhere in between. Seeing all this on the white board made us realize just how present God is with us. God is indeed out of the box. And the more we let him be out there - and the more we expect him to be out there -, the more we will sense God with us wherever we are and whatever we do.

The Lutheran Church has one teaching that doesn't get nearly enough attention: The priesthood of all believers. Luther was adamant that there is nothing special about the calling of clergy. He taught that everyone has a calling to some kind of work that helps to bless all the people of God. The dentist, the realtor, the teacher, the parent, the nurse, the accountant, the government worker, the trash collector, absolutely everyone is called by God and is doing service to God when going about the job in a faithful way. Luther once wrote that the milk maid going about her duties faithfully was just as much worshiping God as the bishop leading the service.

It brings us back to what we said about the ten commandments earlier: God cares about our daily lives. God is there with us, and through God’s presence in our work, God helps us to bless and transform the world.

Good people of God, when you go about your professions or tasks, remember that you are serving God. You are blessing the world with your skills and contributions. God is with you as you go about your daily jobs. So, expect God to be there. God is out of the box and goes to work with you.

This week, I am giving you a challenge: I want you to keep your eyes open to look for signs of God's presence. This can be at work, at home, in the community, at your volunteer positions, at play and recreation, anywhere. Look for God.

And when you see God, I would love for you to share it. Talk about it at Godspotting, post it on Calvary’s facebook page, write a little blurb about it and/or take a picture of it and put it on the bulletin board in the fellowship hall. I want to hear your stories and see your images of God's presence. We can all be inspired by the faith experiences of other people. This way, we will all get better are recognizing it when God touches our lives.

For God is out of the box. And he is with you. And thanks be to God for that! Amen.