Lent 3- Exodus 20.1-17- John 2.13-22- Mopping up the infant & Perfect Profiteroles
It’s Lent, and we all know it is traditionally meant to be a one of the heavier seasons, one for personally getting ready, self examining, of screwing up the eyes about our sinfulness to the point that we might induce a headache for ourselves.
It is Lent, so out comes the aspirin to salve that headache. No, I mean it, the rules for Lent are take 2 tablets a day- that’s what Moses said. On each tablet there was written 5 of the commandments, and it is during Lent that we get to revisit those words again.
And although there’s a lot of common sense there, they are not at all easy words to deal with in places. Particularly the bit about punishing children to a 3rd or 4th generation:
"You shall not bow down to [idols] or worship them; I the lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me." (v.5-6)
Phew! Let put this one straight right here, right now. Because this one little verse has been the undoing of many a genuine hearted person seeking God over the years. I’ll say it now: this is hyperbole- the language is set to help us see that doing the right thing will bring a high quality to our lived experience. That is all. It does not mean what is written in the words themselves. People are not punished by God for what their grandparents did. What kind of a parent is that? And we call God father? Is not all sin, held by Christ on the cross regardless of who committed and who repented? Is it not known the actions on the cross were done freely for us who did not deserve such love, and yet we were loved because we were God’s kiddywinks?
I like to think of it almost as if we are, spiritually, infantile as a species. Children when they are very small, are not in control of their bodies. They are messy, from one end, or the other, or both at the same time! Ah yes, that is a true trial of parenting, and let’s not hide that one from the likes of these hallowed walls. And yet, the parent doesn’t hate the child for being messy; they can’t help it, they don’t have the required bodily control, they need the parent to mop up after it. And in many ways, that is the spiritually lived experience of being a sinner, for us. In many ways no matter how hard we try, we can’t help it- we haven’t got the required heart-control to live as we need. We need the parental God to mop up after us constantly.
And in the Gospel today we see evidence of that as the money changers helping people have the currency in hand, that was used in the temple, to buy the products needed to make the necessary sacrifices prescribed in the Torah, worked away at their tables-- in the middle of the temple itself. Not only that, there would be commission on the exchange rates. And being temple driven, it is likely that the priests were behind a chunky uplift in the cost of changing the denarii into temple coinage, and this is what made Jesus angry.
Someone gave me a wonderful quote from Alan Partridge on this bit of the bible, which I have had to adapt for language that would not normally be used in public within these hallowed walls!
He said: "I couldn't help thinking of the teen Christ telling the money lenders that if they insisted on screwing people who were cash poor they should at least have the decency not to do it in a [flipping] temple.” And then he goes on to say as a footnote in his writings: “Christ Jesus, God Almighty, the Holy Ghost, if any of you are reading this I've got good news and bad news. The good news; Christianity is still really popular, despite a few bumps. The bad news, money lenders are doing even better, and that's got to hurt."
Jesus turning out the tables isn’t the punishment of wickedness aimed at individuals. All those people were caught up in a web of human complicity, even if they wanted to they couldn’t get out of it. No, what Jesus was doing was the parental mopping up of a society that wasn’t, and still isn’t, big enough to mop up for itself.
And we are asked to be Christ’s hands in our society today. We are asked to be the one’s turning tables, of the rich who feed on the poor, of the oppressed in the war zone of ideologies of various forms. And if you’re carrying within a slight sense of hypocrisy for daring to look at this Christ given calling, yes, well, that is why we have such a strong element of confession and reliance on God in our prayers and this deep deep season Lent, where we can own our own spiritually infantile messiness before God without shame. That’s what it’s for.
...
It is Lent. These topics are heavy, it’s time to lighten the load. It’s time, I think, to use another image to help us understand how God actually loves the fact that we are helpless needy infants. And true to my nature, I’m going call on an image that uses food, and not just any food, because as it’s Lent, this example requires the sweetest, most choklity, indulgent sort of food possible.
When I was young, I recall my dad used to like making desserts. He would never do the rest of the cooking, oh no! And often not the desserts either. But, once in a while, the dad dessert was the highlight of the weekend. Because when my dad cooked or made a dessert, it was an event! The whole house knew that dad was cooking! And his aimed for food was the profiterole. Now there’s something you need to know about how my dad works. You see, he is a perfectionist. It needs to be just right. And because of that, every time a batch of profiteroles wasn’t exactly as he had envisaged, we knew it would not be long before we would get them again.
We ate plenty. And yet, there was always some flaw in them, more often than not invisible to the likes of young me, whose brain said ‘sweet, choklit, cream, perfect!’ Not so, my dad. The pastry: too chewy, too floppy, not sweet enough. The cream: too thick, too thin, won’t stay inside the flippin’ things! The chocolate: too sticky, too bitter, too chunky, won’t set in place. Always there was some flaw in them!
We loved the flaws in them! The flaws stood for something. You see, we dreaded the day he would perfect them, because once he perfected something he never made it again! Over the years there were many things that he had perfected, and we never had again. We watched him cooking, and wondered if this was going to be the last time. My brother even got to the point of deliberately trying to sabotage the profiteroles in order to sustain their existence over time. He did eventually perfect the profiterole. To 8 year old me, it was the saddest day in my life.
But this little anecdote has a meaning within it. As a family, we loved the flaws in dad’s cooking. And similarly, we should revel in each imperfect creature we have here, among our earthy siblings, clay pots as we are. Because once the potter perfects his trade, I think he might be a bit like my dad, and that’s it human history will be wrapped up and made complete.
We have actually seen that perfection in the gift of Jesus. He was gifted to us early, so we could see and have hope that there was someone to whom all earthen pot-kind would be able to draw our pride and heritage from. And, I feel, that’s the reason Jesus was drawn away from us after the first Easter. Here we are; imperfect profiteroles that we are, and the baker will one day perfect his trade, but by golly have we a feast of human goodness here, in the here and the now.
And if we look upon each other with infant eyes, we won’t see the flaws, only the yummy delicious sweet cream and choklit. And if we could use that analogy for each human being we meet, how deep would our inclusion efforts go, and how wonderful the mission of God in the world would go. And maybe, at long last, people will get why swords should be made into ploughshares. And maybe just maybe, the whole batch will be made perfect in Christ - because what is it you would ever want from the perfect profiterole anyway, if it wasn’t the cream and the sweet and the choklit?