[This message was given two years ago on Lent 3 at the first worship service conducted in the new Cathedral in Machakos, Kenya]
I bring you
greetings from the Episcopal Church in Nevada.
I will share
with you today what I believe the Holy Spirit
is saying to us through our Gospel
lesson
about Jesus’ cleansing
the Temple.
But first I
ask you patience.
I want to
tell you about my home
and what it means for me to be here.
Like Kenya,
my home is beautiful but it knows suffering.
Nevada is a
very large state with not many people in it.
It takes
many hours to drive from one church to another.
Our land is
a vast desert with hundreds and hundreds of mountains,
more mountain ranges than any other
state in the USA.
In much of
Nevada, it is too dry to grow crops or raise cattle.
In the
countryside, our main way to make money is mining.
We mine all
sorts of things, especially gold.
The only
place in the world
that produces more gold than Nevada
is South Africa.
We have one
large city, Las Vegas, where there is a lot of entertainment.
Some of it
is good, healthy entertainment. Some is bad for people.
You have
heard that there is much drunkenness
and other bad behavior in Nevada.
It is true.
Much of this
is caused by loneliness.
Very few of
our people grew up there.
Most of us
do not have families living near us.
I have no
family in Nevada except my wife.
So it can be
lonely.
There is
more despair than faith in our land.
87% of our
people have no connection to any religion.
So it is not
surprising that our suicide rate is two times as high
as the average in the USA.
Many people
are addicted to drugs or alcohol.
There is
much violence in the families and much divorce.
Nevada is a
beautiful barren place,
much like parts of the Holy Land where Jesus
lived.
Our people
are brave, humorous, strong, and kind.
You have to
be strong to live in the desert.
But there is
loneliness and despair all around us.
So God has
given our Church an important mission.
We are there
to proclaim Jesus’ message of hope.
We are there
to speak up for the poor and the suffering,
to reach out to the lonely and the
hopeless.
It is a hard
mission, but an important one in God’s eyes.
We need your
prayers.
I pray for
this Diocese of Machakos every day.
Please pray
for us in Nevada.
Pray that
God will pour out his Spirit on our Church
like a long steady rain that we may
be Christ in our desert.
There are
probably many things about the Church in Kenya
that I cannot understand because I
am not Kenyan.
I hope to
understand more after this visit.
There may be
things about the Church in Nevada or the USA
you do not understand.
I can tell
you this much.
Many people
in my home land need Jesus
but have no idea who Jesus is.
They do not
even know the most famous Bible stories.
We are
trying our best to bring people to Jesus.
I learned
this expression
from a old political movement 40
years ago.
“By any
means necessary.”
It’s
basically the same thing St. Paul said,
“I want to bring people to Jesus
by any means necessary.”
That is what
we are trying with all our might
to do in Nevada which is a desert of
land
and a desert of the
spirit.
I am very
happy to be here with you today.
I am happy
for several reasons.
The first is
that there are so many Anglicans here.
There are
five times as many Anglicans in Kenya
as in the USA.
In Nevada,
there are very, very few of us
even compared to the rest of the
USA.
We are a
small church in a large desert.
So it is a
great joy to be here
where there are so many people
who worship and pray in the same way
I do.
The second
reason I am happy to be here
is that we cannot know who we are
unless we know our
story,
and that includes the story of our
ancestors.
So I am here
to see and to touch the land of my ancestors.
Does it
surprise you that a white man would say that?
African-Americans
have always looked to Africa
to learn the ways of their
ancestors.
But today,
our best scientists believe that the whole human race
– black, white, brown, or yellow –
all of humanity
began in East Africa, very possibly
right here in Kenya.
And they
believe that it all began with one human couple
just as the Bible says,
that this is Eden and Adam and Eve
were East Africans,
possibly Kenyans.
You probably
already know this.
Most
Americans do not.
But the
likely fact that this is where human life began
makes your home a sacred place
– a holy place like
Jerusalem –
so I feel blessed and grateful to be
here.
My wife
Linda and I thank you for welcoming us
to your beautiful home,
a place of rich culture and
tradition,
a place of ancient civilization,
the place where all our stories began.
Today’s
Gospel lesson describes one of the most striking moments
in our Christian story.
It tells us
that when Jesus went to the Temple
for Passover, he found people doing
all sorts of business.
He found
cattle, sheep, and doves being sold for sacrifice.
He found
money changers doing a banking business.
This is the
one time when Jesus was violent.
He drove
them all out with a whip, turned over their tables.
scattered their money, and shouted
at them,
“Stop making my Father’s house a
market place.”//
Now Jesus
did not have anything against market places.
He went to
them and through them all the time.
He taught
and healed people in the market place.
He used the
business of the market place
to make spiritual points in his
stories.
Jesus had
nothing against doing business in the marketplace.
What made
him angry was using the Temple for a marketplace,
because the Temple is holy.
Matthew
tells us that when Jesus drove the merchants and bankers
out of the Temple, he said “My house
. . . is a house of prayer.”
Business is
ok in the business district,
but not in God’s house.
The Temple
is for prayer and prayer alone.
There are
two important things we can learn from this story
– one is important for our private
lives
– the other is important for our
mission as the Church.
Let’s start
with our private lives.
What does
Jesus cleansing them Temple have to do with us?
What does
Jesus cleansing the Temple have to do
with your heart, your spirit?
Everything.
St. Paul
said to the Corinthians and he says to us,
“Do you not know that you are God’s
Temple
and God’s Spirit dwells
in you?”//
Your heart
is the Temple of God.
Your heart
was created to be a house of prayer.
But often we
turn our heart into a marketplace.
The busy
thoughts of the world take possession of us.
We plan, we
plot, we think “if this happens then I may gain something.
It that happens I may lose
something.”
And our heat
beats faster with the hope of gain or the fear of loss.
Our hearts
beat faster like the hearts of the gamblers in Las Vegas.
And we think
“If I do such and such, I will have a better chance.
But what if such and such happens?
Then what shall I do?”
And our
heads do not rest easy in our beds.
We breathe a
little too quickly and take in too little air
with each breath.
We have no
peace. We have no serenity.
We are out
of balance and we cannot pray.
Jesus said
“My house . . . is a house of prayer.”
Your heart
was shaped by God to be a house of prayer,
but most of
our hearts are often busy and fretful like marketplaces.
Now it is a
good thing to do business.
It good to
grow food or make things to sell.
The
marketplace is part of life.
The market
place is human and God loves it.
The
marketplace is where justice can happen.
It is where
mercy and friendship happen.
The
marketplace is good. We belong there.
But we also
need a house of prayer.
We need a
serene center in our selves, a place of peace.
We need
hearts that hear the word of the Lord, saying
“Be still and know that I am God. .
. .
Search your hearts while you are in
bed and be silent.”
It is good
to jump into the busy hustle and bustle of life,
to go to the marketplace to buy and
to sell,
to talk, to tell stories and listen
to stories.
But we also
need to leave the marketplace a little while each day.
Jesus left
the hustle and bustle of his ministry of teaching and healing
to be alone and to pray.
He withdrew
into solitude, withdrew into the temple
of his own heart.
“Go to away
by yourself and shut the door,” Jesus said,
“pray in secret to your father who
is in secret.”
Brothers and
sisters, save the very center of your soul
as a place to be alone with God.
Maybe you
have a room in your house where you can pray.
Or maybe you
go out walking alone.
Pray while
you watch the sunset.
Or get up
before dawn and pray while the sun is rising.
Pray as you
take your bath.
Pray as you
put away your tools at the end of the day.
Each of us
must choose his own time and his own place.
Because it
is a time and place that belongs to you and God alone.
The active life
of business and family is a gift from God,
but it can be as stormy as a
typhoon.
We are often
caught up in the busy activity of life
and it blows us around in circles
like a typhoon.
But even in
the typhoon there is a still center.
We call it
“the eye of the storm.”
I don’t know
why we call it that.
Maybe it’s
because it is when we step out of the whirling wind
into the still place, that’s where
we can actually see
what’s happening.
Brothers and
sisters, Jesus invites you to step out of the storm
into the still center of your own
hearts each day.
God says,
“Be still and know that I am God.”
Let Jesus
drive the fears and ambitions, thoughts and plans
out of your hearts so that you can
be alone with him
in prayer, give yourself
to him in prayer.
And what
shall you do in the solitude?
What shall
you say to the Lord?
You can
recite a prayer from the Prayer Book.
Or you can
speak to Jesus of your deepest desires.
You can tell
him what you truly want in life.
Or you can
just imagine his face.
St. Francis
used to sit in silence and pray for hours.
Someone
said, “Francis, tell us how you pray.”
Francis
answered, “I look at him and he looks at me.”
It can be as
simple as that.
There is no
one else who can love you so perfectly as Jesus,
no one else who accepts you so
completely just as you are.
It is a
sacred duty to spend time with Jesus in prayer.
But it is
also the deepest joy, the quietest peace we can know.
St.
Augustine, the greatest African saint,
Regretting how much of his life was
wasted in busy ambition,
prayed these words,
“So late I came to love you, O
Beauty so Ancient and so new.
So late I came to love you . . .
I ran after . . . the things you
have made.
But you were inside me. And I was
not with you. . .
You called, you cried, you shone
through my blindness. . . .
You touched me, and (now) I ardently
desire your peace.”
If we turn
away from the things of the world a little while each day,
then our hearts will prepared to
worship together
when come to church on
Sunday.
Our prayer
and our singing, our taste of the Holy Communion,
will be so much deeper than if we
have spent the whole
week lost in the ways of
the world.
If we have
spent time with Jesus in the solitude and silence,
we will bring a larger soul to the
Church on Sunday.
And we will
bring a larger soul into our acts of kindness
for one another and our work for
justice and peace.
We cannot
bring peace to a war torn world
unless we first have peace inside
ourselves.
Now we have
arrived at the second point we can learn
from the story about Jesus’
cleansing the Temple.
This point
is about the mission of the Church.
I do not
know how this is in Kenya.
But we have
a challenge in the America.
There are
other Churches there
that preach a different message from
ours.
Their
religion is all about prosperity.
They say
that if you believe in Jesus,
he will make you rich, healthy, and
successful.
Their
religion does not have the cross in it.
They would
never observe the season of Lent.
Their
religion is all about becoming rich and powerful
in this world.
They have
nothing to say about justice, mercy, and compassion.
They have
nothing to say about the duty and joy of helping each other.
It’s all
about how to get God to serve us,
not how we serve God’s mission of
peace and love.
Naturally,
those churches are popular and they are growing.
It is a
candy-coated gospel. It is a sweet poison.
But it is
popular because it promises people
what they want in their pockets,
not what they need in their souls.
So our people
in the Anglican churches
say “Look how they are growing.
Their message is popular.
Why don’t we do that in our Church?”
I have heard
that other religions in Africa
and even some other Christian
churches
are doing the same
thing.
I have heard
that other religions promise
all sorts of worldly rewards
for people who will join
them.
This may not
be an issue for you yet.
But if you
have not already been tempted,
you may someday be tempted to become
like them.
But I beg
you in the name of Jesus, do not be led astray.
I beg you in
the name of Jesus, do not turn the Church
into a marketplace.
Each human
heart is a little Temple of God.
When we
bring our hearts together in the Church,
when we unite our hearts in the Holy
Communion,
this is God’s Temple.
God is here.
And Jesus
said, “My house is a house of prayer.
Do not make it into a market place.”
Brothers and
sisters we are not here to sell our religion.
We are not
here to twist our sacred truths
to fit what the market demands,
we are not here to sell whatever
people are most likely to buy.
We are here
to proclaim Christ crucified.
Our Jesus
did not turn the stones to bread,
did not accept political and
military power over the whole world,
and did not perform his miracles in public to make
himself a hero.
He was born
in a stable,
wandered without a home to teach
God’s truth,
and went to the cross to suffer and
die
– all out of love for
us.
Our faith in
Christ crucified calls us to help one another,
not use God to help us get ahead of
our neighbor.
Our faith
calls us to share what we have in love.
Our faith
calls us to befriend the outcast,
to stand up for justice against
power,
to give ourselves to Jesus who gave
his life or us.
It is a
costly faith.
But it
offers so much more in return
than worldly wealth and power.
It offers
the peace of God which surpasses all understanding.
I know the
Anglican Church of Kenya helps people
to have better, happier lives.
I know of
your work in clinics, orphanages, and schools.
I know a
little of your work in economic development.
These are
acts of justice and mercy.
They are
God’s mission.
But God’s
mission must be done from the heart
which is God’s Temple.
All of our
good works in the world depend on prayer.
“Unless the
Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.”
So I beg
you, Brothers and sisters,
make each of your hearts a house of
prayer
where you give
yourselves to Jesus;
preserve this Cathedral as a house
of prayer
where we give our common
life to Jesus.
Then we can
go out into the world to do the work
God has given us to do.
We can go in
peace to love and serve the Lord.
