Meditation on This Week's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 11, 2012:

Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
The commandment of the LORD gives light to the eyes. (Ps. 19:8)
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

This week's Gospel lesson has the familiar story of Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. For some of us, this picture of Jesus still shocks; if we're used to thinking of Jesus as the turn-the-other-cheek pacifist, the actions in this Gospel seem out of place. Those of us who like the radical elements of Jesus may find ourselves cheering. Many of us who are involved in the Church in its present institutional incarnation may find ourselves squirming uncomfortably.

What is it about the moneychangers and merchants that so upsets Jesus? Some scholars speculate that Jesus sees the temple practices of his day as being particularly harsh towards the poor. Some scholars say that Jesus doesn't like the mixing of the spiritual (the temple itself) and the secular (represented by money). If you read the Gospel to its end, you might say Jesus engages in this act of destruction so that he can say mystical things about tearing down the temple and building it up.

In our current age, we might take a few minutes to wonder why it is that once a religion becomes institutionalized, so much of its activities revolve around making money (as opposed to making good Christians, for example). I see many similarities between the temple of Jesus' day and the Catholic church of Martin Luther's (and frankly, both of those have stark similarities to our own church, both the church with a small c, and the larger Church, with a capital C). These institutions are not inherently evil; on the contrary, these institutions provide much comfort and do much good in the world. Yet through the ages, Jesus calls on us to do more and to be wary of entrenched institutions.

I’ve been a member of more than one church council, I've been amazed at how much of our council business focuses on issues of building maintenance. Even as a child, I noticed the contradiction between the Gospel I heard preached from the pulpit (sell all your worldly goods, give your money to the poor, don't store up your treasures on earth) and the trimmings and trappings of the sanctuary; I had more than one heated conversation on the way back from church about why the church has these assets, like gold offering plates and candlesticks, which might be better sold and converted into cash to give to the poor.

And yet, I'm always keenly aware of how much good the institutional church can do. During my college years, when I was home for summer break, I became convinced that I should switch my church membership to one of those inner-city DC churches that works more directly with the poor. I even talked to the minister of Luther Place about making the switch. He asked me about my current membership, and I told him I went to St. Mark's, convinced that he would share my sneering opinion of a comfortable, suburban church. He told me I should stay right where I was, and I'll never forget his reason. He told me that his church couldn't do what they do without the huge amounts of cash that St. Mark’s sent his way. I went away chastened—but I’ve always been grateful to that pastor for telling me a truth I didn’t know before and wouldn’t likely have discovered on my own.

As we listen to this Gospel, we might ask ourselves what Jesus wants from us. Are we to sell our buildings, our properties, to divest in order that we might have more money to give to charity? We'd transform ourselves back to the first century church--small bands of people who met in living rooms and shared meals together (not a metaphorical Eucharistic meal, but a real one, with a whole loaf of bread and bottle of wine and other foods). Some groups of Christians are experimenting with this calling--many of them see themselves as the Emergent Church, and their movement may indeed be the next reformation. Soon on my reading list is Diana Butler Bass’ latest book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening; will she be talking about church buildings or the institution or any group of people who calls themselves a church?

Does this Gospel tell us to get rid of our stewardship drives and our constant calls for money? Does it tell us that we shouldn't buy or sell things on church property? What does this mean? No more rummage sales, as previous generations would have us believe? No support of our local Scout groups, our local schools?

Christ calls us to consciousness. Being part of a religion that has become a societal institution has inherent danger: temple tax, indulgences, stewardship campaigns--these are tools that religion has used to hurt people, and in worse case scenarios to exclude the poor and extort money from everyone else (money used not to help advance the cause of the Kingdom, but to support a lifestyle of a privileged few). Christ calls us again and again to consider whom we serve. Is money a tool or is it our master? Are we storing up treasures for ourselves on earth or in heaven? These are questions not just for the institutional church, but also important ones for us to consider as individuals.

Prayer Prompts and Possibilities

In yesterday's post, I talked about creating a prayer chapel.  I have a sheet on the table that gives people prayer prompts and possibilities.  Here's what it says:

Prayer Chapel Possibilities

Hopefully by now, you have realized that there’s no one right way to pray. Here are some possible approaches to try.

1. Choose the rock with the word that speaks to you right now. Hold the rock in your hand and hold the word in your mind. Sit quietly for as long as you can. Or
2. Open the prayer book and say one of those prayers. Or
3. Open one of the devotional books and read what you find there. Pray the prayer that’s found there or pray your own prayer. Or
4. Look at the colors of stained glass in the window. Think about what the colors could mean. Say a prayer of thanks for the many ways in which our world is colored. Or
5. Write down your own prayer and put it in the red jar. Say a prayer for everyone who has left a prayer in the jar. Pray for the concerns expressed in this room, in this church.


If you need help knowing what to say when you pray, some prayer prompts are below:

1. Write down what makes you feel grateful. Write your prayers of thanks.
2. God knows your needs, but write them down anyway.
3. Pray for others. Who needs God’s guidance and help?
4. Pray for leaders (at work, at church, in local, state, federal, and world government) who face important decisions.
5. Pray for the planet. Pray for places in nature that need healing. Pray for places that need protection.



Please leave the rocks and prayer/devotion books for others to enjoy and utilize. If you’d like to take away a memento, feel free to take one of the blue or white glassy stones out of the bowl. You should also feel free to make notes to take with you on the paper provided.

Creating a Prayer Chapel

A few weeks ago, my pastor asked me to create a prayer chapel for Lent.  I had been thinking about decorating the worship space in the front of the church, but my pastor had plans for that space.  Walking into the church on Ash Wednesday, we found a radically different space:

I've never created a prayer chapel, but I was game.  The space had some challenges:  robes are kept in a closet, and the room also has a bathroom, so it needs to be accessible to people who aren't there to pray.  It's been used for storage, but it could have been worse.  Here's what it looked like before I got started:

I moved some of the materials out of the way, and I set up the table that will function as an altar of sorts.  We don't have a kneeler that I know of, but this set up will work fine:

A card table covered in purple cloth becomes transformed:

I hung up some gauzy cloth to set the space apart.  I'm hoping that people who are praying or meditating will have a sense of privacy, while still allowing access to people who need to use the bathroom.

Here's how the table looks from above.  People can hold the meditation rocks and contemplate, or they can write prayers and leave them in the red jar.  They can simply read a prayer or devotion from the books I left there.

Here's a close up of the rocks.  I had great fun creating them:

I knew that people might want to take the rocks with them, but I didn't want to have to keep creating replacements.  So, I drew crosses on some glassy stones that I had left over from our fountain project.  People can take a glassy stone with them.

Tomorrow I'll post the sheet that I've left on the table to give people some guidance and instruction.

Sunday Snippets

--I continue to think about Nathan Englander.  I've finally read the first short story in What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, the short story with the same title.  Wow.  What a surprise ending.

--I wrote more about yesterday's conversations that this short story engendered in this blog post.

--This part of that blog post will likely haunt me for months:

--I posed the question this way, "Let's say the government decides to exterminate Lutherans. Would you hide me?" Posed that way, the question is almost humorous, especially since Lutherans are probably one of the least dangerous religious groups in the U.S. We tried to remind each other that even though the government has yet to set its sights on Lutherans, other groups, like immigrants both legal and illegal, are often not so lucky.



--I am aware of the school of theology that says if we were living truly Christian lives, we would be on a direct collision course with our government. To say that Lutherans are the least dangerous Christian group probably means we should be stepping up our efforts as Christians.


--Today is the day I create the prayer chapel, if all goes well.  Here are some elements I will use:

--Could my spouse and I fashion a career out of creating sacred spaces for others? 

--Or could we create a career making fountains?  Making the elements for the prayer chapel reminded me of when we made the fountain together last summer:

--So many possibilities for the future!  So much creative fun!

Turning Off the News to Keep My Lenten Discipline

My Lenten discipline:  to give up worry.  So far, it's been going well.  But last night, I almost hit a snag.

I got in the car in time to hear a week in the news kind of NPR show.  The commentators were talking about Iran, and seemed rather sure that the situation would escalate; the word "war" was used.  And then, the show ended, and the top of the hour newscast came on with updates about deadly tornadoes.

I turned the radio off.  I practiced deep breathing.  I said a prayer for everyone who was in the path of dangerous weather.  I prayed for all the people who are making important decisions about the future of our country.

It's been a strange week where old white men talk in histrionic terms about women's birth control.  I understand why as a nation we're not in agreement about abortion, but birth control?  Really???!!!  We haven't already settled this issue.

I could take the feminist road and talk about these old white men who aren't talking about condoms.  But I can't help but notice that all these increasingly ugly/nasty shouting matches about women's fertility are distracting our attention away from the Middle East, which may be about to get really nasty.

We may look back to this time period with nostalgia, that time when gas was still below $5 a gallon, when we had the leisure to have melodramatic arguments about birth control.

Thinking about the national news gives me insight into how to handle my tendency to worry and fret on a smaller level.  When it comes to national politics, I tend not to worry, even though I am influenced by the news.  But it's clear to me that I have very little influence over Obama's decision about how to handle Iran.

Likewise, I really do not control the decisions of the individuals in my life, even though it may seem like I do.  I can have some influence, but in the end, the decisions that others make are really not up to me.   The idea that I can control others is an illusion, and the sooner I can let go of that, the better off I'll be.

But it's important to realize the actions that I can take.  I can try to understand why people are making the choices that they are.  I can protect myself, if need be; I'm thinking more of national issues here--now is not the time to go into debt to buy a gas guzzler of a car.  I can pray as others make decisions.  I can avoid some situations that make me anxious.

It's an easy action to turn off the radio at the end of the day.  I wonder what other easy actions I could be taking to help me with my Lenten discipline.

Preparing a Prayer Chapel

My pastor asked me to create a prayer chapel in a room at the back of the sanctuary.  The back part of the sanctuary is a wall with windows and doors and on the other side of the wall, the chunks of space are evenly divided into a nursery/cry room, a vestibule where people are greeted, and a room that is called a choir room but has turned into a bit of a storage room.  I'll be converting part of the choir room to a prayer chapel.

I've had fun thinking about possibilities.  If we have any sort of kneeler, I don't know about it.  So, I decided to use a card table that we have.  I'll provide colored paper and pens--people can write their prayers and put them into the big red jar that will be on the table.

That still leaves a lot of table space.  I thought about all sorts of things:  a fountain, a collection of crosses and crucifixes, pictures that would put people in a meditative space.

I decided on a collection of river rocks which are slightly bigger than worry stones.  On each, I wrote a word, words like hope, joy, calm, peace.  I thought they might spark people's ideas about what they need and what they'd like God to provide.

I don't want people to take the stones with them, but I know that people might want something to remind them of the prayer chapel experience.  I had a lot of glassy stones left over from a fountain project (see this post for pictures and details).  I drew a cross on each and put them in a bowl.

I'll be writing prayer prompts and directions so that the prayer chapel is self-explaining.  I'll post those along with pictures in a later post here.

Last night, as I drew crosses on the glassy stones, I thought about what a soothing experience that was.  I thought about smudging foreheads on Ash Wednesday, also a soothing experience.  What is it about making that shape?

I've had a lot of fun planning this project.  It will be interesting to see if anyone uses it, but on some level, I don't care one way or another.  The process has been a delight for me.  It's a creativity lesson I learned long ago.  The finished product is less important  than the process and what becomes of the finished product is even less important.

Radical Christians and Out There Older People

At my creativity blog, I wrote a post about what we consider to be "out there" as we get older.  I talked some about plastic surgery and said:

"Yes, my stodgy Lutheran self would like us all to be comfortable in our physical bodies just the way that they are, the way that God made them. When I figure out how to do that, I'll let you know.

My stodgy Lutheran self is amused to remember that for many people of my generation, the idea that God made our bodies as already perfect would be an "out there" concept."

I also have been thinking about the fact that I'm a Christian is often considered the most radical thing about me these days.  My stodgy Lutheran self doesn't really see my Christianity as the radical kind.  I'm not giving away all of my possessions.  I'm still working in the higher education industrial complex, and not the morally safe community college kind but the for-profit kind.

My 19 year old self would probably tell my 46 year old self to go out there and do something really radical.  She would scoff at the idea that taking dinner to homeless people is a radical idea.

Still, I have colleagues who can't imagine giving up their evenings to feed the poor.  My 19 year old self would say, "You only do that once or twice a month, for pity's sake!"  She would like me to feed the poor on a daily basis.  My 46 year old self would like that too.

I find myself in the odd position of having to explain Cardinal Bernadin's idea of a seamless garment of life to people who don't understand how anyone can be anti-choice these days.  I find it odd because my 19 year old self would have told you that there was no point in arguing over a clump of cells--abort them if you wanted because it's your body.  My 46 year old self has the advantage of technology, and modern ultrasound technology makes her queasy about beginning of life issues.

I find myself in the odd position of being the person who can explain all sorts of Christianities to baffled non-believers.  Need to know the difference between an Evangelical and a Pentecostal?  I can do that.  Need to know why some of us are called Protestants?  I'm your girl.  Want to understand why some Christians see Mormonism as a cult?  I can do that too.  I'm an ecumenical gal.

But what's strangest to me is how radical my choice to spend time as part of a church community seems to almost everyone I know.  If it was 1958, it wouldn't be at all radical to go to church on Sundays and to work through a church on social justice projects.  But 2012 is not 1958.

I'm looking forward to reading Diana Butler Bass' new book which I think will explore some of these issues.  Today she'll be on the NPR show On Point, which I'll catch online later.  I expect that she will tell me that the future of the church does not lie in the institution.  I'm cool with that.  I think that our buildings keep us tethered to spiritual practices which take us away from a life with God.  I'm not sure what to do about that.

This blog post, written by one of the founders of the D.C. Sojourners community, explores what it means to be a success and what it means to be an institutional success: 

"An institution’s job is to encase the renewal insight in a preserving shell that can carry the renewal seed to a future generation — and not to die to their organizational identity, . . . .
If we are lucky, we outgrow the organizations that we ourselves give birth to and become 'joyfully disillusioned' with the very institutions that we help to create. And if we are wise, some of us will grow by staying within the very organizations that we ourselves have outgrown.

The tension of this seeming contradiction is the transformational stew of new possibilities, both for the individual who stays and for the organization. We should not expect the institution to be more that it can be."


Here are some Thomas Merton quotes, from that same blog post:

"Be anything you want. Be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form. But at all costs avoid one thing: success."



"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects ... is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism ... kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful."