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People Power! Mark 11:1-11

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Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
March 24, 2024

People Power!
Mark 11:1-11

In September of 2003, the Dalai Lama visited Washington, DC, and offered an address at the National Cathedral.  It was the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and, as I was living in DC at the time, I knew I needed to be there to hear him.  The sun was shining brilliantly, the sky was sparkling blue as I got off the metro. Walking toward the cathedral, the sidewalks began to be crowded with people – all heading the same direction, walking to hear the Dalai Lama.  When we reached the entrance to the grounds, I realized that the line to get into the cathedral stretched down the driveway, through the gate, and out to the street – then curved down the sidewalk and around the corner!  So, we kept going, walking another two blocks to join the end of the line.  Then, we waited, slowly winding our way along the tree-lined streets, standing in the dappled shade as we inched toward the sanctuary.  It took more than an hour to get onto the grounds of the cathedral, and by that time the nave was filled to capacity.  So as the organizers set up loudspeakers outside, we found a spot on the lawn, and sat down crisscross applesauce on the grass amidst the crowds of others to listen.  If I’m honest, I don’t remember much about what he said.  I had to strain to hear, to sort through his accent and the echo of the loudspeaker.  An article in the Post afterwards said that there were more than 3000 people sitting outside in overflow – what I remember is the hush that fell over the crowd that day –  it was as if together we held our breath and leaned in, just hungry for words of hope from this wise teacher.

At that time, the horror of the war on terror was just beginning to unfold.  The Bush administration was spinning the tale about yellowcake uranium that would become their justification, their fabricated justification for invading Iraq.  They’d just outed Valerie Plame.  I was 22 years old, simultaneously brimming with idealism and furious about the drumbeat for war that was reverberating in Washington at the time.  So I leaned in, we all did, listening so carefully, for a world leader to guide us on a path to peace.  We needed it.  I needed it.

Who have you joined a large crowd to see?  Who have you waited in a ridiculous line to hear, or stretched on tiptoes by the side of the road just to catch a glimpse of, to draw near to?  Politicians draw a crowd.  Some musicians do.  4.35 million people saw the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, that’s almost the entire population of Los Angeles.  They say you can hear the roar of the crowd by a red carpet from blocks away.  Fans flock to see the Ravens and the Orioles and the athletes who play professional and collegiate sports… all people and events that may require a bit of patience to witness.  The biggest crowds I’ve been in lately have been political demonstrations, the street theatre of protests and pride parades.

If you’ve been in a crowd like that, you know the tenor changes based on the message of its leadership.  The Dalai Lama, three thousand people sit quietly in the grass.  The Rally to Save America led some 2000 people to storm the US Capitol, wreak havoc and interrupt the certification of electoral votes.

I can’t help but wonder what the tenor of the crowd was that day in Jerusalem.  The city would have been overflowing with people, peasants who poured in from the countryside to celebrate Passover, to make their sacrifices in the temple.  Remember that Israel was an occupied land; there would’ve been a lot of Roman military presence for the festival, to keep order, to prevent a revolt.

But that doesn’t stop Jesus from continuing with his plan. Christ’s followers line the street down from the Mount of Olives, they wait for hours – no dappled shade here, they stand in the sun by the rocky road.  They wait, and shout and stand on tiptoes in the dust just to catch a glimpse of him.  Their hope nearly crackles in the air – Hope that Jesus would save the people from Rome, end their suffering, and rule as King over Israel.

When he finally comes into view… what must they have thought?  This?  This is our savior?  A man riding a donkey?  No saddle to sit on, just the draped fabric of a cloak?

We’re too far removed to realize this, we don’t have a good frame of reference, but people of that time would have known that Jesus is engaging in carefully calculated political theatre here.  This is a protest, one that pits the power of the people against the power of Rome.  When Roman generals returned from war, they would ride their chariots through the city gates with throngs of people cheering their return.  Prancing white horses led the marching army straight to the temple of their war god, where the general would make a sacrifice.  Ched Meyers points out that Jesus is entering Jerusalem as a conquering hero, a general returning from war.  Instead of a chariot, Jesus rides a donkey – evoking the promise of the prophet Zechariah, who predicts the savior of Israel will come on a colt.  Jesus has no crown of laurel on his head, but he will soon wear a crown of thorns.  Rome ruled through military power, oppressing the people through taxation and the threat of violence.  The kingdom Christ brings is different than that.  His is the way of peace, and solidarity.  The way of love – the only power that is stronger than hate, able to survive anything – even death.

Though they understand him to be their messiah, it’s clear that the crowds don’t fully understand who Christ is and what he came to do.  His ministry has offered healing, and wisdom, calling people to life abundant.  But we are schooled in the ways of death.  We believe in fire power, not people power; we bow to the rule of violence.  And so that is what many expected, and hoped he would bring: a violent uprising to overthrow their oppressors.  But Jesus and the drama of holy week teach us that God won’t swoop in to smite our enemies.  God will not singlehandedly undo wrongs wrought on the world, God needs our hands for that.  The divine is not a conquering hero.  God works in humble ways, sitting us down, criss-cross applesauce in the grass to break bread together, to share abundance, to hear words of peace even when we have to listen hard, even when we have to strain to hear them.

There are churches that call this day “palm and passion Sunday” – the idea being that we read all of the holy week texts today, so we don’t jump from the joy of the palm parade into the joy of the resurrection and miss all of the pain of Holy Week in between.  But we aren’t going to do that.  One, because I hope you’ll find a way to be part of our observation in the days ahead, gathering for a meal on Thursday, coming here to remember and hear again the story of the crucifixion on Friday, making space for prayer and reflection on Saturday, before we gather again in hope on Sunday.  But we’re not rehearsing the passion story today because we live in a good Friday world.  We don’t need to be reminded of the suffering around us, we feel it in our very bones.  130 dead at a concert on the other side of the world, in the nation of our sworn enemy, and still our hearts ache for those families, their community.  What we need to hold onto this holy week is God’s promise in Christ not to abandon us here, in the midst of our grief, stuck in the jaws of disillusionment and war.  But to face the reality of evil and sin and death with quiet courage, committed to walk the way of peace.  No matter what.

Thanks be to God.

 

 

A House of Prayer for All People John 2:13-22

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Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
March 3, 2024

A House of Prayer for All People
John 2:13-22

The room is large, with a dusty white tile floor, and dim – with fluorescent lighting that is often turned off, at least in my memory.  The lights are off to help keep the room cool, which mostly works along with a contraption called a swamp cooler, that uses fans blowing over a pan of water keep buildings moderately cooler than they would be otherwise – using the desert heat to cool through evaporation.  There is a thin film of dust on the white plastic chairs that are stacked and unstacked, arranged and rearranged for different events throughout the week.  It seems like an ordinary place, but it is a sanctuary.  The Lily of the Valley church in Agua Prieta, Mexico.

The sanctuary of my childhood was cavernous, at least in my memory, Air Conditioned to keep the Lousiana heat and humidity at bay.  Thick maroon velvet pew cushions three shades darker than the plush carpet softened the room, beautiful with wooden pews, simple stained glass.  Across the front of the sanctuary, sixty something organ pipes stand proudly over the choir – I counted them so many times as a child it’s embarrassing, I can’t recall precisely how many there were.  67?

Another sanctuary dear to my heart and firm in my memory stands on a hillside, with rough hewn rock benches stairstepping down to a fish-shaped chancel.  A big wooden cross stands high above a breathtaking view of the green Guadalupe river – the chapel on the hill at Mo-Ranch.

Some have high ceilings, others are ceiling tiles.  Some are lined with ornate stained glass windows, others have clear views out into the neighborhood around them.  Almost always there are candles.  A table, a font.  Walls that hold the echo of prayers whispered and songs sung over years, decades, sometimes even centuries.  What sanctuaries do you hold in your memory?  Where have you found sanctuary?  Are they the same places?  Different?

I have found sanctuary in a circle of friends, around a salvaged kitchen table.  On a rocky beach, wind whipping my hair and waves crashing nearby.  On a forest trail with nothing but the shush of pine needles underfoot and the birdsong in the air.  Surprising, unexpected places have been my sanctuaries, too: a sticky table at a women’s shelter; sun-baked parking lot; a bedside at a hospital.

See, we know that sacred space isn’t just relegated to in here.  Churches don’t hold a monopoly on what’s holy.  We’ve created sanctuaries, of course, they’re central to who we are: safe, often beautiful spaces for community to gather for work and worship – places to rest in the mystery and wonder of God.  But remember that the first churches were house churches.  And Jesus led a movement, of people sharing the good news from ear to ear, table to table, house to house.  So God isn’t stuck in here.  Or hidden somewhere out there.  Up there.  In here.

When he began his ministry, faithful Jews had to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to sacrifice at the temple once a year, often on Passover, to be in right relationship with God.  That’s when our story takes place.

When this passage occurs in other gospels, it’s near the end of the story. Right after the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus goes to the temple to worship, and is furious about what he finds there: a marketplace, a capitalist frenzy.  Jesus is angry about economic exploitation – the temple-sanctioned squeezing of the poorest people, those weary, road-worn peasants, through a temple tax and unfair exchange rates. So he throws out the money lenders and the vendors, turns over their tables and drives out the animals brought for sacrifice.  This outburst in the temple is what galvanizes the religious leaders into convicting Jesus, it’s the last straw, the one that makes them say – that’s it, this guy has got to go.

But here we are at the beginning of John’s story, a story thick with theology and symbolic meaning. Scholars say he’s trying to say something different than the other three guys.  His story is the last of the gospels to be written; In John’s world, the temple has already been destroyed.  So it seems like John reinterprets this story to be a sign, a foreshadowing that God doesn’t reside only in the temple; God isn’t stuck inside.  And, as the prophets before have declared, God doesn’t require sacrifices to be pleased with us.  Yes, Jesus is angry at the economic injustice at the heart of temple worship, but that’s not all that’s happening here.  in John’s view, Jesus is the presence of God amongst the people.  Christ’s body becomes the new temple, the place where God is made manifest.  Destroy this place and in three days, I’ll raise it up.

There is an ancient ecclesial understanding that church itself is Christ’s body in the world; our hands, Christ’s hands.  As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?

Our very bodies are a place where God resides in the world!  And not just ours, but every body!   Tiny babies, and precious teenagers filled with sass and the thrill of life’s possibilities, and the very old, frail but filled with wisdom.  A squeegee kid, and a broken Palestinian woman grieving her husband shot dead in a bread line.  All sanctuaries of the presence and power of God!  Does it change us to view bodies as sacred?  Not individual cells, mind you, but whole bodies, our living, breathing bodies, these bodies?

We might need to have some tables overturned to see ourselves and others in that way.  Tables of indifference to the suffering of others, tables of self-loathing or shame about the ways our bodies look or feel or move.  Turn them over, throw all of that away.  Drive it out of your subconscious and stop all of that negative self-talk.  A challenge for the week ahead: See yourself as a place where God’s spirit dwells, and see what difference that makes.  See if it helps you be a little more kind to yourself.  More gentle.  To see yourself as blessed and beautiful, as indeed God sees you.  Carve out time and space to breathe, and rest in the presence of God.  I can’t help but wonder if we might eat more healthfully, move more intentionally if we really understood our very bodies to be sanctuaries of the spirit.  If we saw one another that way, too …. we might devote ourselves more completely to the work of caregiving, peacebuilding, and systems change.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this sanctuary and the building that houses it, our church.  The first half of the 20th century was a time of great property acquisition for the church; we bought land, we built buildings – sanctuaries where God could dwell amongst the people.  But the landscape around us has changed.  Neighborhoods change, culture has shifted, and what it means to belong to a faith community has changed, too.  This building was built for a church of 1200 people!  And it has been lovingly maintained and cared for by our congregation – a team of volunteers who gather each Thursday to paint and garden, to arrange and rearrange, to fix leaks and change lightbulbs and otherwise tend to our temple.

The front of the bulletin is a photo of an architectural drawing of our church that hangs in the Woodbourne Room.  I would guess it was created in the mid 1940’s, when our church was still located down in a big stone building at the corner of Gay and Biddle Streets.  And if you look closely, you’ll see that this rendering wasn’t actually completely built – there’s a whole section of the building that never came to life.  Our building was built in stages – first the sanctuary in 1950-51, then the middle Jackson wing about 5-6 years later, then the office wing, kitchen and fellowship hall about 15 years after that.  Almost as soon as that project was completed, the congregation had already shifted, no longer needing the space on the third floor for Sunday school classrooms, such that the Presbytery offices moved in by 1974.

All of this to say, is that our building was built for a different congregation.  It is an incredible gift, an inheritance, a resource that enables so much lifegiving and transformational ministry.  And we pray that it will be even more of a blessing to our neighborhood and community in the years to come.  As I’ve told you before, a task force is at work to envision exactly how it might do that – to create a rendering of what our church of the future might look like.  We’re talking with partners and neighboring institutions to see what they’ve assessed as the greatest needs in this part of the city might be.  And I hope all of you will join me in praying for our ongoing discernment about how this body might continue to be a blessing – a place where God’s spirit is present and alive amongst the people – for many, many, many more years to come.  What will it look like?  How might it need to change?  I can’t wait to find out.