A sermon for Atonement Lutheran Church, Jamestown
I got into camping ministry as a 20-year-old college student,
who loved the outdoors and Jesus and finally discovered there is this little
slice of heaven where those two worlds intersect. I worked as a camp counselor
in northern Idaho at Camp Lutherhaven where I found my temple under the
ponderosa pines on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene, and it was a temple,
because it was a holy place and a holy space—like a church but different; like
a pilgrimage site but different. Beautiful, set apart—a place where the holy
intersected the lives of countless individuals who called it camp.
In some ways, that camp would become my pilgrimage site—the place where I would be sure to find God—and it still is that way. However, I have also discovered that camp is all of those places—not just the camp that I am most familiar with but also Red Willow and all places outdoors and in where we are attentive to God’s presence. I now firmly believe there are no un-sacred spaces; there are just places where we are not paying attention.
Jesus
gets at this in a roundabout way in our Gospel reading today. This is the story
of Jesus whipping folks out of the temple for making it a marketplace. The holy
place that was supposed to be set apart had become the local Walmart; it became
impossible to see the holy because of all the boring, normal bustle of daily
life. So, Jesus literally forms a whip and starts whipping the shopkeepers out
of the temple grounds, which is pretty startling if we stop and think about it,
because it’s not like Jesus was the chief priest. To the temple authorities, he
was nobody. This is why they ask what sign he has for acting in this way. Hey
buddy, show us some ID, they are saying. And what ID does Jesus give? A
strange response: “Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Suddenly, since we know
who Jesus actually is, this scene reveals an amazing truth. It is not the
temple-church that has been profaned. No, that is what the temple elites think;
that is the arena for the debate they want to have, but this is not the temple
Jesus is concerned with. That temple is Jesus’ body, which is to say that the
temple has been profaned because the people are too busy buying stuff to see
Jesus Christ, God-incarnate, standing right there.
This is so important for us today because it is tempting to believe our job is to protect the holiness of church buildings and our camp properties lest they lose their sense of holiness when they no longer feel set apart. Of course there is something truth in this; these are places made holy by the intention of our worship. However, our physical temples only matter if they provide a lens to see Jesus. The point of the temple is that it is set apart, but since we are all part of the body of Christ, all of us can follow Jesus toward the cross wherever we go. Again, there are no un-sacred spaces, just spaces where we fail to pay attention.
