Sunday, March 10, 2024

Snakes! (Numbers 21:4-9)

 Back when I was a teenager, we made mixtapes. Any of you ever make a mixtape?

On my mixtape there were songs by John Mellencamp, Boston, The Cars, Billy Joel, Huey Lewis and the News, Michael Jackson…

I would make these mixtapes by recording songs from vinyl record albums that I or my friends bought—or, sometimes, we’d record it right off the radio, sitting around, listening, waiting for a song we liked to come on, hoping the DJ wouldn’t ruin it by talking over the start of the song…

And when I was done making my mixtape… I would pop out that little tiny tab in the corner of the cassette, the tab that, once removed, would prevent anyone from accidentally or intentionally recording over the songs I had so carefully selected.

But sometimes, I would want to record over a song, or several songs, that I had put on my mixtape. How do you record over those songs, when that tab is removed?

You put a little piece of Scotch tape over the spot where the tab was. Voila! Now you can record.

And if I would go on a long car ride, like when I was in boy scouts and we were off on some trip, I would take my walkman and my headphones, and listen to my mixtapes to pass the time. 

And when I went to college, I got a nice boombox for my dorm room that could play my mixtapes… although that boombox could also play a brand new thing called a compact disc, though I didn’t have any of those… yet. 

Well, hardly anyone makes mixtapes anymore. Most people don’t even listen to CDs these days. Instead, we have custom-made playlists that can be streamed digitally.

This is just one way that our world has changed. Our world has changed a lot. So much is new and different in this digital age, and these changes have affected everything

Including religion.

Right now, we have folks joining us for worship via our livestream. It’s not the same as attending worship in-person, but what a blessing it is for those who are unable to be here, for whatever reason. 

We have meetings that take place over zoom.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The internet has completely changed how we access information. It’s completely changed how I prepare and write sermons. It’s changed how we shop. It’s changed how we communicate.

Really, it has changed everything! - - - -

Phyllis Tickle was an American author and lecturer who spent a lot of time analyzing these changes. She died in 2015, but people still talk about how she described this period of change as a giant rummage sale. 

And she said that the church has one of these giant rummage sales every 500 years.

Every 500 years, she said, the church is compelled to have a giant rummage sale in which it trots out things that have accumulated—things like doctrines, traditions, and practices—and sorts through them to see what should be kept and what should be discarded—just like one would do at a rummage sale.

We are in one of those time periods right now, no doubt about it. Doctrines, traditions, practices—everything is being sorted through, reevaluated, and some of it is being kept, and a lot of it is being discarded… 

Religion is changing. It will never be what it once was.

In case you’re wondering, the last time the church had one of these giant rummage sales, 500 years ago, we were experiencing the Reformation, when Luther wrote his 95 theses and the Protestant branch of Christianity began to take shape. That time of change was fueled to a great degree by the invention of the printing press, just like our own time of great change is fueled by digital communication.

500 years before the Reformation, it was the Great Schism that shook up religion, when Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity split over issues like the source of the Holy Spirit, whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used during communion, and the jurisdiction of the pope.

500 years before that, the church was dealing with the aftermath of the conversion of Constantine, when Christianity went from being an oppressed religion of the poor, to the established religion of the empire.

And 500 years before that, we had Jesus.

Every 500 years, a time of radical transformation. And we are living in one of those once-every-500-year periods right now. And the changes we are experiencing are even more profound than just the evolution of music media, from mixtapes to CDs to streaming. 

It’s an exciting time to be alive!

So, yeah: if it seems that the world is changing so fast, it’s not just you. It really is a time of radical change, the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in at least 500 years.

But the change doesn’t happen in an instant. We don’t just snap our fingers, and all of a sudden, we’re living in a new age.

This time of transformation is spanning several generations. It takes several generations to get used to the changes… and the changes are still happening.

But so many wonderful things have come from it all. The ability to livestream worship, for example; or, the ability to carry around an entire music library or an entire book library in a device that fits in the palm of our hands. Even Gene Roddenberry couldn’t have imagined all the things we can do with a cellphone.

But sometimes, it can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it feels that things are changing too fast, that there’s too much change. Sometimes, we just want to retreat, to go back to a time when life was simpler, and easier to understand. We long for the days of mixtapes, or even 8-tracks; we long for the days of manual typewriters and rotary phones and roll-down windows, and…

…and if any young people are listening, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?


If you’ve ever felt that way, if you’ve ever longed for the old days, despite all the advantages of modern technology, then maybe it won’t be too hard to understand the frustrations of the Israelites, as they journeyed toward the Promised Land.

Life in Egypt was far from perfect. After all, the Hebrews were slaves to Pharaoh; they had few rights; they were forced to labor long hours.

Freedom was their dream, their hope; and when Moses led them out of Egypt, they were overjoyed…

But the journey to a new land and a new nation was a huge change. Their transformation as a people was a lot more challenging than they anticipated. They wanted the time of transition to be over quickly. They wanted someone to snap their fingers, and bam: new life, living easy!

But that isn’t how transformation works.

For the Israelites, it took 40 years. An entire generation, and then some. They grew impatient. They began to grumble, and complain.

And the changes that did come, the changes they were already experiencing… well, it wasn’t what they had expected, and it was all so new… they had never done things this way before!

So: maybe it began with just a few people, standing around a campfire one night. One of them says: “You know, back in Egypt—hear me out! I know we were in slavery, but in Egypt, at least we knew where we would be laying down to sleep each night. And at least we knew we would be getting food to eat. And at least we knew what the future would hold, because every day was the same…

“No worrying about where we were going, or what we would eat… No being overwhelmed by how different and new everything is…

“Was it really so bad?”

And someone else around the campfire would chime in: “In Egypt, Pharaoh made us work hard. But this journey through the wilderness is hard, too.”

And the thing is, they were absolutely right. Any kind of transformation is hard work. 

And freedom is hard work. Liberation is hard work. It’s hard physically, and it’s hard mentally.

Just like many of the changes we are experiencing today are mentally exhausting.

I don’t know about you, but when I ask one of my kids to help me with some tech issue, it’s usually not because I’m not capable of learning or figuring it out; it’s just that I’m tired, mentally, from all the learning and all the figuring out that all these changes have forced upon me.

And… it makes me lazy. I don’t want to learn it.

And sometimes, people get mentally tired trying to keep up with all the other changes taking place in our world… demographic changes, for example. Neighbors speaking different languages. Neighbors redefining love, redefining gender, redefining what constitutes a family. Neighbors who insist on eating things like curry, or boba, or avocado toast. 

I never heard of curry or boba or avocado toast when I was a kid.

All these changes are a lot to adapt to. No wonder so many people long for the “good ol’ days.” And yes, I know people for whom the good ol’ days include a lot of curry, but that’s not my experience….My point is that when the world changes, it’s hard to adapt to, and we’re tempted to grumble and complain about it all… 

Well, God got upset with the Israelites. God got upset with their grumbling and their complaining. God was trying to lead them to freedom and liberation and a new beginning and new life, but their minds were stuck in the past. 

But what could God do? God wasn’t about to say, “Don't make me turn this journey to the promised land around!” 

So, God sent snakes. Poisonous serpents. Which bit many of the Israelites; and those that were bitten started dying.

Now, I heard our General Minister, Terri Hord Owens, say the other day that the snakes are, in her mind, a “narrative device,” because God doesn’t intentionally inflict evil on people. And that may very well be so. But let’s stay immersed in the story, and treat the snakes as real, something that was causing great pain among the people…

So the people went to Moses and said, “We’re sorry! We sinned by complaining and grumbling! Please, pray to the Lord, to take the snakes away and heal us!”

So Moses prayed, and the Lord told Moses to make a serpent of bronze, and put it on a pole, so that anyone who was bit by a poisonous serpent could look at the serpent made of bronze, and be healed. 

Now, you may be asking: Why snakes?

In several different ancient religions, snakes were considered divine beings. Snakes also symbolized new life, or eternal life, because of the way they shed their skins. 

When a snake sheds its skin, it casts off the old, and becomes new once again… and isn’t that what God was calling the people of Israel to do? Wasn’t God calling them to cast off their old way of living, and the old mindset that went with it, and embrace a new way of living and a new mindset? Wasn’t God calling them to cast off their slavery mindset, and embrace a liberation mindset?

People often wonder why it took 40 years for the Israelites to get out of Egypt. Well, I once heard it said, it didn’t take 40 years to get the Israelites out of Egypt; it took 40 years to get Egypt out of the Israelites. It took 40 years to get that Egypt-mindset out of them, and for them to fully accept and embrace the new life God was leading them to.

This season of Lent is a time of transformation. Lent is 40 days, a reminder of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, but also a reminder of the 40 years that it took the Israelites to transition from life in Egypt as slaves, to life in the Promised Land as a new, free, nation.

And during the season of Lent, we are challenged to examine our own lives, and discern what it is that we need to leave behind. What needs “casting off” from our lives, just like the old skin that is cast off by a snake? And what new way of living is God calling us to embrace?

Jesus, who compared his death on the cross to the snake Moses lifted up on the pole, is always calling us to leave behind this world, this kingdom, and all that this world says is important, to embrace a new future of life and wholeness and freedom.

But to do that, we have to die to our old selves and our old ways, to let go of so many of our ideals. The values of this world are not the values of God’s kingdom. This world: profit margins and a scarcity mindset. God’s world: generous giving, and an abundance mindset.

This world is about divisions and barriers and us vs. them. God’s world is about unity and acceptance and coming together as one body.

God is calling us to leave behind the ways of this world, and embrace the ways of God’s kingdom. 

God is calling us to leave the past behind. We can remember the past; If the past was good, we can give thanks for the past; if the past was harmful, we can heal from our past.

But God’s not calling us to live in the past. 

God is calling us to live into a present and future glory. God is beckoning us to live in God’s kingdom. The kingdom of transformation. The kingdom of freedom and liberation. The kingdom where the old is made new. The kingdom of eternal life. ⚫

Btw, curry is really good. A member of my last church made the most amazing curry, from a recipe she brought over from Pakistan when she immigrated to the U.S. Meanwhile, my son Tristan in California loves avocado toast. But boba: I still think boba is kinda weird, but let’s keep that between us; I don’t want God to send a snake to try to convince me otherwise.


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Overturning Tables of Injustice (John 2:13-22)

 It was just a little over two months ago now that we heard, in worship, the story of baby Jesus’ presentation in the temple. Mary and Joseph had traveled to Jerusalem with baby Jesus, went up to the temple, entered the massive courtyard, and offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord: a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.

Actually, what the law of the Lord said (You can read it yourself in Leviticus 12) was that the offering should consist of a lamb AND a pigeon or turtledove; only if the person making the offering could not afford a lamb, could an offering of two turtledoves or two young pigeons be made.

Mary and Joseph were poor. When they went to the temple, they could not afford a lamb. Even an offering of turtledoves or pigeons was a stretch for them.

And, you may recall, it was made even worse by the way the whole process was manipulated and engineered to take advantage of those wanting to make an offering.

The sellers would only accept temple currency; no Roman coins were allowed. So, first, before they could even purchase their offering, pilgrims like Mary and Joseph had to exchange their Roman currency for temple currency.

And when they exchanged their Roman currency for temple currency, the moneychanger kept some as profit, and Rome kept some in the form of a tax on the exchange, which means Mary and Joseph lost money on the exchange.

Then, when they took their temple currency to buy their offering, the seller kept some as profit, and again there was a tax on the sale, which means that, in the end, Mary and Joseph paid out way more money than what the actual offering cost.

It was all about commerce. It was all about cheating the poor, to make the rich richer.

And it made it hard, so very hard, for people like Mary and Joseph to fulfill their obligations to the Lord.

As James Baldwin said, it’s extremely expensive to be poor.

This is just the way of the world; that’s just how the world works. In the world, economic systems are rigged in favor of the rich. That was true then, and it’s true today. The rich get their loopholes and their deductions, while the poor get stuck with heavier burdens.

To cite just one modern example: last week it was reported that, in 2023, General Electric made a profit of seven billion dollars, yet somehow paid no federal income tax and, in fact, received from the government 423 million dollars. 

For many other corporations, the situation is the same. They pay little or no taxes, they receive giant subsidies and tax breaks, all while making record profits.

Yet at the same time, they keep raising the prices that you and I have to pay. They blame their price raising on rising costs, yet the fact that they are making record profits shows that greed is really what’s causing them to raise prices.

It’s the same as the sellers and the moneychangers in the temple. Greed drove them to create a system that sucked as much money as it could from the poor, in order to line the pockets of the rich.

This is the injustice that all of the Old Testament prophets wrote about. 

It’s interesting, that all those Old Testament prophets only appeared in certain time periods. As it turns out, when the prophets were active, those were times when the gap between rich and poor was extreme; in other time periods, when the gap wasn’t as great, and the poor weren’t quite as poor, and the rich weren’t quite as rich… in those time periods, the prophets are silent. There are no prophetic writings from times of relative economic equality. 

This makes it clear that the exploitation of the poor is a primary concern of God’s… No wonder Jesus got so upset at the exploitation and injustice taking place in the temple.

The temple, God’s house of prayer—the house of prayer for all people—was supposed to be a refuge from the world’s corruption. God’s house of prayer was supposed to be a place where people could draw closer to God, but the economic barriers actually made it harder for the people. Instead of drawing people closer to God, the temple was keeping people separated from God.

So, when Jesus returns to the temple, he sees the sellers with their animals, and he sees the moneychangers, and he sees the people counting out their coins, knowing of the great sacrifices they are making, knowing that, for many of them, the sacrifices they make mean it’ll be that much harder to afford food to eat, or clothes to wear, or homes to live in, for themselves, for their families.

And Jesus knows there are others, those who are even poorer; people for whom any offering at all is an impossibility. Yet there are no concessions. If they can’t afford to exchange their money and purchase an offering, then they are deemed to be not right with God. 

It’s all so unjust! Do you see the injustice? Do you see how religion has been corrupted and perverted?

This is not what God’s house of prayer is supposed to be all about!

So: Jesus decides to (as we say) cleanse the temple.

He finds some cords, makes them into a whip, and runs around the marketplace, chasing all the animals out. Can you picture it? Cows and sheep all running amuck, mooing and baa-ing; people screaming and jumping out of their way as the animals rush past… And the birds in their cages getting all riled up by the commotion, adding their own noise to the mix, and flapping around so that feathers start flying out of their cages and swirling around in the courtyard…

Oh, what a beautifully chaotic scene!

And, as if that weren’t enough, Jesus overturns the tables of the moneychangers. Their coins all crash to the ground, and start rolling all across the courtyard. The moneychangers go chasing after their coins, and many of the people in the courtyard do as well, trying to pocket some without anyone noticing.

But Jesus notices; and maybe he smiles a little, thinking to himself that, at least in this moment, some of the money is going where it belongs: to those who need it most.

Then Jesus turns to those who were selling the doves and pigeons, and says: “Take these things out of here!” His voice must have been quite loud, or no one would have heard him, given all the noise that was around.

And then he says (even louder, I think): “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

Because the injustice of the temple-empire complex is just too much for Jesus. The way the temple and the empire have conspired to rob the poor to feed the rich.

The temple is God’s house. Jesus loved the temple, or at least, the temple as it should be. A place where all people can draw close to God, with no barriers or obstacles. 

But the way the temple was being run, it was making it harder—and, in some cases, impossible—for the Jewish faithful to worship God, to present themselves before God, and to present an offering acceptable to God.


The etymology of the word “religion” can be traced back to the Latin word “religio,” which means to bind or to connect. It makes me think of the ligaments we have in our bodies: bands of tissue which connect bones, joints, or organs.

So, religion, done properly, connects us to God and to one another. It enables connection to happen. It creates a conducive and favorable environment for reconnecting.

But religion done improperly disconnects. It makes it harder for connection to happen. It sets up obstacles and barriers, creating an unfavorable environment for reconnecting.

The moneychangers and the sellers were making it harder for people to connect with God—especially poor people. Originally, their presence was meant to be a service, a convenience, to those arriving at the temple and needing to purchase an offering. But the way they took advantage of the situation for their own gain did just the opposite of how it was supposed to be.

And it makes me think about how religion works in the world today. For some, connecting with God has been made harder by religion—or, to be more precise, by religious institutions. Religion, for some, has become a burden. Religion has caused people harm. Religion has kept people apart from God.

But that’s not the way religion is supposed to be. Religion, by definition, is supposed to help people reconnect; and, in reconnecting, find healing and wholeness.

And even though there are many places today where religion is corrupted, and works to separate people from God and harm people, there are also many places today presenting a truer, more authentic form of religion; a religion that really does help people reconnect with God, with humanity, and with their true selves; a religion that makes people whole.

In the three months that I’ve been here, I’ve heard people say these things about First Christian Church: how they have found hope and healing through the ministry of this congregation; how the love and support and affirmation they received here helped put together the broken parts of their soul, and make them whole again.

That’s what religion is supposed to be like.

— — — 

In a few weeks, Lent will come to an end. We’ll find ourselves in Holy Week. And on Good Friday, we’ll hear again the story of Jesus’ death on the cross.

And we’ll hear how, at the moment that Jesus, on the cross, took his last breath, the curtain in the temple was torn in two. This curtain hung in the Holy of Holies, and served as a barrier between sinful humanity and the holy presence of God. The curtain was large, and likely embroidered, with blue, scarlet, purple, and other colors; and it was thick. Jewish tradition says that the Temple veil was as thick as a man’s hand, and I even read one description that said it was a foot thick. Which, I’m sure was an exaggeration; but the point is that the curtain was a barrier, a separation, between people and God.

But at the moment of Jesus’ death, the curtain was torn in two; and this tearing of the curtain at the moment of Jesus’ death symbolized the removal of all barriers between God and humanity. Jesus’ death on the cross removed the barriers, and brought humanity and God together. It reconnected God and humanity, once and for all.

So any religion, any version of Christianity, that makes it harder for people to connect with God, is not representing what Christ stood for. Any religion, any version of Christianity, that is about judgment and condemnation more than it is about grace and love and affirmation, is not representing what Christ stood for.

Because the one thing Christ could not tolerate, was the act of erecting barriers that kept people disconnected from God. The one thing Christ could not tolerate was placing heavier burdens on the lives of people who come seeking rest, relief, and redemption. Especially when those burdens were placed on the backs of the poor and the oppressed.

If you have been hurt by religion; if religion has pushed you further away from God; if religion has made you feel that you can’t come into God’s presence as you are, with all your goodness, with all your brokenness… If that’s what religion has done to you,

…then, on behalf of the church, I apologize. I apologize for what the church has said and done, and for how the church has actually made it harder for you to connect with God.

I do hope that you find here, at First Christian Church, a place where the barriers no longer exist, and where you feel you can come into God’s presence with your whole self, and know that God’s Spirit dwells within you, and that God’s love embraces you, and that the abundant life of Christ is available to you, free of charge.

And I hope that you know that, whatever you have to offer to God, is acceptable. You don’t have to exchange what you have for something else, and you don’t have to change who you are to become someone else, someone that you are not.

The curtain, the veil, has been torn in two; and God is waiting to reconnect with you, God’s own child; because God has loved you from the beginning; and God has never stopped loving you; and God will always love you, to the end of time.