Becoming Who We Are

 John 2:13-22

We are what we love, St. Augustine asserted, and this Lent we are exploring how what we love and desire is shaped by our unthought habits and repeated rituals.  It’s our chance to do a “liturgical audit” – to ask what habits are shaping me away from life? And what habits are shaping me toward life?

We learn habits through repetition; they become so ingrained in us that we don’t even think about them. So changing habits can be daunting. Once we recognize an unhelpful habit, we want instant results and immediate gratification.  We modern folks are not wired for the long, slow slog of repeating uncomfortable things until they become second nature. We’d rather keep repeating comfortable things, even if they’re not great for us. 

A couple years ago I realized my problem with exercise was not that I didn’t have the right health club membership, exercise partner, tennis shoes or motivation, but that I didn’t have the right habits. I was formed and forming myself as a person who thought exercise was a good idea and did it when I could, but mostly just practiced feeling bad I wasn’t moving as much as I believed I should be. But, it turns out that changing my habits has changed my desires, and lo and behold: I have become a person who exercises. 

When I decided I would not be all or nothing about it, my mantra became Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. (This carries over quite well to things like thank you notes and birthday greetings, but not to things like home repair projects or driving). Consistency, rather than quality, was what mattered in my habit-learning quest, so I decided I would exercise every single day even if it was just for a few minutes, whether I felt like it or not. The promise was, if I did it every day, I would reach a point where it would become just like brushing my teeth—I would no longer have choose to do it, it would just happen. 

And I had evidence this could be so. I do, after all, brush my teeth—twice every day, in fact. And I tie my shoes like a pro without even thinking about it. Because a long time ago, I learned how by doing it imperfectly, over and over again, and probably I cried about it a few times. And now, I exercise. And as a totally non-athletic, lifelong avoider of sports, after a couple of years of moving on purpose every day, I sometimes really look forward to exercising – though mostly I love the feeling of having exercised.

Why can I apply these habit-forming ideas to things like eating vegetables or exercising, but I can’t seem to do so with prayer? I put up all sorts of hurdles and barriers between God and myself.  Even though I long to be connected to God, and I want to be a brave, kind person in the world, it appears I would much rather stay busy and distracted, even by tedious and unpleasant tasks, and practice feeing bad about “not praying enough,” than assume the inner stance of least resistance and terrifying openness to being encountered by God as just my vulnerable old self. 

Turns out, we humans have a long precedence of creating barriers to God for ourselves and others.

The marketplace situation in temple that Jesus blew a gasket over was not something out of the ordinary - it was business as usual. People had to change their normal money for temple currency, to buy sacrifices to offer to God here in this place where human beings and the Divine meet each other.

 

But that’s not how things started. Way, way back, when God was giving the Israelites instructions for how to live as God’s people, God said, 

Dedicate 10% of all your harvest from your cattle, crops, and vineyards, and bring it to God, and feast on it with God. This is a way to remember, every year through practice, that you belong to God.  And, so you don’t forget that you also belong to each other, every three years, use your saved up 10% to stay home and throw a feast in your own town for all who are in need. 

 

To help this happen, God’s law accommodated those who couldn’t reasonably travel long distances with 10% of all their harvest and animals. They could sell it, travel with the money, and then buy lovely things for feasting with God when they arrived at the temple. (Deuteronomy 14:22-29)

 

But over time, this directive that was supposed to make celebrating belonging to God and to each other more feasible for all, became a gatekeeping instrument, an obstacle to navigate, a hurdle to jump through. Now, whether you lived near or far, you needed to trade your money for temple money, and likely also exchange whatever imperfect gift you brought for a more perfect, worthy sacrifice. 

 

And so, a whole business arose in the temple to mediate the connection between human beings and God, and this is what Jesus came bashing and crashing and yelling about. 1500 years later, Martin Luther will call out the church for similar practices of selling and buying access to God, though in a far less dramatic tacking up of a piece of paper with some provocative statements written on it, onto a Cathedral door.

 

It turns out that even those of us who believe in a God of mercy and grace, belonging and wholeness, often tell a different story with our practices and habits, You belong if… you don’t belong unless… you only belong when…

After Jesus’ outburst, when the air clears of feathers, the coins stop rolling, and the shocked silence holds them all, someone clears their throat and asks, "What sign can you give us for doing this?," What an astonishing and wonderful question to our modern, secular ears! This question means they were willing to consider that God might be redirecting them through this – they were open to a Divine course correction.  

 

Lent is a great opportunity to be open to a course correction. But it can’t come from more of our own well-practiced, malforming habits. 

 

When Jesus answers them, he does that frustrating thing where he stays all metaphorical and vague, saying, Tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. Only he uses the other word for “temple” not as in "sanctuary space," but as in “the place where God dwells.”  And the gospel author helpfully tells us he’s not talking about the building they are standing in, but about his very body. 

I am, Jesus will go on to say a million times in John, I am the way and the truth, I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the place where God dwells, the ground on which God and humans meet.

 

God became flesh and dwelled among us, breaking through barriers of time and space to be with us, and nothing can separate us from God's love.  According to the Apostle Paul, because we are in Christ, we are now the temple, the very place where God dwells. Our ordinary lives are the sacred ground on which Divine and human meet.  We are the Body of Christ, the dwelling place of God. 

 

And so, Lent’s Divine course correction opportunity asks us, 

How are we making our lives into a marketplace?  

How do we sell our attention and earn our worth? 

What hurdles do we put up to connection, and what barriers do we build against belonging? 

Do we despise our own imperfect gifts and try to exchange them for a more perfect, worthy sacrifice? 

As parents, or partners, or neighbors, or friends, do we construct all or nothing approaches that wall us off from the terrifying vulnerability of being human alongside one another and beloved of God, just as we are?  

How do we habitually resist being encountered by God?  

And what are the well-worn ways we withhold the possibility of access to God from those we despise? 

Do we avoid being brave and kind because we can’t do it perfectly? 

And with what patterns do we refuse to rest because we suspect being unproductive means being worthless? 

 

We are so practiced and proficient at our habits of disconnection and alienation from God and the world - which is another way of saying, we’re so good at our sin – that we do it without even having to think about it. It’s ingrained in us. No amount of our own effort can free us. We cannot save ourselves. 

 

The good news is Jesus is ready and willing to storm into our business as usual, and tear down every barrier we erect that divides us from God and each other. He is always opening cages and letting our guilty pride and pampered self-loathing fly off. Jesus will drive out every label and prerequisite we place on ourselves and others for how to be included or excluded as God’s beloved people. He’ll chase away our carefully calculated good deeds, toss out our smug judgments of one another, and gladly scatter in the dust all our well-honed measurements of worth.

 

Once that happens, the compasses of our hearts are recalibrated by the promise that in Christ’s body, Christ’s own relationship to God, we are pulled into love and set on a new path. 

 

And just as we may not realize we have habits that are misdirecting us, we also probably don’t appreciate those habits we have that reinforce us in our belonging to God and all others. Just take today, for example. By getting out of bed and coming here, even when you don’t necessarily feel like it, because here something happens that we can’t make happen, without even realizing it, we’re being, with and for each other, the place where God dwells. 

Today when we confessed our sin and sought forgiveness, sharing words spoken by followers of Jesus for hundreds of years, and when we called one another to worship by receiving the welcome of God and remembering out loud why we’re here, and in a few moments, when we lift up our fears and joys to God with one another in prayer, we are practicing assuming the stance of least resistance to being encountered by the Divine. 

When we share what we have in offering for the work of God between and among us that is only sustained by our free giving, we are living in a different economy than the marketplace of the world. When we depart in blessing and are sent out to see strangers as siblings, and our neighborhoods and communities as the sacred ground where Jesus shows up, we are learning new habits of relating through repetition. When we remind each other to watch in the world for God’s hope and healing, and we use our time and gifts to share in that work, the compass of our heart is pulling us toward God’s trajectory for the world.  Each time we acknowledge beauty, and let ourselves listen deeply, we are attuning ourselves to the Creator. And every time we answer our knee-jerk dismissal of another person with an internal reminder of their belovedness, and an external acknowledgement of our shared humanity, we are joining in our own transformation. 

Talking to God is worth doing poorly. So is reaching out to someone we’re worried about. So is accepting help from others. Saying things wrong to someone we love, and imperfectly apologizing does far more to shape both of us in our already-belonging than fearfully guarding our words does. Practicing forgiving forms us toward freedom. 

By repeatedly doing these uncomfortable things until they become second nature, we’re participating in God’s relentless redemption of the world and of ourselves, so that, little by little,  by the grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit, living our belonging to God and all others become more and more habitually ingrained in us, directing our love so we become who we are. 

Amen. 

 (The sermon is the second in a Lenten series drawing from the themes in James K. Smith's, You Are What You Love. Here is the first). 

What do I love?

 Each morning, the first thing I do is reach for my phone. I look at how good of a sleep I got according to my watch data, I read my emails, and check the breaking news.  This habit is not neutral. This is a practice that is forming me.  

Like a sponge, I wake up parched and immediately soak up the world’s tension and division announced to me in breathless headlines. I let the urgency, self-judgment, and need for productivity course through my veins and get my blood pumping. Little do I realize this going to my heart. I am shaping my desire by adrenaline and upheaval, I am being trained to chase competence, proficiency and efficiency, and sooth anxiety with data points and accomplishments.  And, I’m told I’m not fun to be around in the morning.

What is this daily practice telling me about what a good life is and how to live it?  What does it reveal about what I actually love, over against what I think I love?

James Finley shares a story of interning in a VA hospital on the treatment unit for alcoholism in the 1970s. The men on the floor, mostly Vietnam vets, had developed an initiation rite that was passed down. In order to be admitted to the unit, you had to pass through this rite.

Finley describes being in a large room, with chairs all pushed against the four walls and the center empty, except for two chairs facing each other. Nearly 100 men are sitting silently along the walls, heads down, eyes to the floor. 

In comes the person at the end of his rope, with alcohol destroying his life.  He’s nervous, glancing around the room, knowing he will need to pass this initiation to get in.  Those around the walls keep their eyes lowered, and remain completely still and silent. Finley says, “It’s serious as death, which it is.”

The interviewer invites the man to a center chair and sits down across from him. 

The questioner then asks, “What do you love the most?”

“The alcoholic, not know what to say, stammers something out like, “My wife.” at which point everyone in the room yells as loud as they can, “Bull----!” and then goes silent, staring at the floor. 

The rattled man looks back at his questioner, who asks again,

 “What do you love the most?”

“My children,” he tentatively answers.

“Bull---!”, hollers loudly back from all sides.

“What do you love the most?”

Finally, finally, the person says, “Alcohol.”

Immediately all the men rise to their feet and give the man a standing ovation. Then in complete silence they line up and hug him, one at a time, as tears stream down his face.

He is ready to begin his journey.

We can know a lot, believe a lot, have the best intentions and the loftiest goals, but our hearts are shaped by our habits.  Like a compass: our love is directed toward what we put our attention on, what we practice every day.  

Were someone to observe us from afar and describe who we are, they could not see inside us, read our thoughts or intentions, or deduce our motivations, they could only witness and describe what they see us doing with our lives, what direction we are moving. And the conclusions they draw about us would, in some ways, be more accurate than the conclusions we often draw about ourselves.

Generations before Christ, when the Israelites were delivered from bondage in Egypt, they were sent into the wilderness, for 40 years.  All the lifegiving liturgies and practices of their faith that sustained them behind closed doors as the people of God during their 400 years of slavery came with them. But other patterns and habits, the “liturgies” of the empire had been shaping them day after day, telling them their lives were worthless except for what they could produce. The way of fear dominated their waking hours, forming them in daily doses toward self-preservation, guarded competition and on-edge dread. 

But in the barrenness of the wilderness this liturgy was extinguished, and new patterns and practices took their place, shaping them toward a different way of being. Every single day, God, who claimed them as beloved children, miraculously provided them food and water, protection and care.  Little by little, day by day, through habits of trust and dependence on their Creator, they were remade from fear to trust, from degradation to dignity Instead of relentless, competitive striving, they were rooted and grounded in the belonging, generosity and rest of a loving God in whose image they were made for a life of giving and receiving ministry, to bear God’s love to the world. 

Today we read that Jesus’ own ministry begins when he is plunged under the waters of baptism, and hears God’s claim on him, You are my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.  And then, immediately, Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the habit-disrupting, trust-teaching wilderness of his ancestors for 40 days of vulnerability to be cared for by God. 

Lent is the 40 days before the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter. It has always been seen as a kind of spiritual wilderness, a time of stripping away of our idols, isolation and captivity, and reorienting us back to God, who loves us and claims us for ministry. 

Lent turns the compass of our hearts back toward God, by first asking us, what is your compass pointing toward, that you may not realize? and then, like an initiation into recovery, disrupting our patterns of self-sufficiency and sin and recalibrating our loves.

Because when we see ourselves and our lives as they really are, and not just as we wish them to be: this is where God meets us, where transformation happens, where discipleship begins again, and again. In the wilderness of Lent, we too are tested by satan and waited on by angels, which is to say, we recognize how deeply seductive are the messages the world gives us about what a good life is, and how strongly they pull on us, but, there, in our most vulnerable and true selves, we are welcomed with ovation and open arms into the care of the one who calls us Beloved child in whom I delight.

My Lenten “liturgical inventory” began this week when I recognized how my waking up, (and for that matter, going to bed) rituals are mis-directing my heart. So I made the choice that I will not look at my phone for the first two hours of being awake. 

Each morning, I greeted the day in front of my eyes instead of on a screen. I was present to those around me instead of barking orders at them, and I felt myself inside my body, instead of racing through emails and giving my attention to whatever felt loudest or most urgent.  I managed to do this 5 of the 7 days. It is uncomfortable and hard.  But how hard it is shows me how necessary it is– like resting on sabbath Sundays reveals my dependance on doing. 

A week in, I’ve already discovered that when I come later in my day to the pressing news and to-do lists, first having awakened to God’s presence and been present myself with a different heart-orientation, it shapes my perspective, and I am noticeably less anxious the whole rest of my day.  

God is God, always here, always holding my life and this world in love, always moving both through and despite humans to bring redemption. I want to trust this, not just with my head, but with my heart, and so, then, also with my habits.  

May it be so. Amen.