By Kurt Nelson
March 6, 2008 Rollins Chapel
Text: Mark 11: 15-19
During my second of three years at Yale Divinity School
which was my first year of working with Yale undergraduate religious life,
my anger over issues of homophobia and exclusion
within the church and wider culture, reached a boiling point.
The Rev. Fred Phelps was out protesting Open and Affirming churches
and funerals and campuses,
proclaiming God’s hatred of sodomites, perverts,
and other epithets I’m not comfortable repeating.
Anti-gay posters had been placed all over the Yale campus,
couched in a deeply religious language.
And my own church, the ELCA,
had at the end of its second, 7-year institutional study of sexuality,
decided to effect no significant changes on policies for same-sex marriage
and the ordination of gay and lesbian pastors.
I was pissed.
I spoke out, I talked with everyone who would talk with me,
I organized a panel discussion,
hoping eventually to resurrect a student group called Queer People of Faith,
as a place for students to talk about serious issues of faith and sexuality,
exclusion and religion, of hope and possibility.
After a semester of no movement,
I decided simply to convene the group myself.
It was hard work.
We met weekly as a group usually of 3 or 4.
We had interesting conversations and created a nice, supportive environment,
but by the end of the semester I was tired,
and convinced that the group would not live on past my Yale tenure.
which was true.
But now a year later,
seemingly whenever I speak to one of my Yale friends and colleagues,
they tell me another student has inquired as to whether QPoF was still meeting.
Clearly, the work of the group has reached beyond those 3 students who actually came.
Had a lasting impact even for those unwilling to come.
I’d like to think had a lasting impact on those who did.
And I know had a lasting impact on me.
What began as anger, turned into patience and love,
to desire to work for justice,
to hope for change and possibility.
As my preaching teacher Tom Troeger once wrote concerning today’s scripture:
let anger be
the first note
in love's ascending scale.
I have no “final word” for you on the question of faith and citizenship.
No ultimate and specific vision for how to live our lives in a complex situation.
But this story of Jesus cleansing the temple
speaks to me deeply on the issue.
the vast majority of the sermons I’ve heard on this gospel story,
have focused on Jesus anger.
certainly as a sign of Jesus’ humanity,
but more to point to the fact that anger can be utterly useful,
and utterly holy, from time to time.
And I hope you’ve heard a good sermon on holy anger,
Because I’m not going to preach you that sermon today.
At least not exactly.
Because I think the real question for me,
is always, “to what are we ascending” when our starting note is angry.
I’ve got plenty of holy anger,
but often little sense of where it’s taking me.
So it leaks out from time to time,
in sermon or letter or conversation or debate,
and the ascending scale neither ascends nor sounds particularly attractive.
Anger might peter off into exhaustion, or frustration, or hopelessness.
And I think part of that, for me,
is due to a predominant image of holy anger,
which demands instant gratification.
Which comes largely as a result of a particular reading of this text
a la the Gospel of John with his ‘whip of cords’
and perhaps healthy dose of Martin Scorsese’s “Last Temptation of Christ,
of Jesus as the holy action hero
furiously chasing away each and every money changer in the temple.
Achieving his goal,
difficult though they may be,
in that very moment, violently and quickly.
And I must admit, I like that angry Jesus.
Who I can see posing a serious threat to the ruling power.
This Jesus who Utterly disrupted the business of the day,
and achieved his ultimate goal, his cleansing, in that very moment.
A holy Rambo, purging the temple of evil, then and there,
if only for the moment.
With holy anger ascending into immanent holy success.
But I don’t think that’s what the story is about.
This prevailing image of Jesus disrupting the whole of temple life in that moment,
simply doesn’t stand up.
The best archeological estimates suggest that the outer walls of the temple
(and it’s not clear whether the money changing would have been happening inside or out)
were roughly 500 meters by 300 meters long.
Making an internal space of about 150,000 sq meters.
8 times the size of the green.
With at least 7 major points of entry.
The Temple would have been roughly the size of Hanover’s bustling business district
bounded by Wheelock and South St.
and on the east and west by School St and Crosby.
This was a big area,
and Jesus was not a big man.
He would not have disrupted the whole of business life in such a large arena.
He wasn’t actually some holy action hero,
clearing everyone out of the temple.
A more apt image,
might be Jesus as the angry old lady at the grocery check out line,
arguing over an expired coupon and refusing to leave-
A nuisance, yes. Especially for those waiting in line behind him.
But not ultimately disrupting even the business of that very day.
I imagine people would have found another table, or another gate.
and still probably made their offerings and sacrifices
perhaps a bit shaken,
but maybe even ignorant of what was going on.
And those who had their tables turned,
probably went home to their families with a good story to tell.
About the crazy guy with his whip,
screaming about “dens of robbers” or some such thing,
while they were just trying to go about their important business.
Maybe they were even able to laugh about it after a few days.
But there’s hope in this, for me.
Because the story has resonated through 4 gospels,
and two thousand years as an example of loving, holy anger.
Which did not effect immediate, significant change,
but has lasting significance like few other stories.
Let anger be the first note
of love’s ascending scale.
Ascending sometimes to places we neither know nor see.
Like John Woolman who in his anger over slavery
went door to door and town to town,
trying to convince his fellow Quakers to free their slaves.
John Woolman, who died 4 years before the declaration of independence,
before the Quakers united on the question of abolition,
and 90 years before the emancipation declaration.
But he mattered.
He who answered the call of faith and citizenship.
Who had lasting significance.
Like Rosa Parks,
who refused to give up her seat,
and went to jail,
and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott
just four days later.
which organizers hoped would last a few weeks
and which lasted for 381 days.
And continues to resonate as perhaps the most successful non-violent protest
our country has seen.
She who mattered.
Who had lasting impact.
Like Cal Dewitt,
who was an environmentalist and an evangelical
long before it was popular to be either.
But who wrote and spoke and lived a life
in response to the call of faith and stewardship,
and who is now one of the most sought after religious voices on the care of creation
some 45 years after his work began –
lasting impact.
Like my Yale queer people of faith group,
which was small and difficult and exhausting,
but which resonates with students still.
I’m sure we all have stories of people who mattered to us,
who may not have known it.
Or things we did that mattered in ways we would have never expected.
Lasting Impact.
Sometimes it takes years or decades,
sometimes only days.
But this is, to me,
the life we are called to.
As faithful citizens,
who ought to get angry from time to time,
but ought not be discouraged
if we can’t chase out all of the money changers within our life-time.
if we can’t reach everyone we want,
or achieve all of our goals.
For we have our faith to sustain us.
Like Cal Dewitt and Rosa Parks and John Woolman.
and Jesus of Nazareth.
Faith that our anger and our action can indeed be the first note of an ascending scale,
toward an end we may not know and may never see.
Faith that we can act and work and speak,
for love and justice,
and faith and citizenship.
Following in good footsteps of those who did the same.
Some of whom were successful
and some of whom simply started us on the road to success,
with some successes that we have yet to work and hope for.
