Lent III

At St Paul's Catedral, Buffalo, for Lent III:


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

When he was in his mid-thirties, David Finch encountered a life-changing revelation: his doctor diagnosed him with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum that explained his atypical reactions, his lack of understanding of the emotions of others, and what he had always thought were just quirks and strange habits. That diagnosis forever modified David’s understanding of his life and worldview. In his memoir related to that diagnosis, David’s wry and dark humor peeks out. He entitled his biography The Journal of Best Practices, and explains in his book how his revelation of Asperger’s made him see that his life didn’t have to be the way it was. For you see, David’s relationship with his wife had become strained, and was now so far different than when they had been dating and newly married. Now, with work pressures and two young children, David’s inability to understand his own needs and desires, let alone those of his wife and children, and his frequent overreactions at small things and underreactions at important things was no longer tolerable in his family system. It wasn’t ok anymore that David spent an hour looking at himself in the mirror trying to discern if his face was symmetrical, or that his inability to help his wife get the kids ready in the morning because the noise was just too much for him was causing his wife to want to poison him.
But his diagnosis changed everything. He had never before thought about changing, he had never thought about working to be different. His diagnosis didn’t mean that he was a bad man or had an undesirable personality; but his diagnosis allowed David to consider that he was not acting the way he felt that he could act at his best.
And The Journal of Best Practices poignantly tracks David’s struggle and humorous progress in his change. He found that he had to learn lessons that did not come naturally to him, and he catalogued and studied these lessons, trying to put them into practice. Included in the Journal of Best Practices are the insights that: his wife is not lazy because she spends an hour three times weekly to wash, dry, and fold the clothes for the entire family, but expects David to put them away. David also wrote down in his journal: don’t change the radio station in the car when my wife is singing to the song playing. The alternate personalities that David created at work in order to deal with clients in sales situations should not be also employed with his wife to try to convince her to do what he wants; she can see through it. When a friend is talking to you at a party and you’re not interested in what he’s saying, don’t just turn and walk away in the middle of his sentence and go get yourself another beer. David wrote that if a close friend were to come up to him and tearfully tell David that she had only 24 hours to live, David’s reaction would be to ask her if she knew how long he had to live?
And David learned that when you’re working on improving your marriage, and you’re excited about a new insight, don’t immediately wake your wife up in the middle of the night and tell her how you’re going to be more sensitive about her busy schedule, or don’t insist that she give you a full performance review with Powerpoint like she would to an employee, and certainly don’t spring the idea on her when she’s trying to relax in the bath and have some personal time, and absolutely don’t demand that she prepare for the review immediately. David taught himself each of those lessons the hard way. And the lesson that he had to keep learning over and over? It’s not an apology if you yell it.
As much as I cringed often, as well as laughed hysterically (trying to keep my own voice down, lest I be insensitive of those around me), it’s also remarkable to reflect on the entire process David Finch undertook: thorough self-examination, adaptation, and acceptance of who he was, who he could be, and what change would mean for him and for his life, both the good and the bad, the falling in love again, and the screamed apologies.
David chose to no longer be disenfranchised from himself and from the person he wanted to be, for himself, and for his family. It took dedication, work, patience, and an open heart until David could begin to feel that his self-identification was now in parallel to the man he could be at his best.
All of us know individuals who are remarkable for the integrity of who they are at all times, and we admire those who strive to always be coherent, always be themselves. And no person has ever been more coherent, has ever been more Himself, than the Lord Christ.
So, it may seem odd that this Gospel today recounts a violent event in Christ’s life that is so brusquely dissimilar to the calm, the peace, the meekness of Christ’s demeanor and behavior in the rest of the Gospel. Is Christ throwing a tantrum? David Finch might have related to Christ’s seeming overreaction to the moneychangers. But Christ’s apparent erratic and over the top behavior is entirely explainable, and that explanation comes immediately in the discussion that follows between Christ and those gathered in the Temple precincts. In that conversation, Christ immediately compares the Temple to His own Body. Those listening don’t understand, hence their confusion about which temple it is to which Christ is referring. And those same people probably weren’t in the most understanding frames of mind, anyway, since Jesus had just ransacked the merchants’ booths, and there were likely a lot of turtledoves flying around, freed from their cages, landing everywhere, and doing their business on the shoulders of the bystanders.
Christ’s reaction, though, flowed from his intimate and coherent association of Himself, of His own Body, with God’s love in the world. Christ knew Himself to be the Temple. It was not the newly-built Temple that would be the source of grace, love, and sanctity in days to come, but it would the very heart and Body of Christ standing among them that would be their Holy of Holies. Christ saw those changing money, earning profit, disregarding the Temple’s call to prayer, God’s call to amendment of life and the invitation to always seek to be the best one can be, and Christ immediately overthrew it, for it did not belong alongside the coherence and beauty in His own heart.
Overturning the tables in the Temple, though an atypical and dramatic scene, was also not an action frozen in time, nor did it apply just to that morning in Jerusalem. Christ, as the Temple we worship, as the very Holy of Holies, bids us to overturn the tables that we place in the shrines of our own hearts, to overturn the distractions and inconsistencies that keep us from being truly ourselves, and ourselves at our best.
In the 1712 addendum to the English Book of Common Prayer regarding the hallowing of graveyards and consecration of churches is included this prayer: sanctify us, we pray thee, that we may be living temples, holy and acceptable unto thee; and so dwell in our Hearts by Faith, and possess our souls by thy grace, that nothing which defileth may enter into us; but that being cleansed from all carnal and corrupt affection, we may ever be devoutly given to serve thee in all good works, who art our Saviour, Lord and God, blessed forevermore. So, now, like when David Finch realized that his life could take a different path, we see the point of today’s Gospel for us: we, too, are temples, and Christ is overturning the tables in our lives, bidding us to turn away from the things that distract and detract, and to turn toward Him, and to turn toward a more complete and healthy version of ourselves.
Christ offered His ministry, His life, His Blood and Passion for the conversion of our hearts, for the health of our minds and the quiet of our lives, and for the eternal salvation of our immortal souls. He overturns the tables that we fill with worldly needs, and then forces us to stand in front Him, to stand and face Him in the shrine he has built in our hearts, and to accept His invitation to live our lives more abundantly.
This is the third Sunday of Lent, and in just a few short weeks, we will enter into Holy Week. We will start that journey on Palm Sunday, and on that morning, as we gather here in St. Paul’s Cathedral and as Christians gather around the world, we will witness these walls of Medina sandstone melt around us as we process with Hosannas, and the sunblasted walls of Jerusalem rise to take their place. We will join in proclaiming Christ with shouts of joy, in welcoming Him into our homes, and into the temples of our hearts. Here, in the Jerusalem that will surround us, and here, in our own hearts, we will receive from Our Lord the life he instituted for our life in the Holy Eucharist; on Maundy Thursday, we’ll hear the choirs sing the words written by St Thomas Aquinas: He gives Himself with His own hand. And, receiving Christ in the Eucharist, we will welcome Him again into the temple he has built in our hearts.
Lent is not only given to us so that we can think about skipping that third martini, or avoiding carbs. Lent is given us to reevaluate who we want to be, who Christ dreams we could be. Lent is given us to prepare, to firmly and resolutely name the ties that bind us to infirmity, and to grasp strongly the edges of the tables cluttering our souls with needless anxiety, with purposeless worry and empty pleasure, with white lies and with darkest sin, to grasp the edges of those tables and fling them over, kick them flying, throw them across and out of our hearts, to do violence to our imperfections.
As we continue to prepare together for Holy Week and the unfolding of the great work of God in Christ, let us prepare our hearts as Christ prepared Jerusalem, by overturning the tables in our hearts that inhibit us from being completely ourselves, by cleansing the Temples Christ has built in our souls, and by standing, together, adoringly, before the Christ who bids us to follow Him, to grow into greater life and joy in Him, and then to stand in vigil at the Cross with Him, for the healing of our hearts and for the salvation of our immortal souls. Amen.