Matthew 6:1-2

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward."

In the passage just read Jesus proposes to draw a distinction between faith and the dominant religious practices of his day.  It the difference between faith and humankind’s finite need to place restrictions on God for our comfort.

There can be no mistaking the general theme of Jesus’ words.  Implied in these two verses, which continues through verse 18 of this chapter, is the assumption that those listening to Jesus’ words will engage in the practice of religious acts. 

Moreover, there is little that Jesus is offering in this chapter that does not seek to uncover the best of what Judaism has to offer.

On some level, could we not make the same assumptions and critiques about this listening community and others that claim they too are followers of the teachings of Jesus?    Could we not find the same assumptions about our willingness to engage in certain religious acts? Could we not further conclude that what Jesus is offering gets at the best of what it means to be a follower of his movement?

But what’s at question is the motivation for such practices.  Are we committed to the kingdom or to the temple?  That is the question that all of us must confront honestly and answer authentically.

Our acknowledgement of Ash Wednesday, and the ensuing preparation these next 40 days that will culminate when that thin pencil line of dawn ushers in a new beginning on Resurrection Sunday.  Is that acknowledgement based on our commitment to the kingdom or the to the temple?

As we commemorate Black History Month, affirming the contributions to science, to literature, the politics, to the arts, to the moral conscience of the nation by a people who toiled for centuries in the darkness of oppression and the sweltering noon-day heat of injustice, is that recognition based on our commitment to the kingdom or the to the temple?

Very simply Jesus is reminding that particular listening community, just as he is reminding this ecclesia today, that it is quite possible to do the right thing but for the wrong reason.

Are we preparing ourselves these next 40 days to renewing our commitment of faith in a God that is not swayed by ostentatious impulses, but the realization that God is searching for the meek to inherit the earth?

Now I suspect that we would automatically condemn anyone who we thought was guilty of doing what we perceived as the right thing for the wrong reason.

But before we rush to overdose on haughtiness and insularity by condemning such acts in others, let us look calmly and honestly at ourselves, for all of us are endowed with those same desires—the desire, whether we act upon it or not to engage in the short cut of what I call “Temple Worship.”

Temple worship is when, for whatever reason, we place more emphasis on ritual than relationship, doctrine rather than Deity, legalism rather than love.   Temple worship is not a place, but rather a state of being.

Temple worship is when we become too busy to stop on the Jericho road, to preoccupied with the speck in our neighbor’s eye to self-reflect about the beam in our own eye, too afraid to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and too jaded to love our neighbors as ourselves.

So in lieu of the tough struggle we opt for the false sense of safety offered by Temple worship.

Jesus tells us that Temple worship is a simplistic vacuous form of worship that robs the soul of the spiritual nutrients required to be better people.  There is no hope, there is no grace, there is no mercy, and there is no love to be found within Temple worship.

If you’re content to engage in Temple worship, you can’t stand up in opposition to African-American chattel slavery, you have no burden to bear on the subsequent Jim Crow laws, you’re not ashamed about the “Trail of Tears,” you’re uncomfortable with the women’s suffrage movement, you’re silent during the Holocaust, you’re missing in action during Japanese internment, you’re neutral on Apartheid, you don’t understand why gays lesbians want the same rights as their heterosexual brothers and sisters, you’re confused as to why innocent men, women, and children who take on Bull Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses, and you would be ill-equipped to comprehend the magnitude and purpose of Calvary, the sacrifice made, the power unleashed, and the transformation that occurred.

Because none of these things occur in the temple.

Temple worship feeds our fears, fortifies our division, emboldens our prejudice, it makes the glass appear half empty when it should feel half full.

If we examine the principles on which this country was founded is it not somewhat nonsensical to have a Black History Month?

Black History Month began in 1926 as Negro History Week by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, as a way to bring attention to the positive contributions of black people in American history.

Woodson's achievements alone are of great historical value. The son of former slaves, Woodson worked in the Kentucky coalmines in order to put himself through high school. He graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903, and then went on to Harvard for his Ph.D.

Woodson was concerned that one was hard pressed to find the contributions of blacks, positive or otherwise in American history books, even though blacks had been an integral part of American history since 1619.

In 1915, he established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and then founded the Journal of Negro History and Negro History Bulletin. In 1926 he began promoting the second week of February as Negro History Week. In 1976, it became Black History Month.

Whether it is the belief that without Black History Month the achievements of African Americans would go the way of the spotted owl if Black History Month came to an end, or the comfort realized in being marginalized, it is a conversation that many are not prepared to entertain.

I have long maintained that Black History Month renders the achievements of African Americans to an adjunct status in American history.

It is a mistake to view the Civil Rights Movement as something that merely helped blacks gain equal rights. This was a movement that tested the elasticity of the Constitution. In doing so, it made America examine whether or not the Jeffersonian notion of equality had any authentic validity.

Is that not a lesson for all Americans to embrace?  Why are the names of George Washington Carver, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ralph Bunche almost exclusive property of African Americans?

Furthermore, does not the concept of Black History Month suggest that other marginalized groups have a month of celebration as well?

Thus, the solution would be to authentically integrate the achievements of African Americans as well as other marginalized communities into American history.  But here is where I fear we do not possess collective maturity.

To do what I suggest would cause us to collectively engage in the discomfort of change.  It is that discomfort of change that causes us to seek the safe shores of the temple but it is the antithesis of Jesus is calling us to.

Jesus says over in Luke “Do you think that I’ve come to bring peace? No, I tell you, but rather division!”  This paradoxical statement is directed at a status quo religiosity that would rather worship in the temple than to engage in the tough struggle of the human condition.

Though the passage may be somewhat paradoxical when we examine our collective stereotype of Jesus it reminds us that the path to peace is often times paved with discomfort.

Just as the path to love is paved with hatred, the path to joy is paved with sorrow, the path to happiness is paved with sadness, the path to satisfaction is paved with disappointment so to is the path to peace paved with some measure of discomfort. 

And you can’t have change without the pain, the humiliation, the suffering, and the discomfort of Calvary because that is the perquisite to resurrection.

Very little change occurs in the temple because temple worship does not create discomfort.  It does not create the type of discomfort internally and externally if we are to be agents of change in a world still searching for its moral compass that has been demagnetized since original sin.

Temple worship is designed to maintain order, but it is not a highway to hope, a road to redemption, or a lane to liberation.  For as Jesus warns in the text the rewards to be gained from temple worship are predetermined and carry an expiration date.

As we begin our forty-day journey to resurrection Sunday do we have the courage to break from the shackles of temple worship?  Are we preparing ourselves to the light that shines in the darkness?

Jesus says in the text that those who engage in temple worship have already received their reward.

But with the courage and humility to break free from the arrested development of temple worship than can infect us all, we have an opportunity to participate in the “they will be done on earth as it is in heaven” clause. 

We are charged to turn midnight into morning, turn despair into deliverance, turn mental rigor mortis into spiritual resurrection.

Will we use a few select scriptures that work for us, and against others, as tools of exclusion?  Will we make the bible, in the words of Karl Barth: “a self-sufficient paper pope?”

Or will we use this time of preparation to renew our strength.  As Howard Thurman says: when you’re down and out and void of strength there will be a strength beyond your strength giving strength to your strength.

Because God is the living God, God cannot be frozen for eternity on the pages between Genesis and Revelation. God cannot be made to fit within the contours of society, as we understand it. Nor can God be held down by the stocks of temple worship.

We want to sentence Jesus to life without parole confined to the prison of our ecclesiastical conformity.  We want to wrap him in a shroud of legalism, bury him in a glass tomb of irreverence, we want to sanitized the cross so that we are not reminded by the blood stains that were left there, we want to freeze him in the portrait painted by Michelangelo 16 centuries after his death, we don’t want him to get his hands dirty in the fight for justice or the struggle for freedom, we want to tie him to the tomb, nail him to the nation, chain him to the church, stagnate him based on sexuality, stabilize him in simplicity, and rivet him to the race.

The Nicene Council has no copyright on God; and the church has no patent on God’s word.

God is still speaking, active in the world recruiting change agents who possess the courage to overcome their fears of discomfort to embrace something bigger, wider, stronger, and more lasting than temple worship 

The God same that said, “Let there be light!” Was also Adam's redeemer, Abrams vindicator, Abraham's sacrifice, Jacob's wrestling partner, Moses staff, Joshua's courage, Rehab's allegiance,  Elijah's fire, Jeremiah's balm in Gilead, Ezekieal's wheel, Vashtai's virtue,  Esther's determination, Isaiah's Prince of Peace, Hoea's love, Amos' justice, David's music, Deborah's leadership,  Daniel's pray room, Malachai's messenger, Job's confidence, Noah's ark, Jonah's deliverer, Mary's baby. 

It was that was Harriet Tubman’s North Star, Frederick Douglas’ eloquence, Martin King’s dream interpreter, Rosa Parks’ usher, Nelson Mandela’s company keeper, and Barack Obama’s audacity to hope. 

It is the same God that will comfort us when times get tough, when the valley is deep, when the road is long, when the burden is heavy, when the strain is unbearable, when the hills are un-climbable, when the rivers are un-crossable, when problems are unsolvable, my bridge over troubled waters, my joy when I'm sad, my ladder when I'm down, my hope, my peace, my bread, my all. 

That’s why I sing because I’m happy I sing because I’m free his eye is on the sparrow and I know God is watching me. God is ready to meet us outside of the temple, on the road of hope with love, grace and mercy.

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