Column by Mary Lee Talbot
“Would we be in this much trouble if our moral and spiritual centers had attended to their original purposes?” the Rev. Frank A. Thomas, Ph.D., asked the congregation at the 9:15 a.m. Wednesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “God’s House of Prayer,” and the Scripture reading was Luke 19:41–46 from the New International Version.
In his sermons from Sunday through Wednesday, Thomas has examined the verses of the Scripture from Luke, and his theme has been “The Things That Make for Peace.” He said, “There are four movements in this series about the things that make for peace: loving kindness, be honest, brave and kind, give up on innocence in the journey to self and cleanse the temple to return it to be a house of prayer.”
The Temple was the religious heart of Jerusalem. “If we and Jerusalem are doomed (as the Scripture text says), what does that say about the Temple and its leaders?” Thomas asked. Jesus quoted Isaiah to remind the people that God would bring all nations to his holy mountain and the burnt offerings of all nations would be accepted.
“It would be a House of Prayer for all nations. All nations? Jesus highlights that the Temple is not for just one nation but every nation is welcome,” Thomas said. “Jesus is asking how we can be in this much trouble if we are doing our call right. Something has gone profoundly wrong. Jesus said, ‘You have made this a den of robbers.’ You might be peddling religion.”
Thomas said most sermons about this passage suggest that the merchants were bad, were selling shoddy goods and jacking up prices, that the problem was affordability. “This is a challenge, and I say Jesus is calling out the church. What if Jesus showed up at your church and started to clean it out, throw tables around? Jesus called all of us peddlers because the system is corrupt.”
He continued, “We love to be prophetic except when the church is under scrutiny. The crowd recognized that Jesus was some kind of king, but the temple leaders didn’t. They failed to see Jesus but the poor people, those he healed, even a criminal on a cross, saw him.”
Jesus was in the tradition of the rejected prophets of Israel but there was a profound difference. The prophets would speak saying, “Thus sayeth the Lord,” while Jesus spoke with the authority of being God. He called the temple “my house.”
Thomas said, “Jesus’ call to the religious centers has failed, and he has come to reclaim God’s house and people. He warns of the dangers of being religious peddlers.”
Thomas took the idea for his sermon series from theologian Frederick Buechner. “If you are going to steal, do it in broad daylight and name it,” Thomas said. In 2 Corinthians 2:14–17, the apostle Paul writes of being captives in Christ in a triumphal procession to spread the aroma of Christ. Paul tells the Corinthians to not be peddlers of the word of God.
Thomas said, “Buechner said, ‘Peddlers are people with packs on their backs full of things they want to sell, and the things they try to sell hardest are the things they think will sell best. Peddlers are less concerned with what the world needs than with what the world wants or can be made to settle for. Peddlers are salespeople who are interested less in the quality of what they’re selling than in the success of their sale.’”
Thomas continued, “If a vacuum cleaner salesperson comes to my house, I ask what do you use in your house. You can’t give people what you don’t deeply need. If we don’t deeply need it, we can’t sell it. If we don’t pray, we can’t sell prayer. Preachers don’t often tell the real story, that they had to go to the house of God, see the mirrors and vomit up the truth. Light and dark, sin and grace, innocence and freedom are always with us.”
Buechner wrote that preachers are afraid of uneasy silences and blank stares. In 2 Corinthians, the triumphal parade is used by God to spread the aroma of Christ which brings both life and death.
“Who is equal to be the sweet fragrance for Christ? Those who speak with sincerity as those sent from God, they speak before God with sincerity. God is watching and waiting to see what we say about Jesus,” Thomas said.
He continued, “When we speak in sincerity, we are the aroma and fragrance of God. We need to reclaim the House of Prayer in Christ before God. These are the things that make for peace: We speak in sincerity, and that is the aroma of Christ.”
Thomas closed using the “Prayer of Loving Kindness” to pray for churches, then temples, then mosques. “I pray that all churches, temples and mosques will be God’s House of Prayer for all people.”
Robert Wilson-Black, director of the Department of Religion, presided. Allen Kitchen, a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church and part of the Bestor Plaza music jam, read the Scripture. The prelude, performed on the Massey Memorial Organ by Organ Scholar Owen Reyda, and on the Steinway piano by Interim Director of Sacred Music Sonya Subbayya Sutton was “Largo, from Concerto for Two Violins,” by Johann Sebastian Bach, arranged by Gerald Near. Rebecca Scarnati, oboe, joined the Motet Choir for the anthem, “O Holy Spirit, Praise to You,” music by Howard Helvey and text by Mary Louise Bringle, based on Hildegard von Bingen. The choir was conducted by Sutton and accompanied by Reyda on the Massey Organ. Reyda played Postlude, Op. 66, No. 4, by Horatio Parker, for the postlude on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s preaching and chaplaincy is provided by The Rev. Leonard J. Ebel Chaplaincy.
