That sense of tension can be seen in the debate about homosexuality in our church and in most churches and other faith traditions. On the one hand there are those who argue about the immutability of scripture and others who talk in terms of human rights and equality. In this debate also the middle ground does not get much airing. The debate is all either/or. I have a deep respect for the tradition of scripture and for the sacredness of the text. But I also believe from my Anglican heritage that scripture is always read from the perspective of the tradition of interpretation and through the eyes of reason which include the contemporary insights of the sciences including psychology and sociology. The outcome of this approach is not always a neat solution but rather an attempt both to recognize and embrace the tensions inherent in the issue.

St Paul in perhaps the most famous and most revealing passage in the Pauline corpus articulates this tension which he locates within his own mind. He speaks of it in terms of Law and Grace. Paul like Augustine and Luther in later centuries struggled with the tension of obeying and following the way of God and with the deeply engraved proclivity to sin and disobedience in the human spirit. Paul cries out with painful anguish echoing each one of us at some stage of our life. “Wretched man that I am!” Or maybe in more familiar terms “what does life mean?” Or “how can I become the person God wants me to be?” Tensions abound in human existence and in religion. I have mentioned the tension between Law and Grace with relation to the Pauline passage. In other places we are aware of the tensions between Law and Spirit; or that between Faith and Reason or between Religion and Science. In our own lives in the community and in the church we know the tensions at play between individual and communal rights, between freedom and security as in the recent debate about the Patriot Act, between order and freedom in matters of worship, between liberal and conservative approaches to any particular issue. These are tensions with which we are familiar and with which we wrestle day in day out.

Jesus in the Gospel passage was dealing with a major tension at the heart of religion; the tension between the priestly and the prophetic; between the dominance of the cult and the life of the Spirit. Here in the style of the prophets of old Jesus acts out the prophetic denunciation of the abuse of the sacrificial cult. In a scene captured with all its drama by El Greco in his several versions of this incident Jesus creates havoc in the Temple courtyard driving out all the commerce that supported the sacrificial system. It was not just that this commerce distracted the faithful from their prayers but that the system itself was about to be superceded. This account from John’s Gospel differs from that in the Synoptic Gospels by placing the incident at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and not just before his Passion. Furthermore John makes the focus of the account not simply the dramatic action but the dialogue which follows which is all about Jesus’ identity. Who is this? The disciples recognize the scriptural allusion which locates Jesus’ actions as being Messianic but the Jewish authorities (who John refers to simply as the Jews) miss that entirely. When they ask for a sign Jesus replies “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jewish authorities assume Jesus is referring to the actual Temple, the home of the sacrificial system. But John says “he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this.” What John is saying is that the Temple and all it stands for including the sacrificial system is about to be superceded by the new reality, the Risen Christ, who is the Temple of the Spirit. God located in person rather than place. For John Jesus, Risen and Glorified, is the resolution to the tension between the sacrificial cult and worship in the spirit. “Types and shadows have their ending for the newer rite is here”.

In like manner Paul finds the resolution to the tension which tears him apart in the saving work of Christ. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That was Paul’s grace-filled moment when he realized that it did not all depend on him but on God’s saving activity through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it was for Augustine and for Martin Luther in later times. So it is for all Christians as we wake up to the fact that God has acted on our behalf out of Love, no strings attached.

But what about those Ten Commandments which seem to anchor us back in the Law, laws to be obeyed, laws with which Paul struggled to obey. Where do they fit into this discussion? Don’t they simply raise the bar yet again and add to the impossibility of compliance? These Ten have been much in the news in recent times with commandments in stone being place in the Supreme Court building in Texas and provoking a debate and judicial ruling on the tension between Church and State in the Constitution. But that is not the central issue with regard to the Decalogue. This legal summary stands at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition and is not to be trivialized for political ends. But for us for whom they are fundamental it is important to recognize that they are not burden but gift. They are not imposed on us by God to make life difficult, to become a burden. Rather they are the gift of our loving, saving, forgiving God to guide us in our redeemed life. The clue of course is in the context. “Then God spoke these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Ten Commandments are given by the God who Saves; who saves a people he has created and whom he loves.

In all three readings today we sense the tensions at the heart of our own lives, the life we live in community as well as in our spiritual lives. All three ultimately lead to the point of resolution to all these tensions and that is the Salvation wrought by God in and through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which we are preparing to celebrate in Holy Week and Easter. In all our struggles to live creatively and lovingly may we never lose sight of God’s great love for us focused in the outstretched arms of Jesus on the Cross.   Amen

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