A few years ago, we received an interesting message through our parish Facebook account. A man doing research on Anglican Eucharistic miracles was inquiring about a reported miraculous apparition here at Good Shepherd. He must have heard of an apparition of Christ’s face on the veil that hangs in front of the tabernacle on the high altar. I was not familiar with any reported miracle here at Good Shepherd, so I simply assumed that the person who messaged us was mistaken. How common it is for people of faith to long for a sign, I thought!
The real miracle of the Eucharist is that Christ comes to us again and again in ordinary bread and wine to feed us with his life. It doesn’t get more miraculous than that. But in our modern quest for certainty and evident signs, that miracle would seem to be insufficient. We need apparitions on tabernacle veils, as opposed to the unending gift of heavenly food to all sorts and conditions of people.
It’s my suspicion that the person who messaged us had mistaken this parish for another Episcopal church in northeastern Pennsylvania, where there was a reported apparition. It’s true; look it up. But why is it that some people of faith need the assurance of a supernatural sign? I, for one, do believe in miracles, even apparitions, but I also believe that miracles happen more often than we realize. And we usually overlook them because we’re looking for faces on tabernacle veils rather than the miraculous mystery of a God who allows us to receive his perfect self into our imperfect bodies by consuming Bread and Wine.
The real miracle of the Eucharist is that week after week, and day after day, broken people like me and you bring all our emotional and spiritual baggage to the altar. We kneel together with all our different viewpoints and diverse life stories, and Christ feeds us with himself. He puts us back together again and sends us out into the world to love and serve in his name. The real miracle is that even though we turn away from God again and again, and even though we demand proofs of his existence through apparitions or clearly answered prayers, God continues to welcome us back into his loving arms and feed us abundantly. And so, if there’s any evident sign of what God is doing among us, it’s the profound mystery of God’s unconditional provision for us. God gives us himself, God feed us, but sometimes we prefer a spectacular sign instead.
Rather than a mystery, we want a sign that is visible, clear, and extraordinary. To put it bluntly, we want God to prove himself. And this is precisely what happens to Jesus when he goes up to Jerusalem around the celebration of Passover. It’s one of three such occurrences in John’s Gospel. Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives out the moneychangers and their animals. He chastises the moneychangers for trading in transactions in his Father’s house. He overturns their tables.
It certainly appears to be an act of violence, until we realize what Jesus is doing. And although some in the Temple demand a sign from him to prove that he has authority to do what he has done, the sign has already been offered but unnoticed because his interrogators are looking for an obvious sign, an apparition on a tabernacle veil, if you will. What they fail to see is that the overturning of the moneychangers’ tables is the sign, although it’s a disconcerting sign. But if we read all the details carefully, we can see more clearly what Jesus is about.
It's Passover time, a time to celebrate the liberation of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. It’s a time for freedom, and so Jesus releases the animals that are the victims of a transactional system. He releases the people, too, from a demand for sacrifices that require money to purchase unblemished animals to offer to God. It’s a system that could easily be abused, where it might be perceived that nothing was enough to appease God. And yet, Jesus’s overturning of the tables is not abrogating the value of his own Jewish religion. It’s a visible sign that the freedom and salvation of the whole world are now located and enacted in a person, this Jewish man, Jesus, the Savior of the world.
Jesus is the sign. He’s enough. His impending passion, death, and resurrection are enough to release the world from the cruel grip of competition and the mad rat race of power games. The overturning of the tables is a sign that points to the real miracle that God is doing among humanity.
To our mortal eyes, clouded by sin, what Jesus does seems to be only an act of violence. He trashes the moneychangers’ tables and pours out the money they have collected. And it appears as if destruction is the intention and the final word. Yet we know through the eyes of faith that there must be a mystery beneath this visible sign. It’s a mystery because it’s not an evident sign like an apparition on a tabernacle veil or even a burning bush. This mystery is nothing less than the entire world being turned upside down. In the strange wisdom of God, an upended world is the greatest and most beautiful sign of all.
The overturning of the tables in the temple points to a mystery where wisdom is folly, and folly is wisdom, where poverty is spiritual wealth, and material wealth is spiritual poverty. In this mystery, loss is gain, and gain is loss. At the heart of this mystery, violence is countered with peace, and the vicious cycle of vindictiveness is broken. Through this great mystery, death brings new life. The whole world is turned upside down, just as Jesus overturned those tables in the temple. It’s a visible sign that in the mysterious providence of God, what is broken is put back together again. What is old is made new. Offenses are forgiven, and apparent destruction is never the end. For out of such destruction, God recreates our world.
It’s only natural on this side of heaven that we hunger for signs that God is actively present in our lives. It’s understandable that when we’re wandering aimlessly, we’d want God to give us even just a small hint of certainty as to his will and where we should go next. And when the stability of our world comes crashing down and the rug is pulled out from under our lives, it usually seems to be the last word. Chaos seems to be the end of the story, and it’s very hard to see past it to the other side.
But just like those who interrogate Jesus in the temple, it’s easy to miss what the risen Christ is teaching us. The destruction of his body on the cross has the appearance of hopeless finality, but after three days, the world is turned upside down. A crucified, broken body on a cross is a sign that the world is being redeemed and made whole again. We learn that the world’s Savior still lives despite a crucifixion. We learn that the ruins of loss are the material that God uses to remake the world.
To follow Christ is to allow our worlds to be upended and reoriented around his Gospel, and this will hurt. It will hurt to let go of those things that seem to be the most visible signs of God’s favor, but which are simply the path to death. It will be painful to let go of our control, of our unhealthy attachments, of our resentments, of our power, of our desire for religious certainty, of our comfort, of our need to be right, of even our lives themselves. When we let Christ into our lives, it will feel as if the tables of our lives are being overturned. It will feel like we have lost everything.
In recent days, I have watched the lives of people dear to me being turned upside down. The pain is real and undeniable. And yet, my faith tells me that through this woundedness God can do something extraordinary. The overturned tables of our lives are a visible sign of the unfathomable mystery of God. And in that mystery, our unbearable loss is our richest gain. Our humbling experiences are our path to exaltation. The daily deaths of our lives are how we will rise to new life in Christ, who is the visible sign of our life’s freedom. And although our world may be turned upside down, it’s only a sign that the God who loves us unconditionally will always turn us right side up. And in him, although we seem to die, we will live forever.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday in Lent
March 3, 2024