Chaotic Good
Thumbnail: Eric Haynes, used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
March 7, 2021—Lent 3B
Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-22
In the world of role-playing games, every character has an “alignment,” which describes their basic ethos. You can be good, neutral or evil; and then within that, you might be lawful, neutral or chaotic. Thus, you could be Chaotic Evil, causing havoc and destruction almost for the joy of it; Lawful Good, working for a stable society and well-being for all people; or anything in between.
I always ended up playing Neutral Good. Frankly, Lawful was a little too structured and stuffy for my taste. On the other hand, Chaotic scared me a bit. In fact, “chaos” is a word I often use to signify the opposite of God’s work in the world: God creates, heals and brings order; the forces of evil bring chaos and destruction.
And I still believe there’s truth there. But the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the Temple suggests it’s not the whole truth. Because the whole truth includes something I once heard from U of M Chaplain, Matt Lukens: that in the face of a Lawful Evil system, the only ethical response is Chaotic Good.
Now, before anyone gets the idea that I’m saying Judaism was evil and Christianity was the good that replaced it, I want to remind us that any time Jesus faces off against the religious authorities, it is the church that should feel his skeptical gaze. We are the inheritors of those spiritual dangers; we are the ones who might now feel the scorn of the prophets, demanding us to answer for the ways in which we protect our own power and influence, the ways in which we feel complacent about our own goodness, boastful about the ways in which we are righteous, just a touch too satisfied in our own salvation.
We need to remember that, whenever we look at the strengths and the flaws of the Temple system. In the time of Jesus, people came to the Temple to make the required sacrifices, to make offerings to the God who had given them so much. It was a way of connecting, a form of communication and thanksgiving. They came from all over, and rather than bring the required animals with them, they would buy them when they got there. And rather than carry Roman coins into the Temple, they would change their money before they entered holy ground.
The Jewish people have worked hard to maintain this single central Temple, even as they’ve been exiled and occupied and scattered. But the system has become unwieldly, and according to Jesus, its priests care more for their own wealth than for the care of widows. And so, when Jesus makes that whip and drives out the dove-sellers and the money-changers, he is not so much “cleansing” the Temple as suggesting a replacement for the whole system, a system that began as the connection between heaven and earth, but in many ways now functions as an inaccessible marketplace!
In our day too, we have a system. We don’t have one central building, but we do have lots of buildings: individual churches that “good Christian people” come together to pray in every week. And we have creeds and catechisms, and we have prayers to accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, and we have attendance at Mass and regular Confession. We have all sorts of things that we have built up as the point we are SURE that earth and heaven meet. We have our Temple, even without a central building in Jerusalem. We have our practices and our rules to follow; we have our money that needs to be paid, and pity on you if you do not have it; and we have our inner sanctums and we have our outer courts for the less worthy.
We too have a system whose structure can become its own god. Becomes its own god, when one wing of the church focuses solely on an individual’s entry into heaven after death, and ignores the situations of people in this world. Becomes its own god when another wing focuses so intently on participation in the rites that reveal God’s grace that they forget to apply that grace outside the church walls. Becomes its own god when any one of us receives blessings from scripture and worship that we do not immediately extend in every way possible to the rest of the world.
Every system, no matter how well-meaning, has the danger of slipping into Lawful Evil. In many ways, it’s unintentional. We begin by doing such a good thing, and we’re just trying to protect and perpetuate that. That why Lawful Evil often has such an upstanding, even benign exterior. The danger comes (the damage comes) when we start to be more focused on perpetuating the system, and protecting our power and reputation within it, than extending its values and its plenty as far as possible. And those are the times when we find ourselves in desperate need of Chaotic Good.
Those are the times when Jesus strides in to overturn the tables at which we have secretly longed to keep our seat. When Jesus stands in the middle of the wreckage and demands a reckoning of our order and complacency. When he reaches out a hand and invites us, begs us to remember the kind of temple he came to build for us.
To BE for us.
In the place of a temple, an institution that gathers power and wealth to itself and to its procedures, Jesus offers himself. For years the prophets have insisted that generosity and liberation are the offerings God desires, and Jesus now proclaims that a life filled with those things is actually the place where earth and heaven meet. The life of Jesus is where the relationship between God and humanity will be made visible. In the person of that living, breathing, suffering, laughing, feeling human being. In his terrible death at the hands of those who opposed the life he lived. And in the resurrection that was the victory of life, sprung up in the very midst of death and defeat.
There, THERE is where we will see the face of God. There is the true temple, the meeting place between heaven and earth: in a human life. In the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. In the life and death and resurrection that make up ALL of our lives. Because when the disciples asked Jesus, “Where did we see you, Lord?” he replied: All around you. I am all around you, if you could just see me.
It is in our own life. It is in the stuff of the lives around us. Heaven and earth are met, if we will just open our eyes. Heaven and earth are met, if we will come to the temple that is Jesus, and offers ourselves there. Not just in a prayer that we utter, hoping that it will earn us entry into heaven. But in the wild, chaotic hope that it will change us in this life. That it will unleash in us the power of Christ: a creative, generous, liberating power that does not care one whit for institutional longevity and reputation.
This is the power of Chaotic Good. A little frightening, very much unruly, and certainly risky when it comes to those tables we had rather enjoyed sitting at. But in the way we see them overturned, and ourselves turned out into the streets to meet Jesus in everyone we encounter, they are the place where heaven and earth meet!
Foolishness, as Paul says. But also, the power and wisdom of God! May we come and worship there. May it be so. Amen.