A student in one of my seminary classes handed me a copy of
this news story from the BBC:
`Talking fish' stuns New York: A fish heading for slaughter in a New York
market shouted warnings about the end of the world, two fish cutters have
claimed. Zalmen Rosen, from the Skver
sect of Hasidic Jews, says co-worker Luis Nivelo, a
Christian, was about to kill a carp to be made into gefilte fish in the city's
New Square Fish Market in January when it began shouting in Hebrew. "It
said `Tzaruch shemirah' and
`Hasof bah'," Mr. Rosen later told the New York
Times. "[It] essentially means [in Hebrew] that everyone needs to account
for themselves because the end is nigh." Mr. Nivelo
told the paper he was so shocked that he fell into a stack of slimy packing
crates, before running in panic to the shop entrance and grabbing Mr. Rosen,
shouting: "The fish is talking!" However his co-worker reacted with
disbelief: "You crazy, you a meshugeneh!" A
disbelieving Mr. Rosen then rushed to the back of the store, only to hear the
fish identifying itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who had died the
previous year.
The incident relates to the beliefs of some Hasidic Jews, who say that
righteous people can be reincarnated as fish. Many members of the city's Jewish
community are now certain that God, troubled by the war in
Now that's an amazing story, and I really don’t know what to make of
it. I know that I really like the new
commercial for McDonalds where the fish on the guy’s basement wall turns
and says, “Gimme that filet-o-fish…gimme that fish” But this is a whole different kettle
of fish isn’t it? But no matter
what I think about it … the part of the story that really got me was the
last line that read: "The fish was eventually killed by Mr. Nivelo and sold." Isn't that amazing! They killed it
and sold it! It may have been God speaking! It may have been a voice from the
dead. It may have been a demon or the devil himself.
But what do we humans do when confronted by the awe-filled, mysterious presence
of the holy? We kill it and sell it!
Our gospel story today tells us about the day Jesus got angry because the holy
place was being disrespected, because the spiritual was being commercialized,
because the
It may bother us that Jesus got mad. We often think of Jesus as being a kind of
dispassionate stoic, the pure self-controlled mind of God always on top of
things. But our gospel stories tell of Jesus' heart. Like us, he has deep
feelings. He gets sad to the point of weeping at the death of his friend
Lazarus. He feels compassion for the poor and outcast, for the people who feel
like lost sheep without a shepherd. He grieves for the beloved city of
Jesus doesn't get angry all that often. But he gets angry when Peter tries to
talk him out of the hard way of the cross and into the path of easy triumph. He
gets angry at the religious leaders who play gatekeepers to God and exclude
people from the tender mercies of God's grace. And he gets angry with the
moneychangers and marketeers in the
It's not completely clear what raises Jesus' ire in this story about the
cleansing of the
Did Jesus object to the profits these vendors made? Are we to assume they were
taking advantage of the poor? Or was it the location that offended him, the
noise and bustle in the one place the Gentiles were allowed to come and pray?
Is his anger about greed or about exclusion or about irreverence? Or is it
something else altogether? Whatever it was, Jesus made a whip and then he made
a scene. This drew an immediate reaction from the keepers of the
Now, we hear this story in our time as Jesus against the Jews. But Jesus was a
Jew, worshipping in the
Jesus expects the best from us. First of all, he demands due reverence for
God's house. It should be a place of prayer for all people, not desecrated by
human greed or by those who want to control access and exclude people from
meeting God. I think that means for us, the keepers of this temple, that God
has given us a place we are charged to keep holy. That means giving our
resources - our time, our treasure, our trouble - to take care of it as our witness
to the world of what we think of our God. That means keeping it in good order
and appearance. That means supporting the cost of keeping the lights on and the
heat running. Not long ago a dedicated group of volunteers cleaned out the
closets and the storage areas. Every
fall and spring we have a “clean the church workday” when the
windows are washed, the pews are polished and the kitchen is made to sparkle.
It won’t be too long before we do that again, and I urge all of you to
take care of these spaces as your service to God.
I think this story also says something about how we behave when we come here.
It means that we never gather or let others gather here without understanding
this is God's space and it should be treated with reverence. It says this is a
place to set aside other personal agendas, to dedicate ourselves to making this
space a sanctuary for all people. It means treating all people with the dignity
and respect we would give to Christ himself and even in our speech, to make
this place emotionally safe for everybody.
I love this sanctuary, and I know you do, too. I love the fact that it housed
the quilt show again yesterday and that many people got to share its beauty
along with the beauty of the quilts. I
love the fact that we have shared so many beautiful, sacred moments with God
and with each other here. This sanctuary is holy ground. But there is also a danger that we hold the
place in higher reverence than the God to whom it belongs … that we trap
God here so we can visit God when we feel like it, forgetting that God is also
with us in the world and there is no place where God is not.
This place is holy to God. But so is your home. So is your workplace. So is
every person you encounter. That's the biggest danger of all, that church buildings
could become more important than the people God loves, that they may be turned
into a museum of the holy instead of a busy spiritual hospital for the wounded.
Buildings are made for God's people, not God's people for buildings, and
I’m so proud that this building serves as the weekly meeting place for
senior meals and AA and the monthly host site for the Neighborhood Table.
Jesus was accused of irreverence, but he was calling for the right kind of
reverence, where we treat holy spaces with respect, but people with a higher
respect and God with the greatest respect of all. Jesus attacked the false
reverence we give to our idols: our power, our control, our greatness, which
leads us to arrogance and violence. As Tony Campolo
suggests, Jesus made hamburger of their sacred cows! And that is a dangerous
thing to do.
It shouldn't take a talking fish to make us stop and stand in awe. Life itself
is a miracle, a grace gift from God. Our lives and the lives of every person on
the planet are precious to God and they are God's gift to us. Instead of
killing the holy and selling it, let us learn to stand in awe and treat all
people as the temples of the holy that they are.
May we pray?
O God, teach us to have reverence for you, reverence for human life, reverence
for each other, and reverence for this place which is called by your name.
Forgive us for the way we kill the holy and disrespect what is precious - who
is precious - to you. Have mercy on us, O God, and bring us to peace in your
holy of holies, the human heart. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa