sermonboy.com

Third Sunday in Lent

John 2
13Not long before the Jewish festival of Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. 14There he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. 15So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.
16Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, "Get those doves out of here! Don't make my Father's house a marketplace."
17The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, "My love for your house burns in me like a fire."
18The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, "What miracle [c] will you work to show us why you have done this?" 19"Destroy this temple," Jesus answered, "and in three days I will build it again!"
20The leaders replied, "It took forty-six years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days?"
21But Jesus was talking about his body as a temple. 22And when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered what he had told them. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words of Jesus.


Let's call this exercise "what on earth is he talking about?"

They come in five colours: green, red, blue, light blue and burgundy (remember, I'm colourblind)

They are a fixture in our lives. It is widely believed that if you select one of the colours in childhood, you will remain with them for the rest of your days.

They are shrinking. The local form has diminished by 800 in the last five years.

They seem to have an aversion to poor people. Most of the missing 800 went missing from neighbourhoods in need.

They want to shack up together: It seems that the blues want to be together and green has a thing for burgundy.

If you guessed the banks, you are correct. Of course there are more than five, but most often we differentiate between the "big banks" and all the little banks. And they are very much a fixture in our lives.

Love them or hate them, everyone has an opinion on the banks. Should the blues be allowed to get together? Does green mix with burgundy? Are bank executives rewarded for coming up with new services charges? Why are they fleeing poorer neighbourhoods while building new and bigger branches in the "better" neighbourhoods? Why has the government never compelled them to release statistics on how many people are refused credit? And why can the banks charge 19% on a credit card when interest rates hover around three percent? How is it that the Money Marts and other thieves are allowed to move so seamlessly into the areas that the banks vacate? And how do they get around the law that says you can't charge more than 60% interest on a loan?

Sorry, I guess I'm on a rant. Luckily for me, it's the theme of the day.

***

There are few places on earth as intense as the Temple in Jerusalem. At the very top is the Dome of the Rock, sacred to Islam as the site from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. Near by is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a secondary Islamic structure. All of this is surrounded by what is left of Herod's reconstruction, including the Western Wall, sacred to Jews as the last remaining parts of the ancient Jewish Temple. It is also believed to be the place where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac, as well as the legendary location of Jacob's ladder to heaven. Conservative Christians believe that the Second Coming of Jesus will occur here, and the most extreme of them dream of displacing both Muslims and Jews to allow this to happen.

As intense as all that, I want you to imagine that the temple in Jesus' day was more intense. Not intense in the sense of potential conflict, but intense in that the temple was God's dwelling place. It was divided into three sections: an outer court, an inner court called the "holy place" and finally the "Holy of Holies" the place where God lived. Each section was accessed by rank. The highest rank, the Chief Priest, was the only one allowed into the Holy of Holies, and only once a year. So intensely sacred was this precinct that the Chief Priest would enter with a rope tied around his waist, so that in the event that he died within the Holy of Holies the other priests could pull him out without violating the sanctity of the inner chamber.

It was also intense as the centre of Jewish commercial life. After the period of exile in the sixth century BC, the Persians allowed the Temple to be rebuilt as both religious shrine and a sort of national treasury. Call it the biggest of the big banks, and then roll in an early version of Revenue Canada (or whatever they call it now) serving both the new Jewish elite and their Persian overseers. One of the most interesting features of the Temple ruins is called "Wilson's arch," named for the archeologist who figured out that the curving outcrop at the top of the Temple mount is all that remains of an ancient bridge that allowed the elite members of society to cross over to the Temple without having to rub shoulders with the rabble below. It is into this intense situation that a new character enters:

There Jesus found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins. Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, "Get those doves out of here! Don't make my Father's house a marketplace."

Most scholars agree that this was a small-scale protest. Far from "cleansing the temple" as we might imagine, this was akin to tearing up your deposit slip and telling everyone in line you are moving to the credit union. Jesus, "larger than life" as he was, was still one man against a large and complex organization that dominated the city and the nation. It was a symbolic action, one designed to gain the attention of his adversaries, and the one thing that his protest did very well. Even though John decides to place this episode at the beginning rather than the end of his Gospel, it is still one of the primary links between action and official reaction (meaning trial and cross).

And there is another layer too, one that illustrates the symbolism at work here:

The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, "What miracle will you work to show us why you have done this?"
"Destroy this temple," Jesus answered, "and in three days I will build it again!"
The leaders replied, "It took forty-six years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days?"

The temple, we soon realize, is his body, destroyed on the cross and rebuilt in three days. And this is even more pointed when we recall that John is writing this Gospel thirty years after the Romans destroyed the Temple a final time. He writes about the thing that may happen--and has, in fact--already happened. Nor is this new. When the author of 1 Kings recounts the words spoken to Solomon after the dedication of the First Temple, words of warning that predict the destruction of the Temple, it too has already happened. Writing from exile, the author of 1 Kings writes a warning that describes what is already true:

6But if you or any of your descendants disobey my commands or start worshiping foreign gods, 7I will no longer let my people Israel live in this land I gave them. I will desert this temple where I said I would be worshiped. Then people everywhere will think this nation is only a joke and will make fun of it. 8This temple will become a pile of rocks! [a] Everyone who walks by will be shocked, and they will ask, "Why did the LORD do such a terrible thing to his people and to this temple?" 9Then they will answer, "We know why the LORD did this. The people of Israel rejected the LORD their God, who rescued their ancestors from Egypt, and they started worshiping other gods."

Recall that Solomon's dedication of the temple was one of the most commonly known passages in the Bible and one that Jesus would have known since childhood. It describes the primary tension in the life of the Israelites: God will only remain faithful to them if they remain faithful to God. Jesus lived and breathed this tension, and although he didn't agree with it, it certainly coloured the way he viewed the Temple and the economy that grew up around it. Rather than acting to defuse the possible destruction he welcomes it, knowing that the Temple had become too corrupt to save.

***

Sermons on "cleansing the temple" can follow a number of directions. We can meditate on righteous anger. We can look at social justice. We could look at temple sacrifice and the pure sacrifice to come. We can even use it as an excuse to take a poke at the banks. The primary topic, I would argue, is God. A poem, recently recited:

The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul.
The decrees of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.

The commandments of the LORD are right,
bringing joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are clear,
giving insight to life.

Reverence for the LORD is pure,
lasting forever.
The laws of the LORD are true;
each one is fair. (Psalm 19)

Again, this is a song that Jesus sang many, many times. It is a compelling summary of why the law is at the heart of the Jewish religion and why we believe Jesus fulfilled the law rather than overturning it. The poem essentially restates the same idea six ways: the law is commended to us, and its impact is made clear. "The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul." The reason that the Lectionary makers linked this to the "cleansing of the temple" and the reason it is powerful for today is this: Jesus believed that the key to a happy and faithful life lived in the law.

When a teacher of the law heard Jesus give a smart answer, he asked him, "What is the most important commandment?"
Jesus answered, "The most important one says: You must love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.' The second most important commandment says: `Love others as much as you love yourself.' No other commandment is more important than these."

Ignore the content for a minute and listen to the topic. Jesus is a teacher of the Law, the perfect Law, the Law that Moses carried to the people, the Law that resides in Ark of the Covenant that resides in the Holy of Holies. Rather than divorce Jesus from his religion and his past we need to draw a stronger connection. Jesus was using his whip to protect the law, to make the holy place holy again, and to act on his twin desires to love God and love neighbour. There are no greater commandments in the Law. Failing that, he was willing to risk arrest and even death to live out these commands.

***

The real sermon, the living sermon, is the one that leaves with you and informs the way you spend your week. It is not my sermon, and may bear little resemblance to the words spoken today. The living sermon is the one that honours the same God that Jesus honoured with angry words and an improvised whip. The living sermon is the choices we make to glorify God and love neighbour and maybe get angry when the structures that surround us make this difficult. The living sermon will prepare us for Good Friday when the world's anger conspired to destroy Jesus. And the living sermon will find meaning, when the temple is rebuilt, in three days, and God will be praised. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 12:49 PM