Lent 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Lent 3
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Kingsville
DATE: March 23, 2003


TEXT: John 2:13-22 – Jesus Cleanses the Temple
The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

ISSUE: The temple was not only a place of worship, but also the political and economic center of the country. It was known to have become corrupt under Roman influence and by human nature. It was a symbol of the oppressive forces that maintained the status of the poor, and became cluttered in such a way as to prevent access to God. Jesus intervenes dramatically and puts himself at risk of great danger for his symbolic cleansing. He will become the new temple and access to God.
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The gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. It is one of the things that Jesus does that is very dangerous. In fact, the synoptic gospel accounts place the story very close to the end of Jesus’ ministry. Matthew, Mark, and Luke give the distinct impression that this cleansing of the Temple scene is the cause and last straw of Jesus’ ministry that results in his crucifixion. The Gospel of John, however, places the story near the beginning of Jesus ministry, as perhaps a belief that from the beginning Jesus is about the business of purifying religious access to God for all people. Wherever you place the story, it was apparently one of those very important stories and events in the life of Jesus that places it in all four accounts of the gospels.
To best understand the importance of the story it is important to understand the place and importance of the Jerusalem Temple. The new Jerusalem Temple construction began by Herod’s command in about 20 B.C.E. It was not completely finished until after the crucifixion of Jesus in 62 C.E. Once completed it didn’t last long, because the Romans destroyed it in 70 C.E. The Temple was not like a church or cathedral as we understand them today. The temple was the center of Judean life. It was a place of religious worship where major feasts like Passover was celebrated, requiring Jews from all over the known world to make a pilgrimage to the Temple, and for local Jewish men to worship annually at least. It was a place where offerings were made, and where animal sacrifices were offered.
The Temple was more than just a place of worship. It was also the political center of the Jews, and an economic center, a kind of national bank. It was what we might call the capital building as the religious center of worship. It was a very large construction. Isaiah’s vision of the Temple as the house of God was that it should be “a house of prayer for all people.” (Isa. 56:7) However, certain rules of Scripture prevented it from being a house of prayer for all people. Sick people, who were not perfect, like Eunuchs, lepers and leprosy of the time was not Hansen’s disease, the blind, the deaf, the mutes, and cripples were not allowed in the Temple. Foreigners were not allowed in the temple, expect in a certain court of the Gentiles. It was in the court of the Gentiles where the moneychangers and those who sold animal sacrifices did business.
Moneychangers changed Roman coinage into Temple coinage. The Roman and other foreign coinage had the images of Emperors and pagan gods on them, so they were unacceptable and had to be changed into Temple coins for offerings. There was, of course, a charge for making the exchange, which was burdensome for the poor. Animal sacrifices were a part of the worship of that time, for sin and thanksgiving. The animals had to be perfect, and without any kind of blemishes. If you brought your own animal, it had to be inspected to see if it was acceptable and without blemish. It was difficult for many to travel with animals, so they would buy and animal at the Temple, which was again quite costly for the poor, and almost everyone was poor. You may well get the picture by now. The Temple leaders were puppets of the Romans to whom they paid tax, and collected taxes from the poor, and charged the marketers who did business in the Temple Court who in turn had to make a living by over charging and cheating the poor. The whole system had become quite corrupt.
There was a group of monastic like Jewish men who had formed a kind of monastic order called the Qumran Community. So far as we know, Jesus was never a part of the Qumran party, but they were very strict in their observance of Jewish law. They bathed everyday as a sign of their longing for purity, and they wouldn’t go near the Jerusalem Temple because they viewed it as so very corrupt.
This fact is important for us to understand. When Jesus went into the Temple to throw out the animals and the merchants, and when he upset the tables of the money changers, scattering their coins all over, this act was not an action against his Jewish Faith. Jesus did not condemn Judaism. He was always a faithful Jew. He was angry, yes angry about the corruption and the oppression, and the cheating that went on in the Temple, and the demeaning of God’s Temple. God’s Temple was defamed by corruption and oppression of simple people who longed to be in the presence of God, and to have access to the holiness, the redemption, forgiveness, and love of God. The Temple did not convey that hope and presence, because all that was being crowded out by corruption and greed of the leadership. It had become a market place run by thieves! Thus, Jesus makes takes this very dangerous prophetic symbolic angry action and attempts to throw out the money changers and the dealers in animal sacrifices. Jesus didn’t get crucified because he was a nice peaceful kind of guy. He took this very dangerous action. The Gospel of John lays it on the line from the start; this is the kind of guy Jesus is, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke present this event as the cause of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Then, according to John, leaders ask Jesus to give them a sign for his authority in challenging the Temple leadership. “Destro this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” says Jesus. What was that supposed to mean? It means simply that Jesus for the early Christian community was the new way to the presence of God’s love and forgiveness. That’s what his entire ministry was about, clearing the way to the revelation of the marvelous glory of God for his people. You see, by the time the Temple is destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., the early church of Jesus is declaring that the new Temple is the risen Christ himself. Look to him, and you will find the unencumbered easy access to the presence of God’s love, and the entrance to the Kingdom, the gateway to the Kingdom of God. Jesus, you know according to John, is the Gate way, the door for the sheep, the way to the Realm, Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven without delay or without barriers, and without corrupted cost.
You see this passage and story addresses the way we live today in terms our own economic, political, and religious lives. For the Christian they’re all related, and inseparable in much the same way they were for the people of Jesus’ time. All we do, and all we are has religious implications: how we use and spend our money, how we vote, how we use spare time, how we take time for prayer and reflection, how we make moral decisions, and how we see and proclaim God by the actions of our lives.
Like the people of Jesus’ time, our lives get cluttered. The way to the presence of God gets pushed aside. Telemarketers are out to get us. Radio, T.V., Cell phones, fax machines, newspapers, magazines, billboards, salesmen and women, old-fashioned landline telephones, the internet, clubs, sports, the church’s activities, school activities, fads and philosophies, new age stuff. All these things are out to get us. So much stuff demands our attentions. There are many demands. All of them vie for our attention. At our hearts, and what is basic to all of us as human beings is our human spirit. We are more than just a physical body living in a material world. Are we not? We say we have a soul, an inner being that is in the image of God. But if we lose sight of God, we lose sight of our souls, of our precious spiritual being. They world can tempt us away from the very heart of our being. We need a Temple, a focus, for being in union, resonant with God and our true being. From the time of the early church one of the greatest gifts of all for the world from God is Jesus Christ. In him we see our true humanity, and our way to godliness, and to the way of God, and our access to God. In him we see the justified prophetic fury and anger at a world that keeps us from the love and peace of God.
At the present we are embroiled in an ugly conflict with Iraq. We see some of the human condition at its worst in the evil of Saddam Hussein, and frustration of some of the world that can’t find another way expect through hostility and war to bring the peace. We see still others hanging on for patience, and trying to find another way. The world and our humanity is hardly perfect. We simply keep looking to Jesus Christ as the way to find the love and peace of God. We’ll have to learn from the lessons of the present, and keep asking God, help us to find peace in the world. Help us to bring to the surface the true human spirit of love and peace.
In all we do in terms of spending our money, does a sacrificial amount go to human need, and God’s glory? Do I give my blood for the human cause of healing? Do I vote from my religious convictions? Do I make moral decisions on the basis of convenience or what I personally want, or out a prayerful conviction of what God wants me to do, to believe. But we have to clear away the clutter, and all that separates us from the love of God. Jesus Christ has to be our hope, our way, our truth, the stuff of our life, and at the heart of our convictions. He has to be our Temple where we are led to the way of God.
Well you may say, I have good friends who think and believe very different from the way I do. They’re not especially bad people and they believe in God too. We are just different. How do we have the unity that we expect to come from our relationship with God? There is always going to be Republicans and Democrats, Hawks and Doves, Catholics and Protestants. That is the beauty of our world. God’s way is and marvelous and his ways and works are far beyond anyone person’s understanding. We just trust, believe, and place our loyalty in Jesus Christ that in the end the Spirit of God prevails and leads us all into the prevailing spirit of God’s love. In the respecting of the dignity of us all, we find ourselves in the communion of God our Father, where his Kingdom will come on earth, as it is in heaven.