Lent 3

The Reverend Martha Frances

Year B, Lent 3

15 March 2009 

Text:  John 2: 13-22; Exodus 20: 1-17

Other Readings:  Psalm 19; I Corinthians 1: 18-25 

      John's gospel passage today is one of the most awesome yet troubling in all the accounts of Jesus.  Jesus & his disciples arrive in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, & upon arriving at the temple, Jesus throws a royal coniption-fit.  When he sees the commerce in the temple, his temper gets the better of him.  Had this happened in Houston, the men-in-blue would have tazed him for disturbing the peace & then sent for the men-in-white.                                                    He hurriedly makes a cord whip & sends the sales people & the money-changers packing.  Later, the disciples recall the passage from Psalm 69 which says, "Zeal for your house will consume me."  All those around him must be downright astonished, but the Jewish religious leaders recover their wits soon enough to ask him for a sign to explain his bizarre action. 

      At times, I have rejoiced in this story, feeling I was justified in a similar explosion, as in, "If Jesus could lose his temper, perhaps it's not too bad when I do the same thing."  At other times, I am dismayed that Jesus isn't always as pacifistic as I would wish him to be.  Perhaps physical violence is the only way he can express his strong objections to what he sees in the temple.  The religious leaders are always trying to catch Jesus in something that will incriminate him; he's in the middle of a first-classed snit & they ask him for a sign.  Sheesh!  Most of the time, this story simply perplexes me.  What can it all mean?

      The other 3 passages read today may help put this one in perspective.  Psalm 19 rejoices in the law, much as does the longest psalm, Psalm 119.  Look how many synonyms the psalmist uses for law:  testimony, statutes, commandment, judgments.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Regardless of which term is used, the psalmist's attitude toward the law is positive & life-giving.  It is perfect & revives the soul, gives wisdom to the innocent, rejoices the heart & gives light to the eyes.  For the Jews, there is a yearning for the law & its fulfillment:  more to be desired than gold, sweeter than honey in the comb. Christians often put down the Hebrew laws & assume that the Jewish people felt burdened by them.  This psalm contradicts any such sense of burden, doesn't it?  On the whole, Jewish people found then & even now find the law life-giving & joy-bringing.  In fact, this psalm begins as a celebration of the wonder the breadth of creation of heavens & earth.

      It's not coincidental that the reading from the Hebrew scriptures today is God's delivery of the 10 Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  God commands the Israelites to keep these 10 basic guides for living as they wander in the desert for 40 years.  In fact, the Godly Play program which our young children experience for Christian formation calls them the 10 Best Ways.  To form & develop cohesive community, God's chosen people need laws for healthy behavior with each other.  The first four commandments refer to the Israelites' honoring one God, the Hebrew God Jhwh:  having no other gods, not making an idol of anything or anyone else, not misusing God's name to do magic or to discredit God, & keeping the Sabbath holy--setting aside 1/7th of the week to worship God & be rejuvenated for work.

      The other 6 commandments are guides for living closely together in community:  honoring parents who brought them here in the first place, doing no murder, not committing adultery or stealing, not defrauding a neighbor or coveting any of that neighbor's possessions.  These lessons for living with each other peacefully still work pretty well when we follow them, right? 

      Was Jesus undermining these very practical religious practices when he threw the merchants out of the temple precincts?  Heavens, no.  He even told those trying to trap him regarding the law to follow the Shema: to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, & strength; as well as the partner commandment: to love their neighbors as themselves. 

      The point Jesus makes here & elsewhere is that observing the 2 great commandments means the heart of all the laws is fulfilled.  Jesus doesn't just want a rote grudging or judgmental following of the law.  He wants his disciples to love the freedom fulfilling the law should mean to them, not the penny-pinching slavishness to the law which had added 603 more through the years.  In fact, the temple represents the epitome of the law to the Jewish people who go there to offer sacrifices & adoration to God.  What Jesus seems upset about is that the Jews' meticulous adherence to the law means they often follow them blindly.  I'm sure some poor people were literally wiped out financially by the cost of the required sacrifices.  You may remember that Jesus' parents gave two turtle-doves in celebration for his birth at his presentation in the temple (Luke 2:24). 

      So Jesus answers the religious leaders who ask him for a sign.  He says, "Destroy this temple," & of course they think he is talking about the building which took 46 years to build.  In his own mind, Jesus has already replaced the temple with his own body which they will in fact destroy.   They misunderstand him, however, assuming he intends to destroy the temple, this holy place of sacrifice & worship which represents the heart of their religious observance.  It isn't that they are failing to be faithful Jews.  They are, in fact, fulfilling the details of the law so fully that they have lost the spirit of the law. 

      Jesus' anger is that their focus on fulfilling every detail of the law has blinded them to God's call to be more loving & more faithful.  We see Jesus over & over uncovering the hypocrisy & self-righteousness of the religious leaders, & here at the geographic center of their worship, once again he sees hypocrisy & self-righteousness at work.

      One commentary calls this powerful vignette Jesus' "displacement" of the temple.  Jesus the human lived faithfully on earth, was crucified, died, was buried, & rose again to break the bonds of sin & death.  He presents himself as the new site of God's revelation, the new "temple."  In the new Covenant with God, we are to worship Jesus just as the Jews worshipped in the temple.  What's more, we are to follow Jesus with the same life-giving joy which the Psalms attribute to the Law.

      There wasn't anything wrong with the law as given to Moses on Mt. Sinai as we read about 1st today.  What had developed was the "religious people's" worshipping the law itself rather than worshipping God the law-giver.  When the law became the god of the people, that was sinful.  We call that idolatry, making something else into God.  Look back at the 2nd commandment:  "You shall have no other gods before me;  you shall not make for yourself an idol. . . ."  

      In today's world this tendency crops up regularly not in worship of the law or worship of the temple but in worship of the Bible.  The Bible is the inspired word of God, but it's not God.  The Bible is an awesome tool for us to know God more fully, especially through the life, death, & resurrection of God's son Jesus Christ.  But sometimes, instead of wrestling with a passage to see what God is saying for our lives today, we simply cut to the chase & say we should or shouldn't do something because it says so in the Bible.  Of course, in order to make that work, we have to pick & choose what we decide to take literally in the Bible because it is often contradictory.  Our Gospel reading today is a good example.  In other places, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, but we certainly don't see any cheek-turning when Jesus enters the temple grounds, do we?  It is God through Jesus Christ whom we worship & not the Bible itself.  If we do, we make the Bible an idol.

      Today is the 3rd Sunday of Lent, & this week we'll be halfway through this 40 day period of penance & preparation.  What salespeople & money-changers does Jesus need to pitch out of your temple so that there is room for Jesus to dwell there & be the Lord of your life?  What spring housecleaning do you need to do in your life so there's room for God to be truly at home there?  What nooks & crannies have you been holding back, trying to keep control of them yourself?  I pray that you'll open the door to those secret places & give them a good airing out so that God can dwell there.