Lent 3B
March 7, 2021
John 2:13-22
INTRODUCTION
I mentioned several weeks ago that during this year we would be switching back and forth between the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John. Today we move back to John for a few weeks. Since John and Mark have very different approaches to telling this Jesus story, I want to be sure we’re on the same page about it. So, some key points to remember about John: for John, the most important thing in a life of faith is that we abide in Jesus and he in us. Sin equals separation from God (aka Jesus), and faith is relationship with Jesus. And so, a lot of his Gospel, right from chapter one, is hitting home that point that Jesus is God, dwelling among us, in order that we might have access to that life-giving relationship.
The particular story we will hear today is an example of that, though I won’t get into that just yet. It is the story of the cleansing of the temple, in which Jesus literally overturns the practices of the temple cult, implying instead that he is the temple, which will be destroyed and risen again in three days (that passion prediction is why we hear this story during Lent). But John’s version of this famous story is quite a bit different from Matthew, Mark or Luke’s, which again, I’ll get into later.
The covenant we’ll hear about in the first reading is one that will be very familiar to you: the 10 commandments. What you may not remember is where this occurs in the narrative and why: Moses has just led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and they are in the wilderness, finding their way to the Promised Land. These are God’s people, the so-called nation of Israel, but they have a lot to learn about what that should look like. So, God calls Moses to a mountaintop and gives him these 10 commandments as guidelines about what it means to live as God’s faithful people. They seem simple and straightforward enough – yet God’s people have struggled to keep them even to today, as we strive to live according to God’s wisdom, not our foolishness.
Which is really the point of all our readings. As you listen today, consider how what we humans think of as wisdom differs from God’s wisdom. What does each look like, and how do they play out? Let’s listen.
[READ]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our Rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Last week we talked about how the principle “location is everything” applies not only to real estate, but also to biblical interpretation, and today is another example of that. I alluded to this in the introduction, but here again is a little Bible lesson for you: we have four Gospels in the canon, what we call the Bible, and of those four, Matthew, Mark and Luke have a lot of common material. Likely Mark was written first, and then Matthew and Luke drew from Mark, and also added their own material and wrote with their own particular style and audience in mind. Those three are known as the synoptic Gospels, because they are so similar in many ways. John, on the other hand, is kind of his own thing. In fact, 90% of the material in his Gospel is unique to John. Today’s story, the cleansing of the temple, appears in the other three Gospels, but there are a couple important differences that totally change how we understand this story. So let’s go through those differences, and find what they mean for our understanding of Jesus.
First, as I said, is the location – in this case, the narrative location. In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), this event of the cleansing of the temple occurs toward the end of story, after Palm Sunday, when Jesus has come into Jerusalem for the Passover and finally, we come to find out, his death. In fact, this incident serves as the impetus for his arrest. John, however, places this incident at the beginning of his story, in chapter 2, right after the wedding at Cana where Jesus famously turned water into wine. Hmm, pretty big detail to change. Why would John do that? Hmmm… stay tuned!
The second major difference is what Jesus says to those gathered. You may recall that in this story, Jesus usually says, “You’ve made my father’s house a den of robbers!” But in John (did you notice?), he says, “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace!” Very different! To understand the different meanings, it’s important to know something about how the Temple worked. Bear with me a moment, for some ancient history: first of all, the Jerusalem Temple was both a place of worship, and a whole economic system. As a place of worship, it was where Jews believed God dwelt, and the way they could encounter God was through worship which generally included a sacrifice. So every now and then, around major festivals like Passover, pilgrims would travel to Jerusalem to be able to worship God in the Temple. But the journey was so long, they were unable to bring along the appropriate sacrifice, because a goat, for example, couldn’t make such a journey. That’s where the economic system comes in. Upon arrival, pilgrims had an opportunity to purchase their sacrifice when they got there. This sort of marketplace system was actually meant to make worship and sacrifice simpler, and conversely the Temple was dependent on this economic system to function. And of course, people probably abused it, perhaps over charging for the necessary sacrifices. People, even people of faith, have always been sinful and greedy. And according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, that was the main issue here. “You have made my Father’s house a den of robbers,” he says, implying some economic abuse.
But in John, Jesus isn’t calling out abuses in the system, or the way they are making these exchanges. He’s calling out the whole system! “Stop making this a marketplace!” he says, before he starts opening cages and driving out animals with a makeshift whip. And yet, the temple marketplace was necessary for the very functioning of the system of worship! It was what allowed people to worship God, to connect with God, to thank and praise God. Why would Jesus tell them to stop doing that?
Let me just like to stop here for a moment, because that was a lot of biblical and ancient economic history and I want to make sure I didn’t lose you. So if I lost you, come on back. Here’s the situation: the 1st century system of worship and economics that has been working fine (though probably not without abuse) makes it possible for pilgrims to the Jerusalem Temple to worship God in the way they believe to be faithful. And along comes Jesus, right at the beginning of his ministry, to say, “Stop doing this,” turning over the literal tables and the proverbial apple cart (though actually, John doesn’t say anything about turning over tables – that’s also a synoptic Gospels thing). So why would Jesus stop this system from happening? Didn’t Jesus want people to worship God?
Here is a problem I often have: when I’m trying to figure something out, I get so stuck in the muck, frustrated with trying to force a square peg fit into a round hole, that I don’t realize I’m trying to figure out this puzzling thing with the assumption that the answer lies in the old system. But when I am able to step back, or perhaps when someone points my attention elsewhere, or maybe when they make a whip and potentially turn over some tables, I realize that the problem is not my methods, but rather, that those methods were built for the old system. In other words: I’m asking the wrong questions.
Churches do this all the time, right? We want more young people in the church, we say. So we will keep everything exactly the same, except we’ll add a rock band, make worship earlier, or later, or hold a monthly pancake dinner. We won’t change anything else about what we do (it’s always worked before, after all), but we will try to draw new people into this old system. Then we get discouraged and frustrated when it doesn’t work. In the language of leadership, we call that making technical changes, rather than pursuing necessary adaptive change.
On a much deeper and more profound level, that’s what is happening here, too, and why Jesus is so zealous (not necessarily angry, notice – but passionate!). By saying, “Get rid of the marketplace, the former way of giving people access to God,” what he’s really calling for is not some technical change to the existing system, but rather, to dismantle the whole system. Typical of our God, God is doing a new thing, in Jesus. He is saying, “This Temple, this way of encountering God, is no longer necessary. Because this Temple is no longer where God is found. God is not confined to this building.”
Where, then, is God found? Well, John told us that in chapter one: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God is found in Jesus. God is found dwelling among us, moving with us, setting up camp with us wherever we may go. God is not located in a building, no matter how glorious, and does not need animal sacrifice to connect with us, for Jesus is himself the sacrificial Lamb.
This was especially life-giving news for the original audience, because when John was writing, the Temple had already been destroyed, and with it, they thought, their means of worshiping or encountering God. But frankly, it is also pretty life-giving news for us, as we recognize today one full liturgical year since we first moved online and out of the building. I know you have missed being in this beautiful space, even as I hope and pray that you have encountered God in new ways in your homes and in other places in your life. That is God’s intention – that in Christ, we have a God who dwells with us wherever we are. That relationship with our God is possible in ways we may never have before imagined, in places we hadn’t thought before to look for God – in our home offices, in our dens and living rooms, on our phones and laptops. That life-giving relationship is not only found at 28 Lincoln Ave on Sunday morning, but is found in the very same places that we work, or watch a movie, or talk over Zoom and Facetime to our friends and family whom we miss, or even mindlessly scroll through social media. God has always been in those places, of course. But maybe this time of tables turning and cages being opened has made us more aware of it.
And that, finally, is why John places this encounter right at the beginning: because for John, the most important thing to know about Jesus, what we need to know right up front, is that he is here with us, for us, dwelling among us so that we would be able to know God through him. We don’t need a building to meet God. Now, I do hope that we will be back in this space together again soon – we are looking at May for that to happen if all goes well. But until then, and more importantly after, I pray that you would know God’s love and presence just exactly where you are, and that you would find in that presence the abundant life that God wants for you.
Let us pray… God before us, behind us, around us and within us, we thank you that you showed us through Jesus your desire to be in relationship with us. Help us to praise, thank, and worship you wherever we are. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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