Lent 3 March 14, 2009

Lent 3
March 14, 2009

John 2: 13-22 Jesus overturns the tables in the temple

Who is this Jesus?! During one of the holiest seasons of the Jewish year, Passover, Jesus, a devout Jew, runs amuck in the Temple in Jerusalem, the most sacred place in the world for Jews, the House of God.
“What is he doing?,” people shout, “Stop him!,” as newly freed sacrificial doves wheel around in the air, as overturned tables crash to the floor, as coins roll along the tiles. “Somebody do something!,” they shout as he makes a whip and drives cattle and sheep into the street.
I can see the headlines on the internet news: “Madman Goes on Rampage in Temple; Halts Passover Services for Day.”
It was serious; a very big deal. It was exactly as if, on Easter morning, a stranger ran into this church, poured out the wine onto the floor and tossed the Communion wafers out the window, then ripped the offering envelopes and cash into little bits,. As if a stranger stopped our Easter celebration dead.
After all, this is our sacred place, our sacred time, Christ is present for us here, just as God was present in the Temple and Passover for the Jews.

If I were writing a Gospel, I’d omit this little incident.
It doesn’t make Jesus look good, not at all, especially not in our timid times. We’d rather have a Jesus who’d sit nicely down in the pew and behave.
But this is one of the few stories contained in all four Gospels in the New Testament.
If we assume that an incident contained in all four Gospels is particularly important, the story of Jesus “cleansing” the temple ranks right up there with Jesus’ baptism, the feeding of the 5000, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

I want to make something clear: despite what you may have been taught in Sunday School, Jesus did not wreak havoc in the Temple because anything illegal or immoral was going on.
The doves, sheep, and cattle were there because blood sacrifice had been an integral part of the Jewish worship since before Moses.
And there was nothing wrong with money in the Temple. Moneychangers had their little booths there for convenience sake, just as they do in modern airports, to change one kind of currency for another so people could pay the “temple tax.” Jews from foreign lands needed to change their own currency into local coins. And no one could use Greek or Roman coins for the tax because they were printed with the image of the emperor in the form of a god.
No, Jesus that day was following in a long line of Hebrew prophets who’d learned that actions often speak louder than words.
The prophet Isaiah walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign to Israel not to seek help from anyone but God.
And my personal favorite: the prophet Ezekiel lay on his side for 430 days in the city square, as a symbol of the weakness caused by Israel’s sins.

So then what message was Jesus conveying by turning the temple topsy turvy?
It is puzzling. Why stop worship? Aren’t we called to worship God?
But worship as an end in itself, independent of what’s happening in the world around us, is sin.
Listen to the prophet Isaiah, lashing out at the Jews, especially the well off, for observing a ritual—in this case fasting—while ignoring the plight of people around them:
God speaks through Isaiah’s voice: “Is such the fast I choose . . .to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?”
The answer is a resounding “no!” “Is not this the fast that I choose,” God says, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them . . .?”
Jesus brought temple worship to a halt for a day to shock people, to shock people then to look around them and see the collusion of the priests and high officials with wicked King Herod, see the temple coffers filled to overflowing while people starved in the countryside around Jerusalem.
Jesus is showing us now by his outrageous act that a church should not be a closed-off place where walls block the world from coming in and block us from seeing the world. The walls of any house of worship must be porous and translucent.

What does that mean for our lives at Church of the Holy Spirit?
It means, for one thing, that bringing food in for the food pantry each Sunday is not just a nice thing or even a good thing to do—it is a sacramental and holy act that breaks down the barrier between world and worship.
Praying for the people of Mabvuku and bringing loose change to put into the jar is not just supporting the Millennium Development Goals. Each time we pray or pay we down the false barrier between worship and world.
Those of you who have taken the names of families to pray for know what I mean by breaking down barriers.
Last week one of you told me that she keeps the card with her family’s name on it folded on her table. Whenever she sits down to eat, she sees the card and remembers to pray that that family in the slums of Zimbabwe will have food to eat today. She told me how that practice had opened her heart and her prayer life in a whole new way.
Another: You’ll see in the insert that we’re going to haul our card table back to WalMart next Saturday morning to offer Free Prayer for anyone who wishes us to pray for themselves or loved ones. Once again, we’re making ourselves step away from the safe walls of the church to plunk ourselves down in the world where many people don’t know the consolation of someone offering to pray for them.

If Jesus walked through our doors today, what would he do? Would he worship with us, smiling as he lifted his voice in the “Holy, holy, holy” to our God? Or would he stride down the center aisle pounding on the pews and reach out his hands to sweep the bread and the wine to the floor? Which? Which? Which?