A sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, year B
John 2:13-22
Today we have John’s version of Jesus cleansing the temple. He braids a whip out of cords and dramatically drives the money-changers out along with all the livestock in the courtyard. Calling it a “cleansing” is a bit of an understatement, don’t you think? Jesus shut down the whole operation by his actions. No wonder the people were upset with him and demanded to know by what authority he had done this.
Before we get to that question, however, let’s start with the question of why? Why would Jesus do this, and right at the start of his ministry in John’s gospel (unlike the other 3 gospels, which place it at the end of his ministry)? Does Jesus need to enroll in an anger management class or does he have a legitimate reason for acting out in this way?
Perhaps you’ve been taught that he did it to protest the inequity and corruption that had developed in the temple. I mean the temple authorities were really fleecing the poor with the temple tax that had to be paid in special temple coins and the exchange fee nearly doubled the cost. On top of that the sacrificial animals available for sale—certified blemish-free to meet the demands of the law—were ridiculously over-priced. Such corrupt practices in the name of religion don’t sit well with Jesus—at least according to Matthew, Mark and Luke where he quotes the prophet Jeremiah by saying these scoundrels have made the temple a “den of robbers.”
In John’s gospel, however, this conflict has a different focus. Here he’s creating a stir that’s not unlike a performance art piece. That’s why the onlookers remember the prophesy about the coming Messiah whose zeal for God’s house would consume him and they say: Yep. Must be this guy. He’s got zeal.
Jesus completely shuts down the commerce in the temple. It’s a big deal. Then he says: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
Now they are totally confused. Destroy this temple? Is he out of his mind?!
Let’s take a quick history break here to brush up on the back story of the temple. God’s people *loved* the temple. They wanted it for so many years. They had longed for a holy place to meet God on Mount Zion where their sacred ark could reside. Finally, the great King Solomon got it built—declaring it a house of prayer for all people. Its glory was unparelleled. In Psalm 46 we hear these words about the temple: “God is in her; she shall surely not be moved.” They thought it would abide forever, like God.
When the Babylonians conquered Judah in 587 BC, they destroyed the temple and sent the important leaders off to live in exile in Babylonia. Their hopes were cut off. How could such a thing happen? Had God abandoned them? Was this the end?
Then half a century later Babylon’s power was broken by the Persian empire and incredibly, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and re-build their temple. It took 46 years to do it but they finally got it done. It was humbler than the first one but even more important to them because it was a symbol of God’s presence with them. It became the center of religious life and the remnants of the ancient nation would come there over and over as pilgrims. At the Passover festival there would have been as many as two and a quarter million people.
End of history break. Back to our gospel scene. When Jesus says, “Destroy this temple,” you can practically imagine their heads exploding. Destroy it? What are you talking about? Don’t you know how valuable this temple is to us?! This is our holy place. God lives here.
Then Jesus gets even more weird: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." What? First of all, they are thinking, we don’t want you destroying our precious temple and second of all, you could never raise it up in three days. It has taken forty six years to rebuild!
But Jesus wasn’t talking about the temple building. “He was speaking of the temple of his body” the narrator of the gospel tells us. And he did so with divine authority.
God’s people clung their temple, their holy place where divine connection could be forged. They came from all over the region to gladly pay their temple tax and to offer animal sacrifices at festivals and special times in their lives like the birth of a baby.
Throughout John’s gospel, we see that Jesus’ body is the new “holy place”. At the beginning we read that “the word became flesh and lived among us.” In the incarnation of Jesus, God came to dwell with us as one of us. He embodied “grace upon grace”. It was no longer exclusively on Mount Zion that God lived, but in the person of Jesus. That is how the people could come to encounter God and receive mercy. And that was all very confusing to the people in the temple that day, especially since Jesus was new on the scene and even his disciples were unsure of what it meant until after his resurrection.
I suspect this whole history lesson is a bit removed from your life. What do we have in common with these ancient people? Why is it relevent to us? Well, like them, we are still concerned about where to meet God.
In Celtic spirituality there is the notion of “thin places,” those places and experiences where it feels like the distance between our finite world and God’s infinite presence collapses and becomes very thin. Now that Jesus has come to unleash God’s presence in the world, to expand it beyond the temple walls in Jerusalem and to make it available to all people everywhere, it seems to me that the thin places, the holy places, are more abundant than we may realize. They could be absolutely anywhere!
Where are your thin places? Where do you directly encounter God’s holiness? Maybe it’s here at church in our beautiful, historic sanctuary. It is certainly in the symbols of our faith, like the cross. We can encounter holiness in the reading and preaching of scripture, in the hymnody and other music, in the water, the wine and the bread of the sacraments. But of course, you meet God in places outside church as well. Most people profess to experiencing the divine in nature and in deep connections with loved ones. Perhaps you have had moments of “thin places” just walking down the street with an awareness of God’s gracious love for you.
Jesus showed us that God’s presence was in his body and in his life, death and resurrection. His body was the temple. Zeal for God’s house wasn’t about the temple in Jerusalem but about his bodily presence with us, opening up the way we connect with God. Then Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to fill the bodies of his followers and so we believe God is in our bodies as well. We are temples. Wherever we are, there is God.
You might even argue that since God is everywhere at every moment you don’t need to both er coming to church. And if you did make the argument, it would be valid but I wouldn’t like it.
I would argue back that though Jesus has come into the world to expand God’s presence, we still need to be reminded so that we can more fully live into that reality. We still need comfort, strength, hope and direction. We need training to discern God’s constant presence in our everyday lives. We don’t technically need a church building but we are the church. We are the body of Christ as a community. We need to build one another up so that we can continue the work of our Savior.
That’s why we invite others to church. We want others to have the opportunity to experience the grace upon grace given to us in the risen Christ and available always. And in this way, we can also be about the work of expanding God's presence in the world. As we journey through Lent, may we search for such opportunities.
