Third Sunday in Lent
Category: Lent
Speaker: The Rev. John Shellito
Sermon March 8, 2015 Rev. John Shellito
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
I know our Lord is a caring God, concerned for our welfare, seeking our flourishing, interested in our abundant life, inviting us into a relationship of trusting reliance, but I think I am still shocked at times when I am reminded that I am not in relationship with a divine pushover.
The Temple was the location for purchasing cows, sheep, and doves to be offered as a sacrifice by the Priests. The sacrificial system was part of individuals finding and understanding atonement. People had doves and other animals sacrificed as a guilt offering, as a freewill offering, or as an offering following a time of ritual uncleanliness. The issue is, because doves were the smallest animal, they were the ones purchased by those who could least afford a temple offering. Because of the requirements surrounding the quality and type of dove offered, the Temple essentially had a monopoly on dove sales. Doves were a major source of revenue for the Temple, and at least part of this came at the expense of the poorest individuals, those who were least able to pay. The cost of doves, in addition to the per-person Temple tax, represented an undue burden on the poor that went to the Temple adminstration, and perhaps also to Rome. Thus Jesus’ command “stop making my Father’s house a marketplace” is a censure of those who would otherwise turn the people’s relationship with God into something to be monetized.
The message I hear in this is that our relationship with God is not nourished by a system of exchange—whether financial, spiritual, or otherwise. We can’t turn our spiritual journey with God into a quid-pro-quo trading partnership. Jesus is not interested in this kind of dehumanization, and if I attempt it, I am asking to get my tables overturned.
The God of Israel I have known is gracious, generous forgiving, and kind. Christ is our great high Priest--he offered himself as a sacrifice for the whole world, that every person might know the reconciling love of God. We are invited to offer our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving here, in this place. But God’s invitation to relationship is a gift we do not “earn”, no matter how good our behavior might be, and no matter how generous our gifts might be. No matter how much we might think we can do for God, we can never put God in our debt. The God of love is the one who is constantly setting us free from our debts, and who invites us to offer the same gift of forgiveness to others. We are invited to rely on the God who already knows us, in all our failings as well as our successes.
At this point I wonder if some of you might be asking—John, how does this generosity and forgiveness business work when we are dealing with a political enemy, or worse, a military enemy? What about a person trapped in a life of crime? What about a person locked in a negative self-image, an addiction, or an abusive relationship? If we are a people of forgiveness, how are we to engage with the worldly powers that might appear to be wiser, stronger, and more powerful than us?
In our Gospel story Jesus is engaging the powers of the world, as they had made themselves manifest in Jerusalem at the time.
Paul reminds us of how God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. In our Gospel today I think Jesus is revealing something about the incredible power of God’s foolishness, and God’s weakness.
I don’t think the confrontation was easy for Jesus. I hear Christ’s hesitance to face the Temple in his exchange with his mother in the verses immediately preceding our story today. When Mary suggests that he address the issue of the party running out of wine, Jesus says “what is that to you and to me-- my time has not yet come”. Mary encouraged him by responding as if he had already agreed to answer his call. We all need those friends and family members who encourage us to step forward faithfully. In John’s Gospel it is after secretly turning the water into wine for the wedding celebration at Cana, that Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the Passover and confronts the abuses of the Temple. This act of power is Jesus’ first public act. Driving out those selling in the temple happens toward the end of the other three Gospels, but in John’s Gospel it is right at the beginning.
So, how did Jesus confront the wisdom, and power of the Temple? How could Jesus wield any power against the soldiers and moneyed interests of the elite?
John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus made a whip and drove out the sheep and the cattle. He acted intentionally, creatively, and with planning to make the whip that he could then use to move the animals out of the Temple space.
Like Rosa Parks, who refused to get up on the bus, Jesus planned ahead. At times we can fall into thinking that Ms. Parks acted spontaneously, but in reality, her choice was planned strategically, in community with others. Jesus, by listening to his mother, and then making the whip ahead of time, shows us that his action in the Temple wasn’t an individual act of desperation. It was a faithful, and planned, act of protest]
I love this image because with one well-planned action I see Jesus launching the entire area into pandemonium. I see Jesus cracking the whip, with the sheep and cows blundering through the crowd, struggling to get away from him. I see the salespeople chasing their wares, struggling to keep their animals separate from those of their competitors, forced to abandon their posts and chase after their moving treasure as the animals walked away.
Similarly with the moneychangers, the upended tables would have meant chaos as each moneychanger chased their own coins. I imagine them gathering them into piles on the ground, trying to keep their coins sorted and distinct from one another.
It is a vivid picture of that eternal question: do we own our possessions, or do our possessions own us?
In John’s Gospel, Jesus didn’t use a coercive power—he didn’t use the whip as a direct threat against people. Instead the whip was a tool. All he needed to do was to move the people’s possessions, and they would be sure to follow.
This story asks the question—when the chips are down (perhaps literally) where do we direct our service, and where do we place our value?
When Jesus told the authorities “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, he was talking about the offering of his own body.
Jesus could just as well have said “This is my body, given for you. I give it to be broken, and to be made whole, so that you may be made whole, even in the places where you have been broken.
Jesus is reminding us that our own bodies are each a temple, a holy location where God dwells with us. If we keep our focus on honoring the divine in each person, we will not be distracted by the size or expense of our offerings, or how they might compare to the offerings given by our fellow worshippers. We will instead be able to focus on our relationship with the Holy One who calls us to risk being our best selves for God and for one another.
The story of Christ driving out the sheep and cows, overturning the tables, and confronting those selling doves is an image of relationship with the one who gives us divine foolishness and divine weakness to reveal a deeper strength than the worlds strength, and a deeper wisdom than the world’s wisdom. Jesus interrupts the sellers in the Temple and Jesus interrupts me in my normal life when I am not honoring the divine presence in each person because every person is worth interrupting.
Jesus by his life invites us into the larger life of his Body—a journey we share together. We are invited into a tradition that was articulated powerfully in the Decalogue, the ten good guidelines for being a part of God’s abundant life—a life of freedom, generosity, and promise. And we are invited into a crucified and risen life with Christ, continually confronting our places of death, and walking in the way of new life.
Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.