Encounters of the Holy: The Money-Changers Meet Jesus
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 15, 2009 Lent III
John 2: 13-22
One Sunday in Lent, we got all dressed up came to church. But just as we got ready for worship, the bell rung, the choir in place, the preacher safely perched in the pulpit, there was a bang at the door. A fierce, wild-eyed intruder came in, screaming at us - good church people - and causing such a commotion that even the minister fell into stunned silence. The ushers tried to restrain him, but they couldn't. We wondered if we should call 911. Do you remember that day? Here's how it went: (Read John 2:13-22)
I don't think I've ever seen Jesus this angry. And it isn't just that he's angry, but he is angry in the temple, angry in the sanctuary, angry in the very place where we have come to be closer to him. I mean, I could understand it if he went down to the local tavern on a Sunday morning and tipped over a few tables, or led a protest against yet another soccer tournament starting early Sunday morning, or maybe went out and kicked over the ball washer on the first tee at the local golf course. That would be cold, wouldn't it? But to be so angry in the temple, here, among people of faith? What's going on?
A story shared with me by our daughter, Bethany. Maybe you've heard this story before. Each Friday night after work, Joe would fire up the outdoor grill and cook a nice steak. Now, he lived in a Catholic neighborhood, all his neighbors attended the local Catholic church, And so, when Lent began, none of them were eating meat on Fridays, most were eating fish. But, every Friday, there was Joe grilling away, filling the neighborhood with the mouth-watering aroma of beef on the grill. Well, it was just too much. Finally a number of his neighbors went to the local priest. Was there anything he could do? So, he visited Joe. They had a chat. He asked Joe to come to mass, maybe even consider becoming a Catholic. Joe said, "OK, I'll try that." He did go to mass a couple of times, went to some classes and and decided, yes, to become a Catholic. So one Sunday morning, the priest sprinkled him with holy water and said, "You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, but now you are a Catholic." The neighbors were greatly relieved - relieved that is, until the next Friday when once again the aroma of grilled steak filled the neighborhood. Immediately the priest's phone began ringing. He rushed over to Joe's house ready to scold him, went into the back yard and then stopped and stared in amazement. For there stood Joe at the BBQ, holding a small bottle of holy water which he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat as he said, "You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, but now you are a catfish!"
Well, I might be stretching it here just a bit, but I wonder if that story might not provide us with a humorous glimpse into the serious point that Jesus is making. If you are going to call yourselves a church, then act like a church! Be what God has called you to be. I think it was Mark Twain who said that everybody loves to go to Rome to see where St. Peter is buried, but nobody wants to live like him." Jesus wants to know, how are you - how are we - going to choose to live?
Now, the other Gospels have the good taste to put this violent incident in the temple toward the end of Jesus' ministry, during Holy Week, just before he goes to the cross. In fact, this event leads directly to his arrest. But here in John, we find it very early in his ministry. Here, Jesus' first great act of public ministry is to take a whip in his hand - only John has the whip - and do a little spring cleaning in the temple - in the church. So again, what are we to make of this? What's going on in this text?
UCC Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, has written, "Mostly the world believes that all the assets are frozen, and things will stay the way they are. You know: If you're dead, you're dead and will stay so. And if you are alive, you had better scramble and get it all, because that's all there is and all there is going to be. If you are homeless, you will stay that way forever. If you are number one, you had better have lots and lots of power, because that's the way to keep it that way. Everything is arranged and settled and fixed and closed, and we work hard to keep the boundaries secure. With this way of reality, some of us end in complacency because it works to our advantage; some of us end in despair because we had hoped for better. But power operates largely to close things down and keep all the assets frozen."
Well, I wonder if these words give us a clue as to what is going on in this text? In Jesus' anger, might we see the anger of one who has had enough of a world of uncrossable boundaries and frozen assets? The Temple in Jerusalem stood at the heart of Jewish religious and devotional life. But for countless people - and it seems Jesus is one of them - it also stood as a symbol of a political and economic domination system that kept most people trapped in grinding poverty, ignorance, and hopelessness. The temple elites, religious and civil - in cooperation with the Roman oppressor - pretty much insured that assets remained frozen, that they stayed in control and boundaries remained secure. Well, right into the middle of this carefully constructed system walks Jesus of Nazareth. He unsettles and revamps, jeopardizes and heals. He brings a "dangerous restlessness", a lack of regard for categories and boundaries, a refusal to tolerate a religion of frozen assets. You know, actually, I don't think he really cares all that much about the money-changers. He's after something bigger. I think he is after a religion of easy complacency, of the petty, polite domestication of God's restless word, a religion that exists to protect itself and its piece of the political, economic and social pie, that accepts the opinion of the powerful and wealthy as the only possible reading of reality. He comes to Jerusalem, and dares to say to the keepers of this official, complacent, domesticated religion, I will replace you. In this text John wants us to see that in Jesus there is now a new way to God. The great altar of the temple has now come down to us. The Word of God has become flesh and chosen to dwell among us, in all of its restless and unpredictable power.
I suppose an important part of my job, week after week, is to help you all somehow meet God. I mean, after all, I am an ordained minister. Certainly in this season, but in all seasons really, aren't I here to help you pass from death to life, from enslavement to whatever masters might hold you, to the freedom of the worship of the true and living God? And I hope there are times when that happens. But my fear is that what happens too often is I offer you a small dose of religion that, much like a small pox inoculation, protects you from ever catching the real thing.
And then I think of Jesus, angry, refusing to let us stand before the mirror of our own moral introspection, overturning the tables of our comfortable rationalizations, spilling the offering plates, allowing sheep and cattle to run loose down the carpet. Whoever is going clean up that mess? "You may have been born a Christian," he says, "you may have been baptized and raised as a Christian, but now I want to turn you into a real Christian, someone who lives and thinks as a Christian. I want to lay my gospel alongside your life and the life of your church and see how you're measuring up."
Fred Craddock says, "I went to the dedication service of a beautiful building at the University of Oklahoma. It had a tall tower, great facilities, all kinds of marvelous things. When it came time for the actual dedication, the young campus minister came up and offered a very brief prayer: 'Lord, burn down this building and scatter these people for the sake of the Gospel!'" (I wonder how long he had his job, after that day.)
Well, I'm not really saying that this morning. I'm not trying to depress you or anger you or make you miserable or suggest that you - that we - are somehow inadequate Christians worshiping in a less than adequate church. I guess it's just that, for me at least, Lent is so much harder than Advent and Christmas. I find myself looking at Jesus, his face set toward Jerusalem, and I wonder...if his life is true life, then what is it that I'm living? I think that Frederick Buechner captures the challenge of the Lenten Jesus when he writes, "People are so apt to drift along on the surface of their lives, not really seeing or hearing or feeling very much because most of the time they are little more than half alive...But in Christ, as we read about him, think about him, there is this terrible quality of full life. The world always seems to be pressing on all of him. Most of us escape so much by being less than fully alive, but he seems to escape nothing: the dead sparrow, the woman touching the hem of his robe as he passes by, the disciples shooing away the children, the sawed-off little crook named Zaccheus up in a tree. Always with all of himself he seems to be vulnerable to all of it and especially to the pain that is around him, not just the pain of the crippled and the bereaved, but the slow, unspoken pain of just being human."
And so when he enters that temple with his whip and righteous anger, with his intense desire for the church to be the church, I think to myself, "Woe is me, this is a person I am not. This is a life I do not live, cannot live, I am afraid to live. I don't carry a whip, heavens, I carry a calendar and a cell phone. I adjust to the world so easily, make its standards my standards, its wisdom my wisdom."
And then it's Lent, and there he is on the road, and we ask him what is true religion, true faith all about? We almost fear his response. But then much to our shock and surprise, he puts down the whip, lets go of the anger, and offers himself - the very power and possibility of God, come to life in our lives, the power to make new life possible, even in all the failed places. He lays us bare, perhaps painfully so, that we might then be open to all the things God calls us to be.
At a retirement dinner for a long time pastor, after everyone had offered their tributes to him and to his ministry, he rose to respond. His first words were, "I want to thank Jesus Christ for making me into the person I am. Without Jesus, I might have been normal." Well, may the same be said for each of us. For there in the temple, here in the church, or wherever we might encounter him, Christ takes lives that could be just ordinary and normal and turns them into high adventure.