3 March 2024 Lent 3
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22
Paul makes some very bold statements in this letter to the Corinthians. He asserts that following God’s laws, or God’s way, is sheer foolishness to the world. He points out that no one would automatically look to win a situation through self-emptying love. And, he says, it is hard to see how suffering could be a source of healing. It is hard to see how the cross, that ultimate symbol of defeat, could be a pathway of healing and wholeness. Yet, we realise, only a suffering God can save; God is the only ‘fellow sufferer’ who can understand. So suffering love – that love expressed by a parent or grandparent or by lovers for one another – can save and transform. And in a world that values power and individualism, this really does seem like foolishness. But in this foolishness, love wins, and the world is saved.
When we look at the gospel, it may be difficult to see any good in the actions of Jesus in today’s reading. The people were just trying to ‘earn a living’, they were giving the community what it needed and wanted so that people could maintain their sacrificial worship in the temple. But it is not their actions, per se, that has riled Jesus, it is the way they are doing it. These traders have taken advantage of ‘the market’. They are not just ‘offering a service’ to worshippers, they have turned it into a ‘trade fair’. Jesus tells them the temple is a place of worship, not of profiteering. And it is not just the ‘trading’ that Jesus is objecting to. He is objecting to the exploitation and avarice of the religious authorities who controlled all access to ritual purity.
And let’s not forget, this occurs as people were gathering to celebrate the Passover. There would have been literally thousands of Jews pouring into Jerusalem, and the temple represented the essence of Jewish faith literally and symbolically. It was a bustling nexus of commercial activity, crowds of worshipers, nationalist aspirations, political identity, historical memory, architectural splendour, and religious affiliation. All who came to worship were required to offer sacrifice, and for that they needed to buy an animal, and they needed change the Imperial coin for the local currency so they could make their purchases. So the area around the temple would have been ‘a-buzz’ with people and animals and traders and religious authorities, and in the middle of it all, Jesus grabs some cord, makes a whip and ‘loses the plot’ as he chases everyone and everything out of the temple precinct. And in doing this, Jesus is announcing the end of this way of relating to God.
This ‘cleansing’ of the temple is just about the only violent act by Jesus that is recorded in our gospels. And this story was important enough for all four of our gospel writers to include it, although Matthew, Mark and Luke put it at the end of Jesus’ public ministry as the final provocative act that leads to his arrest, trial and crucifixion, whereas John puts it at the beginning of his gospel, using it to announce the inauguration of a new era, one in which the grace of God is available to all who receive Jesus as God’s Messiah. And the chaos and disruption in this scene echoes other scriptural scenes where people were afraid after seeing Jesus heal someone, or they were afraid to ask him more questions, or where some followers ‘walked away’ because were so offended by Jesus. The cleansing reminds us that there is no such thing as ‘business as usual’ with Jesus.
And then things get even more strange. Asked to justify his actions, Jesus refuses and then make this strange statement about destroying the temple. Some commentators see this statement as a prophetic prediction of the destruction of the temple that occurred in 70AD, others see it as focusing on the purification of the temple to its sacred purpose – a place of prayer for all people, without manipulation or exploitation by ‘gatekeepers’, others suggest it is in Jesus’ own body, not in the temple building, that we meet God. And given that John wrote his gospel well after the destruction the Temple, his insistence, and reassurance to his community that they would find God’s mercy in Christ outside, rather than inside, the Temple makes practical, as well as theological sense, and it speaks that same message to us today as well.
But maybe, after all that, you are left wondering, ok, but what about today, apart from reassuring us that we can access God’s mercy in Christ outside the walls of this worship space, what does this gospel passage say to me today.
Well maybe it prompts me to ask questions about where Jesus might like to overturn tables in my life; in this church; in our community.
And if I translate these questions to the rooms of a house, where might Jesus like to overturn the tables:
In the kitchen: what is it saying about my appetites and desires.
In the bedroom wardrobe: what is it saying about my secret hangups
In the library, or office: what is it saying about my choices of reading material
In the lounge room: what is it saying about my relationships.
We often think about church as a place we go to for an experience of God, but maybe we should turn that table over and see it as a place we are sent from in order to meet and partner with God in everyday life.
If you have read the Nania series, you will know that at the end of the second book, Aslan tells Peter and Susan that they will not return to Nania, and then at the end of the third book, he says the same to Lucy and Edmund. Lucy is distraught at the thought of never seeing her beloved lion again, but Aslan assures her that she will see him in her own world. Confused at how that can happen, Aslan tells her that the whole reason for bringing her to Nania was so that, coming to know him well there, she would recognise him more easily in her world. And that is a great image for the church. We come to church because we perceive God’s grace most clearly in the proclamation of the gospel and the sacraments. But we are also sent out into the world to look for God, and even partner with God, in our various roles and venues, in order to love and bless the people and world God loves so much. Our homes, our places of work, and the other parts of our lives, are places where God is present, we just need to be ready to ‘upturn our tables’ so we can ‘see’ God there.