“Again & Again, We Are Shown the Way”
Rev’d. Tanya Stormo Rasmussen
The Congregational Church of Hollis, U.C.C.
7 March, 2021
Lent 3B: Again & Again: A Lenten Refrain series
John 2:13-22
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
It’s humorously been dubbed by some as Jesus’ “Temple Tantrum.” And it was a memorable and powerful enough moment that all four gospel writers included it in their accounts. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all place this event at the end of Jesus’ life, within a week or so of the so-called “triumphal ride” into Jerusalem we celebrate on Palm Sunday, and his last holy week with his disciples.
John, on the other hand, places it at the outset of Jesus’ ministry. It certainly contributed to the case against him by those who wanted him dead, but rather than being one of the final straws, it was what got the ball rolling.
In John’s gospel, Jesus performs six miraculous “signs” over the course of his public ministry, all of which are intended to underscore who and what Jesus’ mission is all about. The first sign was when he surreptitiously turned water into wine at a wedding. Shortly thereafter, he went public in a big way when he performed this bold display of righteous passion, “in the most prestigious Jewish space of all, the Temple in Jerusalem, at the most prestigious Jewish time of all, the days just before Passover.”[1]
Why do you think Jesus was angry—angry enough to turn over tables, pouring out coins, driving out the cattle and sheep, and generally stirring up chaos in the Lord’s House? According to John, Jesus “… told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”[2] Was he flat out against buying and selling in the Temple?
I don’t think so. Jesus understood the need for commerce, and although he had a lot to say about our human obsession with money and the ways that the love of money leads to all sorts of evil, he wasn’t opposed to honest fair trade. That’s one of the ways that a healthy sharing of resources happens. What Jesus was opposed to was a corruption of that practice—when the need for trade was taken advantage of, as he saw happening in the Temple as foreigners and poor people were being especially exploited.
Every year at Passover, faithful Jews from all over, including distant lands with foreign currencies, would gather in Jerusalem to commemorate their people’s liberation from slavery in Egypt, and their liberation from the bondage to sin as they renewed their covenant with God. In light of these religious themes at the heart of their gathering, it was particularly ironic and infuriating that currency changers and merchants selling to these faithful migrants were taking advantage of their situation. The travelers couldn’t very well purchase sacrificial animals prior to departing from their homes, because they’d have become ceremonially unclean by the time they arrived in Jerusalem. They had no choice but to pay the inflated prices being demanded to change their currency and to purchase the appropriate sacrificial animal. If and when they couldn’t, they were left with feelings of shame and inferiority because they couldn’t contribute the customary offerings, and effectively were told they weren’t welcome in God’s house. All of this so that the Temple marketplace could take in a tidy profit.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all quote Jesus (who quotes the prophet Jeremiah, who’s quoting God) as saying, “My house shall be a house of prayer for all people, but you have made it a den of robbers!”[3] In other words, Jesus expresses once again the anger and indignation that had been voiced again and again by the prophets, who railed against the corruption taking place in the very place people went to experience a taste of the divinely-intended order for relationships.
Fundamentally, Jesus is opposed to any system, structure, or practice that creates a barrier between God and God’s people. Therefore, there’s a sense in which John recognized that Jesus was going even further than Matthew, Mark, and Luke—who were clearly opposed to the financial exploitation that was going on in the currency exchange and the price-fixing for sacrifices. John helps us understand that Jesus was opposed to the entire system of buying and selling sacrificial animals, full stop.
Jesus was establishing a new era—one where people might understand that, in order to “get right with God”, they don’t need to sacrifice another life; they simply need to abide in God’s love. To live with an ongoing awareness that God-is-with-us, and to manifest that awareness by demonstrating a love for their neighbor that equaled their love and concern for themselves. A love that pursues justice, and practices kindness and humility, as surely as God’s love does.
In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, responding to clergy colleagues who cautioned that the methods of nonviolent resistance and protest being employed by his movement were creating civil unrest and needed to be stopped—who concluded their letter with the words, “We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense”—the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote: “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Further on in his letter, Dr. King talks about the natural response of those living under the tyranny of oppression for a sustained period: “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. … [And] If his [or her] repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history.”
Dr. King was right, of course. Again and again, we see that truth playing out across the Biblical stories of our faith history, from the time the Israelites first demanded their freedom in Egypt. We who were created in God’s image to live in relationships that honor the divine image in each other, we do damage to our own souls as surely as we harm the other when we complacently allow oppressive systems to remain status quo; when we know that things are not right with the world according to God’s design, but we figure it’s not our problem to fix.
When we accept that idea, then we have forgotten or rejected the Christian understanding that, as members of Christ’s body, we are God’s intended instruments of healing, repair, restoration, and reconciliation. Our voices are the ones God intends to use, our hands and feet and experiences and relationships. And when we fail to accept that fact, we miss out on so much by not living into our God-given potential and purpose. We’re scarcely aware of the ways that the world’s predominant wisdom contributes to our spiritual diminishment and slow death.
But all of that can sound like foolishness, especially if we’re invested (consciously or unconsciously) in maintaining the status quo. If life as we know it is pretty good, it can be difficult to hear or believe those who are crying out that the system is rigged in favor of the powerful. And, if we’ve personally experienced and emerged from oppressive circumstances, above all if we feel we did it on our own, it can be tempting to conclude that others should be able to do the same on their own.
Following the way of Jesus—of willingly accepting a self-sacrificing cross, of befriending the needy, the stranger, and the outcast—continues to run against the grain of prevailing logic and expectation. Our world values strength in our leaders, not a gruesome death at the hands of the authorities, one that lays bare humanity’s vulnerability and conflicted notions of power at so many levels.
The clergy and other people who found the Civil Rights Movement threatening, who argued that the tactics being used—however nonviolent they were—were too extreme, probably believed their intentions were pure. It only made sense to them that they should be appealing to a proper sense of law and order; that’s a logic the world seems to understand. They themselves referred to it as “common sense.”
The money changers and vendors in the Temple probably didn’t reflect too deeply on the ways their actions were complicit in corrupting God’s intentions for relationships, either. They were more focused on maintaining the status quo, “doing what had always been done”—and it truly seemed that way, because the prophets Jesus quoted had railed against it had complained of it hundreds of years earlier. And that’s how systemic oppression persists: when well-intentioned people simply maintain what feels safe and familiar, and common sense. When intentionally or unintentionally, we shy away from digging too deeply into troubling realities because a part of us (usually hidden) fears we might be destabilizing our own comfort and security in the process of helping others obtain theirs. Or, we may have to confront truths about ourselves that we’d rather not look at; the Bible is full of stories about how this is a common feature of the human condition, too.
But friends, here’s the Good News. Despite the ways we fall short of our potential, and even occasionally spurn God’s love for us, that love remains steadfast. Jesus didn’t despise those who betrayed, rejected, and denied knowing him. He didn’t even curse those who drove the nails through his hands and his feet. It makes no sense to all the world’s wisdom that, rather than rejecting all of us who get caught up in protecting our own interests with a greater passion than we have for pursuing God’s intentions and interests, Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”[4] God does not hold our sins against us, but with wisdom, and power, and extravagance of love all of which far surpass our own, he opens up his arms in forgiveness and says, “This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you. This is how great my love for you remains, how deeply committed I am to my relationship with you.”
The passion Jesus displayed in the Temple, the tantrum that drove him to overturn tables of systemic injustice, was confounding and perplexing to the powers of the day. But it didn’t end there. God is still confounding the powerful and privileged with the gospel truth and the scandal of the cross—both within the Church and beyond it. Like the congregation Paul wrote to in Corinth, the Church today still squabbles about who is worthy to be at the table, how the poor should be treated, and who has the power and privilege. The magnetic power of the world’s ways and wisdom are real.
But if we’re paying attention, Jesus is still making room at the table for the marginalized and outcast. The wine is poured and bread is shared in the name of the One who opened his arms to all in the midst of his own agony and horrific death. And, if we’re following his lead, we’re the ones beckoning to them and moving over to open a space. Again and again, we are shown the way. Thank God. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
[1] https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/27/why-is-jesus-angry-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-3
[2] John 2:16
[3] Mark 11:17, Jeremiah 7:11
[4] Luke 23:34