In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
Can you see it now, anxious news reporters holding microphones near their lips while the cameras pan out to show a large stone structure in the background as hundreds of excited pilgrims mill about?
“It was announced earlier today that Jesus of Nazareth entered the Temple and made a whip of cords and drove the money changers out of the temple. Sources close to the itinerant Rabbi say that he was challenged by the Jews, asking what authority he had to upset tables and pour out coins. The authorities claim they were mystified by his answers. Pictures and additional interviews at 11.”
For some strange reason, this story has always conjured up dramatic images of a Jesus that seem almost foreign to me. Consider it childish, but my preference is to think of Jesus as more subdued, centered, with a beatific smile and his eyes looking up toward heaven. Clearly this vignette casts Jesus in a very different light.
The story of the cleansing of the temple is found at the end of Jesus’ ministry in the synoptic Gospels, which is more likely to be historically correct, since his behavior may have been one of the reasons for the crucifixion, but John on the other hand, uses the story to introduce Jesus’ confrontation with the Jewish authorities, an ongoing theme of John’s presentation of his particular memories of Jesus and his mission.
Because the time of this story is set at Passover, there would have been as many as a hundred thousand people making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festival. One in Jerusalem, the pilgrims found a system in place to fulfill the requirements of the Law.
Part of the process included services where people could offer the proper Temple sacrifices and have their relationship with God restored.
Part of the sacrificial process involved purchasing ritually clean animals. To purchase the animals, one had to have the proper currency and since Roman currency was considered idolatrous because it was stamped with the image of Caesar, one had to exchange the Roman currency for temple money to purchase their sacrificial offering. This ‘service’ was conducted on the Temple steps and the moneychangers always took their fee as part of the process.
Jesus saw the practice for what it was: an unnecessary barrier between God and God’s people. He saw the poor having to borrow money to purchase the animals for sacrifice, and he heard the arguing and fretting over whether the moneychangers were charging a fair exchange. And it’s apparent on this particular day, he'd had enough.
Some say Jesus, who no doubt knew the words of the prophets, may have been quoting Zechariah when he ordered the animal sellers and money changers to leave the premises. In Zechariah 14:21 it says “and there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day,” the day the Lord will become king over all the earth.
Whatever his motivation, to say Jesus upset the apple carts of many that day is probably an understatement. The tradition of selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging currency had been accepted for centuries. It was custom.
Lent is the time when we invite God to come into our lives and upset our individual apple carts, to turn over the ‘tables’, the customs, the traditions that are barriers between us and others, us and the God we yearn to know, and the Lord we long to love and serve.
The Old Testament defines the places we might start to examine our selves in this regard in ten straightforward commands, commands that tell us how to be in relationship with God and our neighbors.
When we couldn’t manage to live with ten commands, Jesus made it even simpler. Two commandments; love the lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and your and all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. Simple prescriptions for complicated people.
We yearn for acceptance, respect, safety and unconditional love. The irony is that God wants that for us as well, and yet we feel denied. The additional irony is that we obtain the things we want, by letting go of what we think is best for us and others, and turning our lives over to God’s care.
Letting go of the sinful customs that complicate our lives and stifle our relationship with God revolve around: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Aha we say, thank goodness those words don’t describe me.
In my instance I can truthfully say, “I haven’t been slothful in weeks,” no; the truth is I’m so prideful I don’t think a day can pass with out my being at work.
Once when asked by a psychiatrist how I dealt with anger, I proudly answered that I rarely got mad. As he ducked his head in disbelief to write on his notepad, I beamed with pride over my good nature. As those sessions unfolded, I realized that while I rarely got “mad” I was full of resentments, seeds of anger that simply had never bloomed because I tried to deny the feelings. Resentments killed me and my relationship with God as much as any loud temper tantrums might have.
Allowing Jesus into the temple of our hearts is a risky proposition. While he might be the gentle Jesus I tend to prefer, he may, especially during the Lenten season, be the Jesus who turns over the hurt and fear and resentment we cling to so fiercely cling to - driving out our pride; leaving us totally vulnerable to the work of the Spirit in us.
The link between the giving of the Ten Commandments and the cleansing of our hearts is a covenantal relationship, one in which God desires to show us love and makes it possible for us to be in loving relationships, with our creator and our neighbors. The giving of the Commandments and the cleansing of the temple are acts of love, not given as orders in anger, but as tools that remove the barriers we create between God, ourselves and others.
So how do we remove the barriers?
Get out your prayer book and reread the baptismal examination and the baptismal covenant.
When we live by our baptismal covenant, our busy-ness, our rush to fulfill the wants and desires of our hearts, and the ideas that we stubbornly cling to as best for us and others, dissolve and we cease to be anxious. The success of our personal lives and our relationship with God will be secured when we surrender to God’s will. Joe pointed out in last week’s study group that the prayer that never fails is “thy will be done.” For me at least, it’s so much easier to say those words than to live by them.
Where are the money changing tables in our lives? What needs to be turned over and cast out, no matter how long it’s been around? Is it habits that hurt us, relationships that no longer nurture us, feelings that keep us victims to self pity? And if we can't see those things that bind us, can we ask God to reveal them, and help remove them, so that we might create a place in our hearts to renew our relationship with God?
When the temples of our hearts are cleaned out, there’s space for God to work miracles. The famous Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, used the following analogy to describe this process. “When I invited God into my life it was like I was a little house in much need of repair. When he first came in, he repaired things I understood -- like patching a leaky roof or a knocked out wall or a broken door. But then He started really banging around, ripping out walls, adding new rooms, doing major reconstruction that was very painful and I couldn't understand why all that was necessary. The thing was, I thought God was trying to make me into a nice little cottage, but what He had in mind all along was a beautiful, spacious palace.”
Let us pray.
As once you came into the temple, come to us, Lord Jesus,
and cleanse us from all that makes us unholy.
Silence the noise that prevents us from hearing you,
and help us see when we are blind.
Turn over the barriers that block your word,
drive away the distractions that stop our awareness of you.
Give us the wisdom of your commandments.
For you command only what is good,
We are temples of the living God,
help us to know who we are. Help us become your
Sacred dwelling place. Amen.
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