I am struck again this week by how well the lines of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" fit the readings for Lent this year. This week, we reflect on the so-called "Cleansing of the Temple" as found in the Gospel of John (John 2:13-22). This version of the story is slightly different from the version found in the Synoptic Gospels, as we will consider as we work our way through the story.
Given the year we have had, I want us to look at the good news for us in this story. In the midst of disrupted lives and disrupted religious practices, we can know that God is still available to us. God wants to be in relationship with us. God's love was never dependent on business as usual.
Even when it feels like everything is falling apart, we find God waiting for us on the other side.
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Today we have the well-known text of Jesus overturning the tables in the Temple. This story takes place early in the Gospel of John, even though it occurs after Jesus makes his final entry into Jerusalem in the other gospels. It tells the story of Jesus coming into the Temple and observing the vendors selling animals and the money changers set up in the public spaces of the Temple.
I’m sure most of us have read one of these passages before. We’ve likely heard sermons on this passage or perhaps developed our own opinions based on what we find here. Even so, I find that I am still learning new things about this passage. For one thing, the way this event is described in the different gospels gives a slightly different nuance to the story.
In the other three gospels, Jesus goes into the Temple and immediately starts driving out all those who are buying and selling, saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:17, NRSV)
Last year during Lent, I was doing a Bible study that pointed out that a robbers den is not the place that robbers go to steal. Instead their den is the place they go to feel safe. I had never considered this before, but it begins to give new meaning to this act of Jesus.
On the other hand, our reading today tells us that Jesus comes into the Temple, sees what is happening, and then goes to make a whip. In John, this is not some immediate act of passion. Jesus takes the time to literally go make a whip and come back. How does this premeditated act of violence on Jesus’ part begin to give new light to what is going on here?
The same Bible study I was doing last year also points out what the vendors and money changers are doing in the Temple in the first place, something that again had never occurred to me in our modern context. You see, for observant Jews, the only place where they could appropriately worship and offer sacrifices to God was in the Temple in Jerusalem. Just as today Christians might make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to visit spots important in the life and ministry of Jesus, the Jew’s of his time would occasionally travel from wherever they might live in the Empire to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple.
Given the very strict rules governing what sorts of animals could and could not be offered as a sacrifice, most of them would not be traveling for days to the Temple with the exact perfect animal from their own flocks. That’s not even taking into account those that might be a merchant or a tradesman that did not have a flock from which to collect an animal for sacrifice in the first place. Not everyone would have a perfect goat on hand. Not everyone would have access to a turtledove. So it makes sense that the priests might oversee a group of approved merchants who could offer the animals necessary for the religious rites right there in the public spaces of the Temple.
As well, monetary offerings were expected to be very particular. Those traveling from far off regions of the Empire might not have the appropriate coins for making monetary donations in the Temple. Again, having those on hand that could assist those coming to the Temple to be able to participate in rites and religious observances with the least amount of confusion as possible is actually something that helps the Temple run more smoothly.
Taken together, it begins to seem that the mere presence of the vendors and money changers alone is not exactly the issue that Jesus has. I think we have to look to what Jesus says, both here in the Temple and in the other parts of his ministry, to get a clearer picture of what is happening. While the other gospels are much more explicit, even here in John we find Jesus alluding to the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. In Isaiah, God says, “my house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations.” (see Isaiah 56:7). In the seventh chapter of Jeremiah, we find God questioning those who feel free to go forth and break the Commandments and yet feel safe in the house of God (see Jeremiah 7).
Given the words of the prophets and Jesus’ own teaching about love and relationships, it seems that there is something else going on here. By his actions, Jesus is disrupting the very way that the Temple works, not simply the lives of those he drives out. Jesus is taking aim at the transactional religion that the Temple had become. He is making it clear that God doesn’t simply want our payment for wrongs committed. The point of the Temple is not a place to pay a fine so that we can go forth to continue doing those things we are asked not to do.
This is why the religious authorities react as they do. They would have recognized Jesus’ reference to the prophets and understood their import. They knew that Jesus was doing more than simply running a Starbucks out of the church lobby. Jesus was condemning all that the Temple had become.
Even so, the placement of this story in the different gospels makes the reactions we are given very different. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is nearing the end of his time of ministry on Earth when he enters Jerusalem and goes almost immediately to the Temple to run out those who are buying and selling. In these gospels, we are told that the religious authorities observe this act, but don’t consider it something they can do anything about since Jesus has gained so much popularity.
However, here in John, the religious authorities approach Jesus to ask what gives him the right to act this way and disrupt the work of the Temple. What gives you the right? What miraculous sign can you offer to justify this?
It reminds me of the song from the ‘70s, “Signs,” in which a man wandering through the country comments on some of the various signs he finds in the world. Signs telling people where to go or not to go. Signs saying who is welcome and who is not. At one point, the person in the song even yells out in the face of one such sign, “What gives you the right?”
What gives Jesus the right to overturn not just the tables but the entire purpose of the Temple? What sign can Jesus give to prove he has any authority over how the Temple works?
Of course, the thing is that Jesus constantly offers signs of power throughout his ministry. Even so there are many that do not recognize him. His own disciples at times fail to recognize exactly what it is Jesus is saying and doing through his ministry. The signs that Jesus gave were so foreign to how they understood the world, how could they know? It was only in hindsight that anyone could begin to understand.
Our reading today makes this plain. “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered what he had said, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:22, CEB). It doesn’t say that they believed or understood at the time. It is only afterward, after they can see it all in context, that they can truly believe.
I am reminded of the year that we have had. Almost exactly a year ago, the US finally recognized the need to respond to the virus that had been ravaging other parts of the world. People went home from work on a Thursday not realizing they wouldn’t be going back to the office the next day. Kids came home from school not knowing they wouldn’t be back in the classroom for anywhere from several weeks to almost a year. And people who had been to worship the Sunday before found that worship looked unexpectedly different.
This week a friend of mine who is a deacon in Chicago mentioned preaching for the first time since last year. She had preached in Lent a year ago the last Sunday that most churches met face-to-face and had not actually been back into the church building since then. She talked about the emotional experience of walking into her office at the church and finding her robe with her purple Lenten stole still hanging on it in the office where she had left them a year ago, not realizing at the time how long it would be before she would wear them again.
What have we learned over the past year about what it means to be church? What have we learned about what it means to be in relationship with God and in relationship with others during a time when our entire way of doing things has been disrupted?
Like the religious authorities of Jesus’ time, and even his disciples, we have experienced something for which we were not prepared, something that none of us could comprehend based on what we had experienced in life so far. Who of us knew when the response began a year ago that we would still be dealing with this virus a year later? Who of us knew a year ago the extraordinary measures we would need to take to protect one another from a virus that looks different in everyone that is infected? Who knew that in less than a year, 500,000 Americans and five times that many people around the world would be dead and we would still be struggling to understand the cause?
How has this disrupted what we are used to? At the same time, how can we see Jesus’ response as good news in the midst of such extraordinary times? Is our faith still a transactional religion that depends on showing up to a certain place and doing specific acts in order to please God? Or do we realize that our relationship with God looks a little bit different and maybe now in hindsight we can begin to recognize that that is okay? As we come to the Table today, are we simply attempting to relive the sacrifices of the systems of the past, or are we coming to a Table with family and friends, invited by Christ to a joyous feast?
As we continue our journey through what has felt a bit like a year-long Lent, I pray that we can begin to look back at where this started and reflect on where we have come in the last twelve months. Where are the signs of God breaking into our world? Where are the signs of grace that perhaps we have failed to recognize? How do we interpret and share God’s love with a world in need? How do we continue to love God and one another when we may feel like everything is falling apart?
Hopefully, we can hear Jesus' words for the good news that they offer. Yes, our way of doing things has been disrupted. But God's love and grace never depended on business as usual.