Tables Turn – Coins Roll – Love Inscribed

Lent 3B; Ex. 20:1-17; Jn. 2:13-22; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 3/8/15

Jim Melnyk: “Tables Turn – Coins Roll – Love Inscribed”

A whirlwind of anger surrounds us

as doves, uncaged fly free.

Tables turned – and coins roll off

as merchants seek to flee.

We know the man – his whip in hand,

his hair askew and eyes ablaze.

The temple court in disarray, as

onlookers stare in mindless daze.

Do we all stand under indictment

as the prophet sweeps away

the clutter of the market place,

that holds us in its sway?

House of prayer or den of thieves?

questions hang o’er shattered booths.

The harder paths of peace and love

and the challenge of God’s truth. (Jim Melnyk, 3/7/2015)

           

What do we do with a Jesus who is anything but meek and mild in today’s passage from the Gospel according to John?  What do we do with a Jesus who fashions a whip out of cords and goes wild in the market place that has been set up in the temple precincts?  What do we do with two sets of lessons that one the one hand uphold ancient tradition – the Ten Commandments, while on the other hand seem to make a complete disarray of another – the mechanism in place for temple worship? 

This Jesus is a challenge to us, because whether we like to admit it or not, his critique in the temple that day goes beyond the immediate subject – the stuff surrounding temple worship.  We also have to see it as an enacted parable meant to carry with it much more meaning than the meaning of that one event.  If we can see it as a parable, then we can see it saying something about attitudes toward the Law and our relationships with God, and not just attitudes from two thousand years ago, but attitudes challenging Jews and Christians throughout history – and challenging us today.

Are we ever truly comfortable with the Jesus who makes harsh pronouncements that leave us wondering how we might fare under his withering gaze?  Are we ever comfortable with the Jesus whose words often leave us wondering whether or not we might find ourselves under indictment with others who have become the objects of his scorn?

“Pick out the passages that talk about how much God loves us,” we might find ourselves muttering to those who framed our Sunday lectionary.  We don’t like the passages that make us cringe –because like it or not, we know it’s about more than just a historic “them.”

 

To put today’s gospel story in a proper setting, Jesus isn’t offering a critique on the meaning or place of temple worship in his faith.  Jesus spends time in the temple throughout his life – and the early stories in Luke’s Gospel make it clear that Jesus and his family make the required temple pilgrimages, and they carry out the required temple sacrifices. 

In her book, The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, professor and author Amy-Jill Levine points out that the marketplace necessary to carry out temple sacrifice – the changing of coins and the buying of sacrificial animals – was at one time housed on the Mount of Olives, away from the temple and outside the city. Caiaphas, according to Levine and others, moved the marketplace into the Court of the Gentiles, and they suspect that "some Jews, including Jesus, objected” (p. 152).  I suspect the frenzy of the market, along with the potential profit taking to line Roman coffers, may have created the objections on the part of Jesus.  By the time worshipers got to the temple the focus was meant to be on worship, but it seems all the stuff may have gotten in the way.

The Gospel story called by many, “The Cleansing of the Temple” is one of those rare instances when a story by or about Jesus is told in all four Gospels.  In what we call the Synoptic Gospels, the story takes place early in the week leading up to the crucifixion. Mark places it in a sandwich between the cursing of the fig tree and its withering – making it a statement on the apparent lack of fruit not just on the fig tree, but among the religious leadership in Jerusalem as well.  This act by Jesus becomes one of the final straws for the Roman-appointed leadership in Jerusalem, and it most likely raises the anxiety level of Pilate and his military advisers whose number one mission is keeping Roman control in the region.

The writer of John’s Gospel, however, puts this event right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry instead of days before his crucifixion.  Rather than it becoming the last straw, it seems obvious that John wants to set up – right from the beginning – the challenge Jesus makes against the status quo – the challenge Jesus makes to the Roman-appointed Jewish leadership in the Temple – and in a less obvious way, the leadership of Rome.  “There’s got to be a better way of doing things,” Jesus seems to be saying. “You have let the mechanism for temple worship become the focus, rather than the sacrificial act of worship itself.  You’ve let the rules get in the way.”

Contrary to some suggestions, I don’t think Jesus’ foray into the Temple is about showing us his humanity by expressing his anger – though Jesus certainly does that.  Nor is it about having a better way than Judaism – for it’s actually Jesus’ strong Jewish faith that brings him to the Temple in the first place.  Rather, “Jesus challenges a religious system so embedded in its own rules and practices that it is no longer open to a fresh revelation from God,a temptation that exists for contemporary Christianity as well as for the Judaism of Jesus’ day” (Gail R. O’Day, The New Interpreter’s Bible, 545). 

The Psalmist writes, “The statutes of the LORD are just and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear and gives light to the eyes” (Psalm 19:8).  The critique Jesus offers is against worship that runs the risk of losing its focus on God – worship that becomes so frenzied, and so caught up in rules and practices, that it no longer brings joy to our hearts – it no longer “gives light to [our] eyes.”  It’s a case of letting ourselves get so caught up in the styling of our liturgies, or the way our neighbor might be dressed, or a child is acting, an acolyte stumbling, or the priest missing a cue or not preaching the way we would like, that we cannot “Lift up our hearts – giving thanks and praise to God” because we’ve allowed ourselves to become so distracted that we let extraneous stuff get in the way.

Letting the mechanisms designed to assist us in our worship of God, or the ways we live out our faith in the communities around us, get in the way can indeed cripple our ability to live as God calls us to live – in love and charity with our neighbors, and in joyful relationship with the God who gives us being.  Jesus does not come on the scene to abolish the Law – as a faithful Jew he embraces both the Law and the Prophets – and sees the keeping of the Law as a clear pathway into the heart of God. What Jesus does challenge, however, is a form of idolatry that allows the people of God to become so enamored with the words and the actions, that they – that we – forget to follow the Way.

Seventy years ago this past January the death camp Auschwitz was liberated.  We said never again – never forget.  Fifty years ago yesterday we witnessed Bloody Sunday in Selma.  We said never again – never forget. Yet according to the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors hate groups in the US, there are some 939 known hate groups in our nation today – a fifty-six percent increase since 2000 – though the number has dropped from a high of 1,300 groups three years ago.  And that doesn’t even take into account the terror groups around the world.  We have to decide what camps still need liberating in our lifetimes – which bridges still need to be crossed – and which tables need to be overturned – before the Gospel of God’s love triumphs over all.

Author Robert Roth writes, “Chipping the Ten Commandments into a marble plaque at a courthouse is the easy way out. The harder path engages the numerous ways the covenant challenges human law and order. Empires, both ancient and modern, are frightened by this sort of commitment to the way God reorders society. Loyalties shift. Greedy values are rejected. Coins roll” (Sojourners On Line, Preaching the Word, 3/8/2015).

The Ten Commandments on the walls of a courthouse – the walls of a school – or even the walls of a church – in no way ensure our embracing them with our whole hearts.  We spend time arguing about where they belong and forget that they actually belong within us – we forget to live what they demand.  We get so caught up in their marketing that we forget what they mean. 

 What God seeks is the chipping of the Ten Commandments – and the chipping of the New Covenant as well – upon our hearts.  As the prophet Jeremiah proclaims of God, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people” (31:33).

We have to decide what we believe to be most sacred in our lives – what causes our hearts to rejoice and gives light to our eyes.  We have to decide where we will find God’s holy covenant written for our lives – on the pages of a book – on the walls of buildings – or in the depths of our hearts.