MORE POWER! MORE GLORY!! MORE SPIRIT!!!
SURVEYING THE SITE—John 2:13-22
Just when we were getting used to the yo-yo movement in
Mark, oops, the string of the yo-yo broke. The yo-yo hit the ground rolling,
and we have ended up in John. What’s happening? We have heard that the Word has
become flesh and tented among us. John has come baptizing and has pointed out
the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.
Andrew and another disciple have followed Jesus to his tenting place, and Andrew has gone to find his brother Peter. Philip has found Nathaniel, who, after being told that he is without deceit, declares Jesus to be God’s son. Jesus and his disciples have responded to an invitation to a wedding in Cana, where they run out of wine, and Jesus makes the first of his signs/miracles changing water into very good wine.
Then Jesus, his mother, brothers, disciples, and other tag-alongs stop off at Capernaum for a few days before hitting the road for Jerusalem and the first of three Passover celebrations recorded in John. When Jesus enters the temple courtyard, he sees that it is not a place of welcome for the nations but an emporium that profits the temple and chooses to do something about it. He casts out the cattle, the sheep, and the pigeons, along with the money changers.
Wait! We’ve just started the Book of John. Isn’t Jesus supposed to cleanse the temple near the end of the story?
READING THE BLUEPRINT
Now after the blowout at the wedding, Jesus, his mother,
brothers, disciples, and maybe others not mentioned, have gone to Capernaum to
rest for a few days. But when the time comes for the Passover celebration,
Jesus goes up to the city of peace (Jerusalem), to the great temple, to join in
the festivities surrounding God’s intervening activity that freed God’s people
and shaped them.
Entering the outer courtyard, the place of welcome for all the nations, Jesus finds cattle, sheep, and pigeons being sold for those who wish to make sacrifices. The money changers are sitting by their tables, ready to exchange the filthy lucre, roman and other worldly coins, for pure religious coins used in the temple.
Jesus makes a whip of bullrushes and casts out the moneychangers, cattle, and sheep. Then he pours out the coins of the moneychangers, overturns the tables, and tells the people with the pigeons to take them out of the temple.
Three Greek words are used in this passage to describe the “temple”. At this point, “hieron” is used which refers to the entire temple complex not just the worship space itself. It includes the various courtyards of the temple complex as well as any auxiliary buildings and proscenia. So far, everybody is on the same page as to what is being talked about.
Now, when the disciples remember a portion of Psalm 69, “Zeal for your house shall consume me”, things begin to get a little sticky. Here the word is not temple, but house, “oikos”, which is not simply a building or even a collection of buildings, it is the living construct of household.
The people were expected to recall more of the Psalm, “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. When I humbled my soul with fasting, they insulted me for doing so. When I made sack cloth my clothing, I became a by-word to them. I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate. The drunkards make songs about me.”
When this part of the psalm is included, the afront Jesus feels is more understandable. This courtyard of the gentiles is supposed to be a place of welcome or hospitality for the world. But, the marketplace, this early one-stop shopping mall, has made the place of welcome a barnyard and a place of commercial profiteering.
It is not that these service businesses aren’t needed, just not in the holy place of welcome. Sabbath time and holy ritual are to help people remember that God makes this time and observance possible. It is not the work of people that makes the difference. God created the world and everything in it. God’s angel of death passed over the homes of the Hebrew people. God would lead them into the wilderness to the Promised Land.
The leaders of the temple ask Jesus to show them a sign that would justify his actions. In other words, they might say, “Explain yourself, young man.”
Jesus responds, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
This is where you might say, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” The temple authorities are shocked because they expect Jesus to be speaking of the temple complex and/or the construction of God’s house or household. Instead, John uses neither “heiron” nor “oikos” but a third word, “naon”, for temple which is specifically the inner sanctuary, including the Holy of Holies. Beyond speaking of the incarnate sanctuary worship space itself, Jesus translocates the worship space from building to himself.
In this way, Jesus refers back to chapter one: Jesus, as incarnate word, has come to tent with us. This tenting is a mobile operation that moves wherever God’s people are. It is not concretely anchored in the city of peace. It is nothing less than Jesus’ incarnate self who moves among us. “If you destroy the locus of God’s presence in the world, in three days it will be raised again.”
In these words, we recognize the cross and resurrection. When the disciples remember this statement after the great Easter event, they believe.
ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE
A tenet of Judaism is hospitality. In Genesis, God creates
the Sabbath for humanity to know rest, but God also invites humanity into
Sabbath time to be in a relationship of equity. We see Abraham give hospitality
to three strangers who, in return for the gift of hospitality, tell Abraham and
Sarah that they will have a child in a year. It is for lack of hospitality that
Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. Throughout Torah, we hear that we are to care
for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Indeed, the stranger is to be held
with regard and invited to participate in the life of the Jewish people.
This imperative of hospitality is so strong that many Eastern European Jewish communities during the 13th through the 16th centuries maintained a home in their community that was ready for travelers at all times. They built the house with the understanding that no one in the village would ever live in that house, but that they would keep the house stocked and fully appointed as a welcome to strangers/foreigners that might pass through their town on the way from somewhere to somewhere else.
PUTTING UP THE WALLS
As I read this text this week, I am struck by the difference
between this account of the Temple cleansing and the accounts in the other
Gospels. Certainly, the placement of the disruption narrative of the temple
courtyard suggests that something different is going on, but the charges
against the vendors and the moneychangers is also different. In Matthew, Mark,
and Luke, we hear some version of the charges, “My house shall be a house of
prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11).
In John, we hear, “Take these things out of here. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” And even though Jesus says this with a whip in his hand, it appears that the whip was for moving the animals not for punishing the people.
In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the indictment seems more directed to the entire temple practice while this scene in John appears directed to the merchants themselves. It seems more like a reforming corrective than a damning statement against the temple institution.
Considering the rest of Psalm 67, this cleansing is about making space for hospitality. It is about removing the insults against God. It is about restoring humility before God with fasting, repenting without becoming an object of derision. Hospitality should not be the subject of gossip debated by the old men in the cafĂ© or the subject of drinking songs. Hospitality is at the heart of God’s caring presence even when humanity chooses to shun that hospitality: “He was in the world and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him—they were not hospitable.” Left in charge of our salvation, we would throw it away.
It is God’s continuous hospitality of welcome, mercy, and forgiveness, that makes our relationship with God possible. So, we hear, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.”
When the leaders of the temple come and ask Jesus for a sign, they need only look around them. Jesus has raised the issue of hospitality and left the evidence of inhospitality in the courtyard. One can only imagine the detritus from cattle, sheep, pigeons, together with the coinage and the paperwork that documented what they were doing. For those who have read it, it might look like the opening scenes of “The Magic Christian”.
HANGING THE TRIM
In these days of Corona Virus fatigue, we are challenged to
consider whether our sanctuaries are standing for our own use and gratification
or are they places of hospitality for the world to enter?
“Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve, the neighbors we have in you.”
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