Loading...Often when I hear Scripture read,
I see a movie playing in my head.
As the story unfolds, I imagine what it would look like in a movie.
This scene of Jesus in the Temple is one of the dramatic ones –
full of action and emotion.
There are various actors – bovine, ovine, avian, and human
with Jesus at the center.
Jesus, the Divine One, God incarnate, at the center of it all.
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What is he up to?
What is God up to?
What is God doing?!?
Is Jesus just getting angry?
Is he making a political statement? A financial one?
Are we supposed to walk away from this story
learning that we should never sell tickets for an event
or, ACK, never sell Girl Scout cookies again?
[shake head]
So, if not that, then what IS God saying to us?
Are we supposed to hear that God is capricious,
and we’d “better watch out!”?
Or, that God is angry at us for trying to worship in the way we are used to?
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It might help to understand a little background for this event.
Most towns and villages had a synagogue for local worship.
In the synagogue, they’d learn Torah – law – and prophets.
There would be conversations and debates, prayers and singing.
But the big time worship – the drama, the offering –
this all happened at the Temple, of which there was only one.
And it was in Jerusalem.
The requirement was for all who could to make an annual pilgrimage
to the Temple to worship and offer a sacrifice.
The Temple was where God lived!
Most people couldn’t bring their offering – leading a cow or sheep –
all the way from home. So, they’d buy one once they got to Temple.
Truthfully, most people were so poor (lots of taxes and bribes to pay)
that the most they could afford were a pair of doves.
In addition to figuring out how to procure and pay for the animal for sacrifice,\ they would also need to pay their Temple tax.
But, in order to do that, they had to use Jewish money (shekels),
not Roman coinage that was used for every day:
hence, the money changers.
The system was in place – money changers, animal sellers –
to, theoretically, help people to worship properly.
But the truth is, there was corruption: bribery, usury, and cheating.
Not to mention, all that [wave hands vaguely] stuff – this system for worshipping –
ended up putting multiple barriers up
between people and God.
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Then Jesus comes along.
In one of the busiest seasons of Temple life – time of Passover --
There would have been lots of pilgrims.
Business would have been brisk.
This was, after all, one of the most beloved and important of festivals.
And, into all of this comes Jesus who, well…
Well, you heard the story!
So, what is God up to?
God’s not just cranky about the corruption – but, true that!
Maybe Jesus was overturning the notion
that there were only certain ways to connect with God?
Maybe Jesus was destroying the idea
that God only lived in the Temple and didn’t care about you
unless you could pay enough bribe money?
Maybe Jesus was setting the stage for a new story –
one in which wealth, power,
and our own goodness or abilities meant nothing;
one in which stepping on one another to get ahead,
or taking advantage of others was useless.
Maybe Jesus was helping his disciples to understand and see
that God was already right there among them –
that God is already right here among us,
that God is right there in the world, even if we don’t see.
Maybe Jesus is being foolish –
not caring about the dominant societal story of how to get ahead
or how to worship God
(the story that had become so firmly entrenched that people couldn’t see how it was a distortion of God and worship).
Maybe Jesus is walking the way to the cross already,
this foolish way of turning everything upside down:
expectations,
the notion of requirements,
the social and power structure.
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What is God up to?
What is God trying to say to us?
What is God up to in our life and in our world?
Turning things over
by using the “foolish things” like weakness, service, and compassion,
rather than power, strength, and money?
I think that that might be hard for us to really grasp.
Sure, we might nod our heads –
“Oh, yes! God’s way is different.
Following Jesus is a way of life that is different!”
But, it’s also so easy to slip back into the ways of the world.
I don’t mean slipping back into immorality,
where the checklist that the 10 Commandments has become
gets tossed aside as though it’s irrelevant.
I mean the ways of the world like this:
The world tells us that we should do it ourselves!
that we are weak if we can’t handle stress,
that we SHOULD take on more and more –
busyness has become a new goal.
The world that tells us that we should “open the economy back up!”
regardless of the danger of Covid to vulnerable members of our community.
The world tells us that “might makes right”,
that we should show strength, not weakness,
that the way to relate to an enemy is as a fighter
and to “win” through violence and force.
The world tells us that money is more important that almost anything,
that if you don’t have wealth then you
• must not be working hard enough
• must be a failure
• must not care and therefore deserve the little that you have and no more.
But God uses the foolish things of the world –
pain, suffering, and death –
to overturn the world.
But God uses the foolish things of the world –
service, compassion, and non-violence
(the whip of cords that Jesus made was to drive the animals out,
not the people!) –
to show God’s way of life.
God uses the foolish things of the world –
going out into the streets, neighborhoods, and towns
to find the people whom the world has pushed aside.
God uses the foolishness of the world
to deeply, fully, and radically love those who
work for justice for themselves and others who work low wage jobs;
who identify as LGBTQIA
whose ancestors come from non-European countries;
who are refugees, or who are homeless, or addicted, or who have criminal records
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If God is our reference point –
our touchstone, our anchor, our foundation,
our source of being, our very life itself! –
then what is God saying to us?
God is turning over the tables of our life,
the expectations and values, and priorities,
to show us God’s own self in this new life to which God has called us
a life which is counter-cultural, and
which many would deem “foolish”.
I think God is meeting us in our own weak places –
where we’re broken,
vulnerable,
fragile,
humiliated –
and sits down with us.
God abides with us.
God dwells with us.
God pitches a tent with us.
And is.
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Did you know that the origin of the Temple was something called “tabernacle”? It was a tent that was carried by day and set up at night during the time when the Hebrew people were wandering in the desert between slavery in Egypt and a new life in the Promised Land. The tabernacle housed the Ark of the Covenant – the box in which the covenant, the Ten Words (or, as we call them the Ten Commandments), would reside.
The covenant is where people encountered God –
the deep and lasting promise that God would always be their God.
The covenant
in the ark
in the tabernacle
which was rebuilt as the Temple (twice).
But,
but Jesus IS that living covenant that God is alive with us.
There is no need for a special Temple building
or anything else – rules, structure, “wisdom” –
that might separate us from God.
Jesus foolishly overturns all the barriers, the wisdom of the world,
and even our own fear and shame
in order to change and transform us
into people who are also foolish –
people who love and care for neighbors AND enemies,
people who forgive even those who’ve wounded us deeply,
people who extend kindness and compassion to others –
all of whom are broken and fragile also.
Jesus foolishly overturns our neatly ordered world in order to love us
deeply, fully, and foolishly.
And then prods and provokes us that we might live as the foolish in the world
inviting others to live a life of love and grace and mercy, and
recognizing, and witnessing to the radical and life-transforming love of God.
Amen
