As we continue through the season of repentance that is Lent we hear in our gospel lesson an important reform that Jesus arranges in the temple as he drives out the money changers. When the temple was first built the presence of God was clear and the people of Israel followed as carefully as possible the instructions for how to operate in the temple.
Over time people were now using the temple itself as a place to sell animals for sacrifice. Human convenience had somehow become more important than treating the temple with the respect as the place where God choses to dwell and be there for his people.
Jesus does not hesitate in his actions. There is no use of “I” statements or assertive communications. “It makes me feel uncomfortable when you trade in the temple here, could you please find a better place so that we can all worship God as a nation and enjoy the Lord’s favor and blessing toward us?”
Instead Jesus confronted this sin and idolatry with force and zeal. He used a whip of cords and he personally overturned each money table. Jesus was cleaning house and he did not hesitate.
Jesus alone was able to do something like this without sin. As God, his righteous anger against sin is justified and good. He fulfilled the words of Psalm 69 “For Zeal for your house has consumed me.”
There is an American fiction novel written in the mid 20th century by a popular author by the name of JD Sallinger in which a teenage girl tells someone in her family how offended and disillusioned she was to read in the Bible about Jesus cleansing the temple. This character had idealized Jesus as the one nice person in history, and what nice person would upset people like that and use violence to get his way as Jesus did in cleansing the temple?
It is a good thing for us to see the full picture of everything Jesus did in his earthly ministry, to see that Jesus did not come to make friends and accumulate admirers, but to win our salvation on the cross. It is important that we ourselves see and understand the Christian life of following Jesus is not defined above all else through being nice.
This view of Christian life as about being nice is a byproduct of our culture where we are pressured as Christians to think that being nice is how we will endear ourselves to the world. As if our niceness will prove that God is good and we are good because of God and you will be good too if you act like us.
This view of Christian life of not upsetting the waters, of killing people with kindness so to speak, prevents us from having the voice to speak about what is wrong and what is sin in the world. If we are caught up with being nice we will struggle to have a zeal for protecting the holiness of God’s church. If we hold onto an identity of niceness we are so much more likely to make concessions in our faith so that we can get along in the world without conflict. Too easily we forget about the holiness of God’s presence among us.
The cleansing of the temple helps to highlight that we are not called to be pleasant and nice in the world’s view, but to be holy and set apart for God. In our Old testament reading we see in the Ten Commandments instructions for how to be set apart for God.
When the people of Israel first heard these words they were given a gift in seeing how to live in relationship with God. However, these words given at Mt. Sinai were cause for trembling and fear- for who could live up to all of these commandments and not break them? Israel was destined to fail to live lives set apart in holiness.
The very tablets of stone these commandments were written on were placed in the arc of the covenant and kept in the Tabernacle first and then eventually in the Temple. The Commandments were there in the temple, God’s presence, Holy and perfect.
As Jesus was asked for a sign there in the temple on that Passover, he spoke in such a way that helps us to see the connection that he is now the temple in which God dwells. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” He is the fulfillment of the Commandments, he is the gift of God’s perfect love dwelling with us.
The Jews in authority at the temple questioned Jesus because they did not believe He had the authority to make such changes on the temple grounds. They wanted a sign that would show the power of Jesus without threatening them too much either.
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” This sign Jesus gave would only be evident after his crucifixion and resurrection. I the gospel of Matthew Jesus told those who questioned him that because of their hardness of hearts he would give no sign other than the sign of the prophet Jonah: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Jonah’s time in the belly of the great fish was not something that earned him distinction as the greatest and most regal of prophets. Jesus was highlighting the folly of the cross in the world’s eyes in this way.
As Jesus spoke about this sign of his destruction it was not what the disciples would expect. It is only the wisdom of God that could arrange that His death on the cross would be the way in which the commandments could be perfectly fulfilled and the way in which we could ourselves become holy before God.
In our Epistle reading we heard about the contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. We would like to appeal to the world with eloquent words and lofty speech that will convince others of the cause for truth and justice in God’s kingdom.
However, this approach is only another way of trying to be nice and fit in with the standards of the world. Instead, we are called to speak the word of the cross which is folly to the world. The word of the cross is that the most foolish of all signs, Jesus dying on the cross is the answer to any issue we may address in our relationship with unbelievers in the world.
No matter how much we try and find common ground with unbelievers, it is only through preaching that Jesus died on the cross that we can ever achieve true unity with others. Those who do not believe that Jesus’ death on the cross saves them- we do a disservice to agree to disagree and no longer pay attention to our differences as relates to our faith beliefs.
The elephant in the room is that without a living faith in Christ we see the life of the unbeliever as hollow and fragile and tragic. We struggle to talk about this elephant in the room, we often prefer to leave the money tables unturned and to allow the animals still in the temple because we feel sorry for the money changers because that this is how they make a living.
It is also significant to note that when Jesus was put on trial false evidence was brought forward by twisting Jesus’ words. Instead of repeating how Jesus said, “if you destroy this temple, I will raise it up in three days”, they claimed he said he would destroy the temple.
This sounds very similar to what happen in today’s world when quotes are taken out of context in order to take down your enemy. Human wisdom did not understand that Jesus was talking about his body as the true temple where God dwells that he would restore after three days once destroyed.
Jesus has come to bring the holiness of God before us in a way where we can stand in God’s presence. Christ has made us holy in a way that we could never achieve on our own before God. Where we profaned the temple, He took on our sin and achieved by his resurrection a temple that cannot be destroyed ever again. Christ has made us holy. As the collect prayer celebrates it is God’s glory to always have mercy. His mercy in making us as His holy people is His greatest glory- greater than even the splendor of creation. God’s glory is that in Jesus we have access to God without fear. As Psalm 19 celebrates:
Psalm 19: 7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
May we have zeal for this presence of God among us through His Word. May we taste His Word, sweeter than honey. Amen.