Scripture and tradition demanded a full eight-day ceremony, always held between the 14th and 21st days of the month of Nisan, during what for us would be March or April. Such a journey was arduous, perilous, and for many people terribly expensive. They had to travel light to be able to make it there at all. They brought with them only that which they could carry-- it was certainly unsafe, not to mention impractical, to be dragging livestock along with him for the journey.
Yet this was the pinnacle of the religious year -- to commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from slavery and cruel bondage in Egypt at the hand of God. they would recount the series of plagues that had failed to change pharaoh's heart – frogs, boils, rivers of blood, flies, lice, locusts, darkness in the middle of the day. None were compelling enough -- until that terrible night that the Angel of Death himself swept over the land and plucked the first born male of all living creatures and carried them away, never to be seen by their families again in this life. Only then had Pharaoh's heart been turned long enough for the Hebrews to make their escape. Only through Moses’s skill in leading a ragtag fractured people through the howling wastes, Moses who was chosen by God as God's preeminent Prophet and leader, did the Israelites eventually stumble into the freedom of the Sinai Peninsula.
The observation of this deliverance was mandated to be observed every year. And originally it had been held in individual homes. But especially in the last few years, the Temple had become the center of all religious observance, and so people turn their faces toward Jerusalem in order to recount, remember, and renew their covenant to obey the commandments of God in thanksgiving for God delivering the people all those centuries ago, delivering the people and making them a unified people out of a ragtag collection of slaves who had forgotten their homes.
So as they traveled to Jerusalem, the pilgrims arrived knowing that they would have to purchase animals to sacrifice at the altars. On the first day, they would go to the Court of the Gentiles and exchange their Roman currency that had gotten them thus far, for the shekels minted by the Temple in order to pay the Temple tax and be able to participate in all the rituals. They would then purchase oxen if they were wealthy, and sacrificial lambs, or pigeons, or doves, depending upon how wealthy each family was, and bring them to the priests to be sacrificed. The slaughter was nonstop; the lambs were specifically slaughtered from 3:00 to 5:00 PM. And in all these exchanges profit was made-- profit to the money changers, profit to the sellers of the animals, profit to the Temple authorities themselves whose coffers would soon be filled to the brim with taxes paid by the pilgrims.
It was a neat system. The money changers benefited. The sellers of animals benefited. The priests and scribes benefited. Herod, who had been working on rebuilding the Temple for 42 years, benefited by being seen to be a patron of the Jewish faith , despite his uncertain pedigree and claim to the throne. The Romans benefited, because while the people were engaged in their religious rituals , the chance for unrest in trouble greatly decreased.
Until Jesus walked in. and he stood there looking at the buying and the selling, at the bargaining, at the deal-making, at the monetary burden that often was too high a price to pay for the very poor, who were then excluded from full participation in the religious rites of their faith. Jesus saw the Angel of Death hanging over the very seat of God.
And he decided to do something about it. The Prophet Isaiah had declared that the Temple would be “a house of prayer for all nations and for all people,” but all Jesus saw was the profaning of worship. Instead of adoration, he saw a price of admission. Instead of praise, he saw profit. In place of Hallelujahs, he saw haggling. Instead of offerings, he saw deals being struck and bargains being made.
And here we see a different side of Jesus from the gentle shepherd with the unlined, beatific face. His face hardens, but his actions are deliberate. Carefully, deliberately, probably getting more angry as the whip lengthens, he braids the strands of the cords to make his whip, and as he did so, he planned carefully his line of attack.
Jesus engages in an emphatic protest about the commercialization of the Temple cult in this action, and that criticism is NOT lost on the authorities, who make their living off charging for space to the sellers of animals and were suspected of skimming profit off the top of the Temple tax and the money-changing that was required to convert one’s currency from the Roman coins to the sanctuary shekel to pay the Temple tax.
Jesus is claiming that the point of worship has been monetized and turned into a transaction rather than a point of transformation. The worship of God has gone sideways because now it is all about checking off boxes of obligations rather than true gratitude and reformation. The stuff that is supposed to enable worship has instead taken up all the oxygen and all the room in the outer courtyard.
Jesus is depicted here not as meek and mild, but as angry, engaging in a violent rebuke of those who are selling religious goods within the boundaries of the pinnacle place of worship in the Judaism of that era. In particular, he is attacking the market forces that had invaded worship of God. The money changers are not doing people favors so that pilgrims can pay the Temple tax in Temple currency; instead they profit, of course, and charge a fee for the transaction. Likewise with the sellers of sacrificial animals; they do not seek just to break even but of course to make a profit. And Jesus's active public rebellion here disrupts the flow of profit an exchange of goods, as well as, undoubtedly, the ability of some pilgrims to perform what they thought were their obligations.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t actually “cleanse” the Temple. He creates a ruckus in it, and unlike with the transfer of some of John’s followers to Jesus early in chapter one or the miracle at the wedding at Cana at the start of chapter 2, this is the first time Jesus acts on his own. Jesus’s actions here are a direct challenge to the idea that worship of God is tied to being in ANY specific building.
The Temple in Jesus’s time and for centuries before had developed into the center of religious life for observant Jews—although it would soon be pulled down, stone by stone, by the Romans not long after Jesus’s own crucifixion. But for all those centuries, the Temple was believed to be where God dwelled among God’s people on earth— the focal point of the nation, and of the national way of life.
Jesus turns this upside down. His cryptic comment that the Temple is actually his body means that Jesus is the place now where God can be found on earth -- the primary point for revelation, above anything made with human influence. This includes even scripture, which is often elevated to an object of worship itself and claim to be inerrant when the compilation of scripture was actually accomplished over a process of hundreds of years of human decisions, sifting, accepting, and rejecting some texts depending upon political agendas in the early centuries of the development of the Christian Church.
As we come up on the year anniversary of worship being shut down in our diocese due to the rising pandemic, I am convinced this story has a lot to say for us. Jesus claims that the primary location for the worship of God is not in any building made by human hands, no matter how beloved. The true Temple is in his body, which has two meanings: the flesh and blood and sinew and spirit that resides within him as the Incarnated One, and also among us as the Church at home, the Church as the Body of Christ.
Jesus is depicted here not as meek and mild, but as angry, engaging in a violent rebuke of those who are selling religious goods within the boundaries of the pinnacle place of worship in the Judaism of that era. In particular, he is attacking the market forces that had invaded worship of God. The money changers are not doing people favors so that pilgrims can pay the Temple tax in Temple currency; instead they profit, of course, and charge a fee for the transaction. Likewise with the sellers of sacrificial animals; they do not seek just to break even but of course to make a profit. And Jesus's active public rebellion here disrupts the flow of profit an exchange of goods, as well as, undoubtedly, the ability of some pilgrims to perform what they thought were their obligations.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t actually “cleanse” the Temple. He creates a ruckus in it, and unlike with the transfer of some of John’s followers to Jesus early in chapter one or the miracle at the wedding at Cana at the start of chapter 2, this is the first time Jesus acts on his own. Jesus’s actions here are a direct challenge to the idea that worship of God is tied to being in ANY specific building.
Jesus turns this upside down. His cryptic comment that the Temple is actually his body means that Jesus is the place now where God can be found on earth -- the primary point for revelation, above anything made with human influence. This includes even scripture, which is often elevated to an object of worship itself and claim to be inerrant when the compilation of scripture was actually accomplished over a process of hundreds of years of human decisions, sifting, accepting, and rejecting some texts depending upon political agendas in the early centuries of the development of the Christian Church.
As we come up on the year anniversary of worship being shut down in our diocese due to the rising pandemic, I am convinced this story has a lot to say for us. Jesus claims that the primary location for the worship of God is not in any building made by human hands, no matter how beloved. The true Temple is in his body, which has two meanings: the flesh and blood and sinew and spirit that resides within him as the Incarnated One, and also among us as the Church at home, the Church as the Body of Christ.
Whether we are gathered together or remotely, our worship of God does not depend upon a specific place, or a sanctuary, or an altar, as much as those things a beloved tools. But we cannot be dependent upon them. The true worship of God begins in the heart—the heart that seeks to turn and guide the remainder of one’s life to following in the literal footsteps of Jesus as much as can as humble humans who can be empowered by God’s love and call to do great things.
Jesus continually calls us to sweep out all the clutter and distraction and commercialism that can and do distract us from our call as disciples to worship God and share God’s love and reconciliation with all people. Jesus calls us to clean out and let go of all that prevents us from being more fully alive and present to the God who seeks sanctuary within us and within our congregations.
What tables might Jesus overturn in the Temple of our bodies and our lives? Do we recoil from such an idea in shock and fear? Not to worry—I don’t think that’s what would happen. Instead, I think Jesus actually expects us to overturn the tables of the money changers in our own hearts—the places where we criticize and evaluated everything in the church on the basis of cost and benefit, on the basis of whether an activity specifically benefits myself versus does God’s work in the world.
Time for a little spring cleaning. Hopefully no whips will be involved. Time to embrace all that brings us closer to God, and to each other, regardless of what the marketplace might demand.
No building can serve as the central meeting place between God and humanity. Instead, it is Christ's body itself -- which will be offered up and broken through our own rejection of his gospel of love, even today -- that provides the meeting place between God and humanity. That means each of us, as individuals, are called to likewise cleanse and purify ourselves to be fitting Temples for God's presence, a presence that will then captivate us, bless us, and use us for God's greater glory. That is where real worship is. It means that all of us, as the big C Church that calls itself Christ's body in the world, can no longer passively sit back, ask God to fix all the problems human action have caused in the world, or trust that the completion of mere ritual alone will fulfill our obligations as children of God.
Jesus continually calls us to sweep out all the clutter and distraction and commercialism that can and do distract us from our call as disciples to worship God and share God’s love and reconciliation with all people. Jesus calls us to clean out and let go of all that prevents us from being more fully alive and present to the God who seeks sanctuary within us and within our congregations.
What tables might Jesus overturn in the Temple of our bodies and our lives? Do we recoil from such an idea in shock and fear? Not to worry—I don’t think that’s what would happen. Instead, I think Jesus actually expects us to overturn the tables of the money changers in our own hearts—the places where we criticize and evaluated everything in the church on the basis of cost and benefit, on the basis of whether an activity specifically benefits myself versus does God’s work in the world.
Time for a little spring cleaning. Hopefully no whips will be involved. Time to embrace all that brings us closer to God, and to each other, regardless of what the marketplace might demand.
No building can serve as the central meeting place between God and humanity. Instead, it is Christ's body itself -- which will be offered up and broken through our own rejection of his gospel of love, even today -- that provides the meeting place between God and humanity. That means each of us, as individuals, are called to likewise cleanse and purify ourselves to be fitting Temples for God's presence, a presence that will then captivate us, bless us, and use us for God's greater glory. That is where real worship is. It means that all of us, as the big C Church that calls itself Christ's body in the world, can no longer passively sit back, ask God to fix all the problems human action have caused in the world, or trust that the completion of mere ritual alone will fulfill our obligations as children of God.
It's time to clean the house of our souls, and to do so with joy an gladness.
Amen.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 online worship from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.
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