There’s an internet meme that always makes its way around the Facebook circuit anytime this reading comes up in the lectionary. The meme is based on a popular movement among Christian circles in the nineties about asking the question “What Would Jesus Do?” Maybe you remember, it was big for a while to wear those elastic band bracelets with W.W.J.D. emblazoned on them. The idea was that we were to approach any question, any issue, we might encounter with the question “What would Jesus do” in this situation? How would Jesus respond to this conflict with a family member, or this peer pressure temptation, or this moral dilemma, and by thinking about how Jesus would respond, and responding accordingly, we could be guaranteed to act correctly.
Well, this internet meme making the rounds right now is an illustration of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus cleansing the temple. It features a very angry-looking Jesus-figure in the center, dressed in red and brandishing a whip, while all around him, are strewn upturned tables and frightened, tousled people. Framing the image in bold letters, are the words, “If anyone ever asks you, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Remind him that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibility.”
Maybe the better question of this Gospel reading today is not, “What Would Jesus Do? But “What is Jesus Doing?” What is Jesus doing? This is the Temple after all, the most sacred place in the Jewish faith. The center of the known world, the place where God dwelled. And here’s a little more background for you, these people Jesus is driving out, the people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers, they’re not just there all willy-nilly. This isn’t the same as setting up a pet store in the narthex. Part of the Temple culture, the accepted religious practice at the time, was animal sacrifice. People came to the Temple specifically to offer an animal to the house of God. A trip to the Temple was for people who lived in the outlying regions, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, they would travel miles, days, weeks, in order to worship the True God in the Temple. And so, to aid in their worship, to make the journey easier for them, a robust trade of sacrificial animals developed within the temple complex, in order to assist pilgrims in being able to enter fully into worship. Instead of having to travel long distances with a cow, a pilgrim could simply purchase a cow, or a sheep, or a dove, upon arrival. Much in the same way that if you were flying somewhere, you might pick up a bag of chips once you reached your destination rather than trying to keep them from being crushed in your carry-on luggage. And with all this commerce going on, money-changers were there to help people from foreign countries to trade in the local currency. This booming Temple industry had developed to help people worship God. So, one might ask, what was Jesus’ problem with this?
The disciples made sense of what happened here with one word: Zeal. The Gospel reads, “Then the disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Zeal. Passion. Ardor. Fervor. Devotion. Even so far as intensity or fanaticism, zeal is the single-minded drive toward a goal so focused that nothing can stand in its way. So focused is Jesus’ devotion to the Temple, to God, that whatever stands in the way, good or bad, must be forced away to allow for God’s grace to enter through.
At Trinity this Lent we’ve been talking about Old Testament stories, and what these stories have to teach us about the nature of God and the nature of humanity. As we’re talking this morning about zeal, our Old Testament reading from Exodus about God giving the Ten Commandments, and what’s happened with those commandments over time, really gets to the heart of why Jesus cleansed the Temple.
Just a bit of a refresher on how we got to Exodus chapter twenty. The Israelites were in slavery under the Pharaoh in Egypt, then God sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery. But Pharaoh wasn’t keen on letting his entire workforce go free, so God had Moses bring plagues down, and God split the Red Sea, so the Israelites could walk on dry land, and then brought the sea back down upon the Egyptian army, and finally the Israelites were a free people, in the middle of the Sinai wilderness. The other problem, of course, is that the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for so long that they really didn’t understood what it meant any more to be a community, to be the people of God. So part of what God was doing in that forty years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness was making them into one people again. God was uniting them as God’s people, teaching them what it meant to live together. The Ten Commandments were part of this uniting. God gave the Ten Commandments to the people of God so that they would know how to live well together with God and with each other. I had a professor in seminary who described the Ten Commandments as a playpen. We put children in playpens when they are learning to crawl so that they will be in a safe space. The Ten Commandments were about building community, about creating a place where the people of God could be united with each other, connected to one another.
But, because the Israelites were people, over time they turned the Ten Commandments from a playpen to a fence. They put more and more structures and rules in place in order to decide who got to be in the playpen. And the Ten Commandments changed from guidelines to create community to rules to divide people from community. Humanity broke the good covenant which God made with God’s people not by breaking the Ten Commandments, but by enforcing it so strictly so as to take the life out of it, leaving us not with a gift for living, but a weapon for dividing.
If only this was a thing that happened back then, but not anymore. But the truth is, we still do this. We still put up laws, rules, restrictions, on ourselves and on others, about what makes us worthy of God’s love, what makes us worthy to be in the community of the people of God. These restrictions may come from the best intentions, but they divide us. And I think, during this season of Lent and as people of the ELCA, we are even harder on ourselves. We’re quick to welcome others to the fold, quick to extend grace to our neighbors, but do we extend that same grace to ourselves, do we allow ourselves to believe that this good news that we are preaching is for us?
Here’s the good news for us in Jesus cleansing the temple this morning, Jesus cleanses the temple of all that holds us captive as well. All the ways that we fell short, the prayers we did not say, the Lenten disciples we did not keep, the sin and pain and brokenness that keeps us separate from God, with a whip and a shout, Jesus drives all of those things away as well. Because nothing will keep Jesus from us. Not the powers of evil, the death made clear on the cross, not our own failures in faith, or even our unfocused piety that draws our attention to us rather than God. Whatever it is that stands in our way, Jesus drives it away, because such is Jesus love for us, that Jesus will not let anything get in the way of relationship with us.
This morning, like every Sunday morning, we come to the Table to experience this grace. At this table there are no barriers, there are no boundaries, there is no code you have to meet or yardstick you have to measure up to, because Jesus has cleared them away. Jesus has set a feast for us, and all are welcome, because nothing, nothing, will keep Jesus from us. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment