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On
the surface, the story we read from John 2 about Jesus chasing merchants and
moneychangers out of the Temple and, when questioned as to why he thought he
could do this, makes a cloaked prediction of his death and resurrection, which
his disciples did not catch until after the fact.
The merchants and moneychangers were
trying to provide a legitimate service. It was the time before the Passover and
animal sacrifices had to be offered. For many people, bringing their own animal
along to sacrifice was too much trouble. So it was convenient to have
priest-approved animals available for purchase. And the moneychangers had their
job to do. All kinds of currency circulated through the empire, all of them
stamped with the head of the emperor. This money would not be appropriate on
the temple grounds, because of the graven image. That broke the first and
second of the Ten Commandments. So, the money had to be changed into temple currency
that would not have the head of the emperor stamped on it, for a small fee of
course. So, this was all legitimate business, meeting specific religious needs
of the people.
But this was holy ground, this
temple. All of this activity could easily have been done at the market. The
only reason it was going on at the temple was so that the priests could make
sure they got their cut. For the priests, as well as for these merchants and
moneychangers, Passover had become less about piety and more about profit. So
Jesus had to send them out. He didn’t confiscate the money, or the animals, or
set the birds free. The moneychangers were free to pick up the spilled money.
The merchants could follow their animals to the market. Jesus told the
merchants with the doves and pigeons to take them and go. Nothing wrong with
the service they were providing. It’s just that it was taking place in an
improper manner, and with the wrong spirit, an impure spirit.
However, we can go deeper into this
story.
One way to go deeper is to remember
who Jesus is. Remember, back at Christmas, we sang the song about Jesus being
Emmanuel – God with us. Jesus is God. As Jesus says, “I and my Father are one.”
And the Holy Spirit rests upon Jesus. So, just as the Temple is where the
presence of God can be located for the Jews in Jesus’ day, so it is with Jesus.
Where Jesus is, God is present. Jesus is the temple. He essentially says so
himself when he tells his questioners, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it
in three days.” Obviously he is not talking about the bricks and mortar temple.
He is talking about his physical body. His body is the temple in which the
presence of God can be found. The body of Jesus is a temple.
And we can go deeper still. We, as
Christians, are members of the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ. When
two or three gather in his name, Jesus is present, which means God is in our
midst. We, the church, the body of Christ, are a temple.
Further, as Paul teaches, our
individual bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, the
Holy Spirit descends upon us and rests upon us. Jesus stands at the door and
knocks. If we open the door, then he enters in and dwells in us, individually.
Each of us, physically, is a temple.
Holding on to this truth, that we
are temples of the Holy Spirit, that Christ dwells within us, let’s recall what
Passover is all about. The time in which the story read from scripture takes
place is a period of preparation before the Passover. Passover is when the Jews
remember how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. The angel of death went
through the land to kill the first born of every family in Egypt. But when the
angel came to the house of a Jewish family, and blood from a lamb was found
smeared on the doorpost, the angel would pass over the house, and the family
inside the house would be safe.
Now in the days leading up to the
Passover, no yeast was to be used in bread, just as God had instructed Israel,
when it was time for them to leave Egypt, not to take time for bread to rise
but to make their bread hurriedly. It became the practice among the Jews to do
a little spring cleaning of their homes. Specifically, they were to get all the
leaven out of their house. To sweep their hose clean of old leaven. It was an
opportunity to purify their homes. To start a new batch of dough.
As Jesus entered his Father’s house,
he took the opportunity to do a little spring cleaning himself, not with a
broom, but with a handful of small cords. He swept out the old leaven that was
the moneymaking taking place inside his Father’s house. It was in the spirit of
Passover that Jesus took this action of purifying his house.
This also is our time of
purification, as we prepare ourselves for the celebration of our Passover, our
deliverance from slavery to sin and death, the great celebration of Easter. Now
is our time to sweep out the old leaven and put our houses in order, to make
something new out of our lives.
Since we are trying to follow Christ’s
example, we should also share in his same zeal for his Father’s house. Our
temple is the church. And we should protect the church, purify it, make sure
the church is in order. We should love, honor, and care for the church, which
is the body of Christ. Jesus refers to his church as the bride of Christ. So we
should care about the church. We are the church. We are the bride of Christ. We
should look out for one another and make sure we are about the Father’s
business, to make sure that this house is a house of prayer. It’s certainly not
a moneymaking venture!
Our first priority is to deal with
our own individual impurity. What housecleaning do we need to take care of in
this season of Lent, this season of preparation? This is what that prayer I
shared last week from St. Ephraim of Syria is pointing us toward. Let me repeat
the prayer: O Lord and Master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth, vain
curiosity, lust for power, or idle talk. Rather, give to me a spirit of
soberness, humility, patience, and love. O Lord and King, grant me to see my
own faults and not to condemn my brother and sister. For blessed are you to the
ages of ages. Amen.
This is what Lent is about. It is
about focusing on the log in our own eye rather than the speck in our neighbor’s.
It is about purifying ourselves from vice; to get rid of laziness, especially
laziness regarding our relationship with God. We need to get rid of our
tendency to meddle in other people’s business, of being a busybody or always
striving to be “in the know” or get sucked in to the gossip that passes for
news and entertainment. We need to get rid of chattiness, which opens ourselves
up to spreading gossip and talking behind the backs of other. Like we find in
James 3, “The tongue is itself set on fire by hell. With it we bless the Lord
and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” Or
like this other saint said, “You fast from meat, but you devour your brother!”
Our tongues need to be tamed. We need to rid ourselves of all this, so that we
become more pure: body, mind, and soul. We are made in the image and likeness
of God. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We need to purify our
bodies.
But, let us not forget the story
Jesus told of the man who had a demon cast out of him. He says in Matthew 12:
When
the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless
regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, ‘I will
return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it empty, swept,
and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil
than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person
is worse that the first.
The man was free from the demon. But
then he failed to fill that void with good works and scripture reading and
prayer. There was a void in his life. And the demon came back with seven other
demons. And they filled the void the man had failed to fill, leaving him much
worse off than before. So, we have to rid ourselves of our vices, but we also
have to fill ourselves with virtues. And that’s what the second half of this
prayer is about. We need for God to give us a spirit of soberness, which means
to take life seriously, and to take others seriously. We need for God to give
us a spirit of humility, to not be prideful, demanding of our rights, or feeling
entitled. We need for God to give us a spirit of patience, because we know that
being a Christian is hard, and there are a lot of setbacks and we fail all the
time. We need to be patient with ourselves. And we need from God a spirit of love,
for God is love. This is why we are Christians in the first place; because we
have been loved, and we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. So we
need a spirit of love.
And that leads to the last line of
the prayer: O Lord and King grant me to see my own faults and not to condemn my
brother and sister. Of course, we see the faults of others. That’s easy. This
prayer does not ask God to prevent us from seeing the faults of others. That’s
not realistic. In fact, it is necessary for us to be mindful of other’s faults.
We have to look out for one another and hold each other accountable. No, we are
to ask for God to help us not to condemn
others. We can’t condemn others because we have faults of our own. And so, as
Paul writes, “Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling.” When it comes to purifying the church, we
all need to focus on our own troubles. It’s just like when scouts go camping,
and you have to police the grounds. You know what that means? It means you line
up and then walk across the campground, and whatever trash you see in front of
you, you are responsible to pick up. And if everyone is diligent to pick up the
trash in front of them, one walk across the campground and all the trash is
picked up.
This is our task. We are preparing
for Easter. It is time for us to look at our lives, what lies in front of us,
and pick up our trash and dispose of it, and in the process leave behind a life
that is clean and in good order. This is our challenge. And we all need a lot of
trash bags, for we all have made a big mess of things. It will take more than
one pass through the campground. In fact, the cleanup won’t end until we hear, “Well
done, good and faithful servant.” So, let us keep working at it. God will help
us all along the way.
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