The Temple and Change

a Sermon for Lent 3B
Texts: Exodus 20:1-17 and Mark 9:2-9

In our first reading from Exodus, God gives a list of rules to the Israelites. Eight do-nots and two dos: don’t worship another God, don’t make an idol, don’t use God’s name in a wrong way, do remember the Sabbath, and so on. We know these rules. We recognize them. They have informed the way people have lived their lives for over three thousand years—a pretty remarkable feat.

The character of the rules themselves is pretty remarkable. They direct behavior and action. Do this, don’t do that. Here are the proper rules for life; for the way we live together. Don’t steal or kill or lust after someone else’s property. These rules direct action.

But the rules themselves have a life of their own, don’t they. They have a proper name (capitalized and everything): The Ten Commandments. And they served, and continue to serve, as the basis for not only individual behavior, but collective behavior and our institutions. The Sabbath is kept holy, the worship of God and no one else, for instance, serve as the principle instructions for the Israelite people themselves, and the Jewish faith.

When Jesus turns toward Jerusalem in this morning’s gospel, he’s following the rules. He is heading to the Temple for Passover. But he doesn’t seem to act like a good Jew when he gets there, does he? Instead of taking an animal into the temple for sacrifice, he fashions a whip and drives the livestock out of the place. He throws over the tables of the money changers. His actions are not only loud—but they are violent and destructive. Jesus expresses a righteous anger that many of us may find troubling or difficult to deal with.

So what do we do? We refer to this passage as “The Cleansing of the Temple”. We justify his anger as being in the right place and that money changers themselves must be the problem—that they were the 30’s CE equivalent of lawyers—‘have you heard the one about the moneychangers…’ And yet, the people in the Temple were following the rules. The moneychangers and those selling livestock enabled the people to make their sacrifices in the Temple—they facilitated a proper practice. Everyone there was following the rules.

It is no doubt hard for us to deal with this arrangement—let’s be honest. Our freedom fighter is their terrorist. For those that work in customer service fields—or anybody that deals with people—you no doubt know what its like to get yelled at; to be chastised for following the rules. For not only following your boss’s orders, but the rules outlined in the employee manual. My wife and I both worked in bookstores for years and dealt with angry customers with threats and sometimes reasonable arguments. All we could do is say “no, I’ve never thought about that before” or “Let me speak to my manager.” When we were the manager, we would simply say “I’m sorry, but company policy says…” The righteous customer never likes to hear that.

But we can’t really compare Jesus to an angry customer, can we? We can’t separate what we know about Him from this action. But this anger, this action does seem at least a little out of character, doesn’t it? Even if he were truly surprised by what he saw—I can’t imagine he was—it still wouldn’t condone this action. It isn’t the moneychangers that have any say in what they do—it’s the Temple authorities. It’s like responding to a telemarketer at dinnertime as if he or she really had any say in when your phone rings when the company employs them to do just that. It seems like misplaced rage.

The problem with this reading of Jesus is that we think we know who Jesus really is—not just the parts with which we are often familiar, but all of Him. Our experience of Him, our knowledge of Him, our belief in Him—all of it. As Brian McLaren suggests, Jesus isn’t simply an answer man—in fact, he often responds to questions with more questions. He also doesn’t only speak in words—but actions. This great big action in the Temple was a visual parable. His driving out the animals and throwing the money to the floor and flipping over the table were an incredible visual statement about our relationship with God.

The Gospel begins by referring to the location of this passage as being the Temple, but Jesus refers to it as “my Father’s house,” a distinction that Jesus intends to make a severe statement about. It’s identity, purpose, and reason for being is about to change. The notion of worship is about to shift from the indirect worship that is temple sacrifice to the direct worship of God—wherever one may be. Jesus’s radical theology here is matched by his radical action of flipping over tables.

The implication of this change isn’t simple, though. It means dealing with hard questions about practice—and worse—dealing with their underlying understanding of the rules. Those governing rules. In Mark, this same passage is linked with Jesus’s final teachings, including his declaration of the Great Commandment and its companion: to love God and one’s neighbor. Jesus is asking these people to not only deal with change—but change that seems fundamentally wrong to them.

But isn’t what Jesus asking of them freeing them? He is freeing them from more than this simple obligation, but the hierarchical nature of the practice: spending more money on a “purer” animal in order to incur more favor from God.

And doesn’t Jesus free God from that narrow relationship, allowing God to love every one of his creations?

I think He does. I think Jesus wasn’t freeing a couple of sheep and cattle from a horrible ending, but us. Jesus loves those rules as we do. Jesus loves the faiths that have grown out of those rules as we do this faith. Jesus loves His Father’s house and all of the people there—visiting or working. But to love them and us—change had to come.

This congregation has had to deal with change. A changing city, a changing membership, and a changing world beyond these doors: St. David's knows change. It knows the pain and worry that comes from it. But it also knows hope. It knows what kind of place it can be, a mirror for the changing and diversifying culture around it.

In revealing to us the freeing power of change, Jesus offers God’s grace as the strength, as the means of making the impossible, possible. That undeserved, freely-offered, unbeatable grace. We don’t have to go to the store to pick it up and we don’t have to make more money to earn a better share: God just gives it to us. “Here you go,” God says. “You look like you could use it.”