“Christ Driving Out the Money Changers” – Rembrandt (1626)
Imagine the shock of the temple authorities when Jesus answered their question about why he thought he had the authority to drive out the livestock and overturn the tables of the money changers in the temple as the faithful were preparing for Passover.
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
For Jesus to question the traditions of the temple, and to suggest that those traditions could be changed, must have bordered on blasphemy in the minds of the temple authorities.
Jesus had blatantly challenged their profitable religious practices and had spoken of the temple’s physical destruction and the speed with which it could be raised again.
And—Jesus said that he would be the one to raise it back up so quickly.
Although they took his words literally, and knew that what he said was impossible, the temple authorities must have known that Jesus was also saying something about himself—speaking of a power that would work through him, a power that they could not possibly subvert or control.
From that moment on, Jesus became a marked man in the eyes of the temple authorities.
This story strikes deep at the heart of how we can get off track in our relationship with God and forget what scripture tells us about, as Cleo would say, the profile of God, turning God into a convenience for us and for our own desires, rather than remembering that God is full of justice, mercy, and love for all.
This story is a reminder of how, even with the best of intentions, we can get caught up in the belief that we are in control, and that we have unlimited power, and that God must be on our side and that God can be manipulated for our own purposes, putting ourselves in the place of God.
Knowing a little background about this scripture is instructive.
In Jewish tradition, the temple was the place where God was present and where sacrificial worship took place.
Offerings to God were made at the temple, and the sacrifices were carried out by the priests. So everyone had to travel to the temple to offer their sacrifices to God.
By the time in which Jesus lived, the temple authorities had turned the temple into a business that profited the temple authorities and did little to provide for those in need.
This corruption had taken place over time, as rules and regulations about sacrifices and worship became more and more complex and costly.
The big clue that there was a major problem with the temple was the fact that King Herod, an infamous lover of power, had gotten in on the temple act.
Herod had been tinkering with the temple, enlarging it and renovating it, for about twenty years at this point. Enlarging and renovating the temple was to Herod’s advantage. The temple authorities, in love with all the grandeur and the political power they gained by letting Herod have his way with the temple, had put themselves in Herod’s debt. The temple was no longer a testimony to God’s glory alone, but to Herod’s glory as well.
The temple helped to solidify Herod’s standing, not just in his own territory, but throughout the Roman empire. As Elizabeth pointed out in Bible study, the temple was so well known by those in the Roman Empire that when it was destroyed in 70 BCE, carvings of the spoils of the temple being carried away by soldiers were placed on a triumphal arch in Rome.
Now when people went to the temple to worship God, they had to meet all of the myriad temple requirements in order to even offer a sacrifice. The temple authorities were amassing wealth at the people’s expense. And Herod’s power was on full display.
This unholy alliance of the temple authorities and Herod, and by extension, Roman rule, had everything to do with human might and power, and very little to do with God.
So Jesus tackled this power and these politics head on by acting—pointing out in an unmistakable and unforgettable way the corruption, intrigue and compromise that was running rampant in his father’s house. Jesus pointed out a different realty than the perverted reality that had become the norm.
Jesus could have walked through the temple, been horrified by what he saw, maybe even have commented to his disciples or to onlookers, and then kept right on going. Nothing would have changed. No one would have given a second thought to a system that was no longer about God alone, but more about human greed and power. And Jesus would have been a lot safer to keep silent, because he would not have become a marked man by speaking out.
But by remaining silent, he would have become complicit in the system. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence.”
So Jesus chose to speak out, because he could see that the temple system had become focused on human power rather than on God.
This scripture comes at a good time for us, because the actions of Jesus that day in the temple remind us that what we choose to do and how we act in the public square as Christians reveals who we believe God to be.
Every year we Episcopalians turn in something called the parochial report to The Episcopal Church. Each church provides figures on membership, budget and also, increasingly, on what we do as the church out in the world. One page is entitled Outreach Ministries and Volunteer Activities of this Congregation. Of the fifteen listed, we could check off food pantry, help with utilities, overseas sponsorships like the Heifer Project. This page is a reminder of various things we could put in place that would help people around us.
New this year, I’m pretty sure, since this is the first year I’ve filled it out, is a section on Racial Justice and Reconciliation, which asks four questions. The first—Our congregation is actively addressing and working toward racial justice and reconciliation, yes or no. The next question wants to know if this work is a priority for our congregation. Then how committed the Vestry and the Clergy are to working toward racial justice and reconciliation.
This section reminds me of Jesus standing in the temple saying, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” By now we all know how racism and all that goes with it has contributed to the wealth of one group of people at the expense of another.
At last, The Episcopal Church is saying that we can no longer be silent about this issue, or pretend that the problem no longer exists, or just hope that it will go away. If we believe that God is who we say God is, a God of justice, mercy and love for all, then we as a church need to speak up and work to change the system rather than to continue to be, knowingly or unknowingly, complicit in a system that favors one group over another based on skin color. Starting with ourselves. The Church itself is taking a good long look at how it actively participated and benefited in the institution of slavery, so that the church can avoid making the same mistakes in some different form in the future.
The most audacious claim Jesus made when he spoke out that day in the temple was that his own body was God’s temple. The passage tells us that when Jesus says that the temple could be destroyed and that he would raise it up in three days, that Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body–
Jesus tells us where God dwells—not in temples made with human hands, although we can draw close to God in our temples and churches when we gather to worship and to pray—but what Jesus said that day in the temple reminds us that because God dwells in Jesus, God dwells in us, and we in God.
God loved us so much that God came to dwell with us as one of us, a human being with a body, a body that suffered as we do, a body that hung on a cross, a body from which the life drained, a body that was placed in a tomb. A body that God resurrected.
And so we Episcopalians, in our usual worship, celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday so that we can remember Jesus as a body. Jesus asked us to do this. “This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This is my blood, shed for you.” Jesus, flesh and blood, a body, the dwelling place of God, given for us and for our salvation so that we too remember when we receive that bread of life, that our bodies—each one of us—are dwelling places for God, here and now, on this earth. And we too become offerings for one another.
This paragraph from the Rite I Eucharistic prayer sums up what I am saying.
“And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”
Jesus’ body—given for all the bodies on this earth, so that all of us can be God’s dwelling places. Jesus died and God resurrected Jesus for our bodies and all bodies on this earth. Mother Teresa knew this, taking the dying, fly covered bodies of people on the streets of Calcutta, India, that no one else would even touch, caring for them, and treating them as sacred dwelling places of God.
So we have work to do—to make our own bodies more suitable dwelling places for our merciful just and loving God.
And Jesus, standing in the temple, full of zeal for his father’s house, sets the example for us, reminding us that we must speak out on behalf of other bodies as well, for they too, are the dwelling places of God, and God’s power will work through us on their behalf–for God is dwelling in us, and we in God.