Sermon for 3rd Sunday in Lent – John 2:13-22

Our gospel reading for today is the story of the cleansing of the temple, or that time when Jesus got angry. Though whipping and flipping tables sounds a little more like rage than anger, doesn’t it? Strange, coming from the guy who said “if you’re angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” So, Christians have argued for centuries about how to interpret this story. It was even used as a justification for the Crusades, which I think we can all agree is a problem. So, what’s going on here?

Let’s start with the context. Jesus gets to the outer courtyard of the Temple where he sees folks selling animals for sacrifice, and money changers seated at their tables. I suspect you’ve all probably had enough Sunday School to know a few things about sacrifice, so let’s talk about the moneychangers. They sell half-shekel silver coins for folks to pay the temple tax. This is your contribution toward upkeep of the temple. As a Jew, you take pride in the temple. It gives you a sense of dignity when the Roman Empire keeps pushing your people down. It means a lot to you to contribute. But you can’t just use your own money. The law requires a half-shekel silver coin. But not just any silver coin. It has to be highest-quality, and the Jerusalem mint is the only place that makes such special coins. Now, they’re not cheap – one coin’s worth a couple days wages, give or take. Then factor in widespread economic disparity throughout Judea, and it gets even more expensive. But you do it anyway, because life is hard in Judea. Folks struggling to get by. So there’s something powerful about worshiping at the temple because it’s the seat of holiness and maybe this holy God can do something to alleviate our struggles.

Except, it’s not a fair deal. The moneychangers overcharge. Evidently it’s a lot, because Jesus says they’ve made God’s house into a den of robbers. That doesn’t sound like tipping for service. It sounds more like extortion. It sounds like those payday check cashing places we see around Indianapolis that prey on desperate folks with exorbitant fees. And I suspect that the Pharisees expect a kickback too. So, it sounds like a racket. Like a whole system from top to bottom that extorts folks who feel obligated to obey the Levitical commandment or else face God’s wrath. It’s offensive. Guess what, it gets worse. These half-shekels are curious coins. Once upon a time they were minted in the city of Tyre, a Phoenecian city that worshiped pagan gods. So on one side of the coin was an image of Melkart, their patron god. On the other side was an eagle with the phase “of Tyre the holy and inviolable.” Gods and idols. Any pious Jew knows what God thinks of that. Our Old Testament lesson today reminded us “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol.” Yet, these are the only coins accepted at temple. How is this ok? Maybe folks figure that the Pharisees are way smarter and more righteous, so if they say this is right, then it must be. And what they say is that the weight and purity is the only thing that matters, not what’s printed on it. Right. But then they move the mint to Jerusalem and don’t even bother to make the image less offensive. Same idols. And they say it’s because that’s what folks are used to. If they changed the image, then folks won’t trust those coins to be authentic.

Does that make sense? No, but it’s fitting. Because what’s happening in the Temple isn’t about worshiping God. It’s about idolizing money. It’s just a corrupt system. And systems are really good at brainwashing folks into believing garbage. Like that it’s normal to pay the temple tax with pagan coins. Or that maybe it’s ok for the moneychangers to cheat us because maybe we’re so sinful that we deserve it. It reminds me of an abusive relationship where the victim starts to believe that it’s all their fault. So Jesus shows up in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, and he heads straight to his Father’s house because he just knows he’ll find a crowd of folks in the throes of faithful worship. As much as he knows us and still he thinks the best of us. But he doesn’t find that. Instead he beholds this messed up system and he loses his mind. He makes a whip of cords and drives everyone out of the temple, even the sheep and cattle. He overturns tables. He yells “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” How offended do you think the Pharisees and moneychangers were? But I’ll bet you the pilgrims were just as scandalized, even though the system was victimizing them.

So what offends us more? An abusive system or a violent Jesus? What have we always been taught – to be political, or to be polite, because religion and politics don’t mix? Do we get angry or do we make nice, because anger is a sin? Or maybe it’s fear that keeps us in our place, fear of losing friends or family or even our lives for the sake of righteousness. I confess, I know that backlash is swift and furious. But when we’re so desperate for things to be “normal” or the “way they used to be” instead of telling the truth about injustice, then we just abet it. We persist it. So when we meet Jesus in his holy temple, will we find welcome or a whip of cords?

Neither. What we find is Jesus standing up for us. Because he knows our fear and powerlessness. He knows the system will kill him, and still he says “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And that’s exactly what happened, when they arrested him for blasphemy and nailed him to a tree to die. But they didn’t win. After three days he rose in the glory of resurrection and the God-blessed defiance of every power and principality that ever tried to put us down. Jesus won’t let that be the last word for you or for me. The last word is always his, and it’s his unconditional word of forgiveness. But he doesn’t just forgive our sin. He eliminates that whole broken system of sacrifice and atonement that weighed us down, so that he can raise us up as beloved children of God.

Then, Jesus puts an end to temple taxes and moneychangers by freely giving us everything he has. Not just his own body and blood in the sacrament, but even his own Holy Spirit, to make faith in our hearts. Jesus doesn’t ask us if we want it. He just does it to us, because he’s that determined to get what he wants. And he wants us to have faith because faith is a powerful thing. It transforms us. Just like Jesus, it fills us with a zeal for God’s house that consumes us, because this house is a house of prayer for all people. When we experience that kind of radical acceptance, we’ll be damned if we’re going to let anyone or anything get in the way of that for our neighbors. But this doesn’t mean whipping cords or driving away. It means inviting. And it doesn’t mean flipping tables. Instead, we set a table that has room for everyone. A table without any distinction. A table that doesn’t extort us or demand a single thing from us, but simply bids us come as we are.

Because we see what the world does. Faith makes us see the insidious ways that greed and corruption constantly undermine our common good. Healthcare. Economic relief. Voting rights. Dividing us against each other, instead of lifting each other up. That’s the sumtotal of God’s commandments. Loving God by loving our neighbors. So faith leads us to show up and speak out for their sake. Sure, it’s risky to speak truth to power, and most of the time it’ll just feel like we’re failing. But faith assures us that Jesus is always with us in spite of everything, just as he promised. The same assurance that Jesus must have felt in the temple that day. And that really will be enough. Even so, may it be so for you and for me in Christ Jesus our Lord.