Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover. This week long spring festival celebrated the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt where they been held as slaves for hundreds of years and through God’s intervention were set free and allowed to journey to a promised place. It was and continues to be one of the most important festivals for our Jewish brothers and sisters. Passover is closely associated with liberation and divine salvation and it is one of the sacred times that all Israelite males were by Mosaic command to remember by pilgrimage. This would mean traveling to the central city of Judea–Jerusalem.
Jesus would have joined hundreds of thousands of people as they made their way to the Temple, swelling the population of the city to many times what was normal. So those in places of power were at heightened alert. The religious leaders in the Temple would be vigilant in keeping the crowds as peaceful as possible to avoid a violent reaction from the Roman authorities, who used only the most brutal means to exercise their unimpeachable control.
Jesus goes into the Temple. In the time of Jesus, the Temple was seen by the Jewish people as the place of the presence of God. It was seen as the center of the world; the place where all creation converged. The Temple served as a center where God was to be found and how God was to be known. It was the center of worship, but it was also a focus of religious, national and social identity.
For many it stood as the architectural and symbolic centerpiece of their most important city. It was a place that played a key role in cherished memories and figured in a hoped-for future when God’s promises would be fully realized.
In Jesus’ time it was a magnificent structure. Begun in the eighteenth year of the reign of Herod the Great, it astonished those in its presence and testified to the glory of God. The historian Josephus described it having “everything that could amaze either mind or eyes. Overlaid all round with stout plates of gold, at the first rays of sun it reflected so fierce a blaze of fire that those who endeavored to look at it were forced to turn away as if they had looked straight at the sun.” (The Jewish War, p. 304) The disciples themselves remark to Jesus about their admiration of the beautiful buildings and great stones.
All four gospels contain this story of Jesus’ actions in the Temple. In the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke—it occurs at the end of Jesus’ ministry following his triumphant entry into Jerusalem and it is often seen as one of the contributing reasons that Jesus was arrested and later crucified.
But in the gospel according to John, Jesus’ action in the Temple was his very first public appearance. Now those of us with 21st century ears may wonder at the veracity of the timing—which is the accurate story? When did it occur—at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry or near the end? But the Gospels serve as statements of faith rather than historical documents. So each difference provides us with each evangelist’s distinct witness to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
John in setting this story right at the beginning wants us to know right off that Jesus is ushering in a new era, one in which God’s grace is no longer mediated or accessed only through cultic sacrifice or religious ritual, but is available to all through Jesus, the Word made flesh, God’s only son. In John’s gospel, Jesus knows exactly who he is and what his destiny will be. Jesus metaphorically refers to himself as the temple. Rather than confined to a particular spot on a map, the resurrected Christ will be the place where God is encountered in the world—accessible to all.
In John’s gospel, Jesus says that the Temple has been turned into a market place. The Temple did serve as a market place so that devout Jews could purchase unblemished animals for sacrifice and change their Imperial and foreign coinage into the currency that was acceptable in the Temple, that is coinage devoid of the stamped likeness of the “divine” Caesar. (No graven image.)
I invite you to see Jesus’ actions, no matter how startling they are to us today, in driving the animals out of the Temple and overturning the tables of the moneychangers, as a symbolic disruption of the Temple as the exclusive place of God’s presence.
I invite you to see that Jesus, rather than railing against impropriety or mismanagement, is turning over the tables of the entire system. It is an upending of a place being the exclusive locus of God’s presence and activity. In this story, John is saying one thing. It is in Jesus where we will find God. In Jesus we are invited to experience God’s “grace upon grace” (1:17) through our faith in him.
Just as the people in Jesus’ time saw the Temple as the place where God was housed, it is not so different from our current setting. We too, love to gather in beautiful places of worship. It is often in houses of worship that we experience a special closeness to God. In seeking a space of beauty and quiet—a place where we can rest from the world’s turmoil, we are able to reflect on God’s glory. We come to be fed in prayers and music and to experience a sense of the sacred. I remember vividly the former chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary where I spent many hours sitting and looking at the beautiful window behind the altar that called me to reflection and petition as I sought to hear God’s voice in my life.
But John offers us an expanded perspective on where God is to be found. While churches, cathedrals, chapels—and our Crissey Farm space—offer us a place to come to experience God, this really is more of a launch pad.
It is a place where we gather to worship, to share common prayers, to be nourished by the presence of others on their journey in life and then to be sent out into the world to meet and serve God in our everyday life. Jesus in speaking of the Temple as his body reminds us that we follow God who permeates all that is. God is never contained in a space—no matter how majestic—God is to be found everywhere we find life if we only look and listen.
When I was in college, I was invited to sing with a band. We were for the most part students and this band allowed us to sing and make a little money to cover our college expenses. But when my grandmother—who is the love of my life and its north star—found out, she was horrified. I remember her telling me that God would never be found in a nightclub. I remember, though never of course saying it out loud, that I disagreed with her. I believed God would be found everywhere. In a nightclub as well as in church, under a city bridge as well as in a cathedral, beside a lake as well as in a Sunday School classroom. It just depended on where you looked. In fact some of my most profound experiences of God have been outside the walls of the church. Now not that I don’t love worship and love being in a sacred space, but I believe that is to the world where we are called in loving and serving God to love and serve the world that God loves so much.
In C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series we meet the four Penvensie children who have been evacuated from war torn London to escape the bombing. In the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe they discover a magical closet through which they are able to enter into the land of Narnia. In Narnia they meet the great lion (and Christ figure), Aslan, and with his help they defeat the White Witch who holds Narnia captive in a perpetual winter. (Some may believe we need the Penvensie children and Aslan about now.) In the second book, the children travel back to assist Prince Caspian in obtaining his rightful throne and at the end of that book, Aslan tells the two older children, Peter and Susan, that they will not return to Narnia.
Now at the end of the third book, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader,’ Aslan meets Lucy and Edmund at the edge of the Eastern Sea and tells them the same news, that this will be their last trip to Narnia. Lucy is devastated that she will not see the beloved lion again, but he reassures her that she will see him again in her own world. When she is surprised that Aslan is present in her world, he tells her that the whole reason for bringing her to Narnia was that in getting to know him here, she would recognize him more easily there.
What a wonderful image for our church. We gather on Sunday mornings so that in hearing the Gospel proclaimed and in sharing the feast at the table, we are made more clearly aware of God’s presence. And then we are sent out into the world, — to our daily work, our daily lives–to find God there and to join in as a partner working with God.
For just a moment, I invite you to think of one place you know you will be this week. silence And then I invite you to see Jesus calling us to share his love there. silence
Where will God find us this week? Where will we meet God and be drawn into God’s work in the world? We don’t know. God is always doing something new. We follow Jesus who clears the way for us to encounter God’s love, not just in a specific place or moment in time, but in every aspect of our lives. Through God’s manifold grace may we go into the world afire with God’s love, sent out seeing ourselves as temples where God resides, claiming our baptismal identity as disciples of the risen Christ.