When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
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Just over ten days ago, I visited the country of Panama. It was two years since I had been there before, and the immense changes to the country are truly amazing. When you enter Panama now, you receive a slip of paper which says every visitor to the country receives 30 days free medical care. The road infrastructure has expanded so that isolated places can be reached. Services are extremely efficient and well organised. The old rat-infested barrios are being demolished, and in their place new affordable apartments geared to income. Everyone has work and a guaranteed wage. Everyone has health care and education. The resort where we stayed provides a day-care centre for resort staff, so they can come to work and bring the children. The construction of the new sections of the canal is well under way - but here, for me, was the crowning piece. A scant twelve or so years ago, Panama took full control of the canal. When it became evident expansion was needed, they did a complete environmental assessment and plan first; then they drew up the plans; then they made both the assessment and the plans available to the public; and finally, they had a public referendum on whether or not to embark on this project. It was overwhelmingly accepted.
I cannot tell you how exciting it is to see a country which was one of the poorest, now working to elevate itself to the 21st century, on all fronts at the same time - but always keeping in mind justice for the people. Given Panama’s history, this itself is amazing.
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Jerusalem, - a city of over three million people at that time, packed with even more people who have walked across the Negev, the Shepelah, from the Mediterranean coast, and the Tigris /Euphrates basin, to commemorate their liberation from oppression in Egypt.
From the time of Moses, when the law was given, sacrifice was part and parcel of Passover. There was a belief that God demanded a sacrifice, an atonement, in preparation for the cleansing of sins. However, many people didn’t want the hassle of getting animals across the desert, and maybe losing them altogether. Most preferred to buy in the city, to save time and effort.
Why were animals being sold in the Temple? The historian Josephus suggests that a feud between the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas, the High Priest, forced the Sanhedrin from their office space in the Temple. In retaliation, the Sanhedrin invited merchants to sell animals outside the Temple area, near them. Not to be out-retaliated, Caiaphas allowed merchants to sell animals and exchange money *inside* the Temple precinct. Then it became a way of making more money for the Temple. Worshippers could not use official secular money, particularly Roman coin - they had to exchange it for Temple money. Sacrifices to God had to be without blemish - that is, they had to be perfect - and those animals cost more money, and of course the price was inflated. So the outer courtyard where the Gentiles came to worship was full of animals, tables and the sound the secular coinage being exchanged for kosher coinage, and the Temple precinct was as well. A place of worship was turned into a trading post. Neither the Jews nor the Gentile converts could actually
worship.
Jesus entered Jerusalem. He didn’t go there very often, and maybe hadn’t kept up on the inner politics of the temple. He went planning to spend time in worship and prayer, and found instead a market where the poor were being charged exorbitant prices, and brisk commercial enterprises. He grabbed some cords and tied them into a whip, set the animals loose, hurled the tables of the money-changers over, sending the money all over the ground, and screamed “You have turned this place of worship into a shopping mall."
I bet it was difficult for people to decide if they should applaud Jesus, or be embarrassed at his behaviour. The disciples probably hid behind pillars. This was pretty unusual, even for Jesus. Most of the worshippers probably wanted to come for some comfort, and calmness. Not only could they not get it in this already noisy place, but the whole day was shot when Jesus had a tantrum and brought everything to a spectacular halt.
In the Gospel, John has Jesus fired up that a place of worship had been turned into a marketplace, a money-making event. He defended Jesus’ actions as a case of confronting extortion and worship-gouging, and using the temple as a place to work out hostilities. Not only had the time of Passover been turned into a time of making more money for the temple, but the real core of the festival - the promise of God that there would be freedom from oppression - had been subsumed into oppression of the people by their own religious leaders. My vision of Jesus in this instant is that he was vein-popping, eyeball-popping furious. We like to tame it by calling it ‘righteous anger’, and maybe it was - but I’ve always liked the idea of Jesus just completely losing it altogether about this triple travesty - oppression of Jews by the Romans, oppression of the poorest Jews by their own leaders, and the disdain with which the Temple was treated.
In John’s gospel we’re right in the middle of a worship war. It isn’t about selling Fair Trade coffee after the service, raising funds for an outreach project. It is about far more than that. It is about God’s promise to the people, and the people believing the promise, only to be squeezed into another kind of oppression by the very ones who are supposed to be helping them grow in faith. It is about personal hostilities, and corporate greed being lived out even inside a place of worship. Jesus brings the focus right back to the purpose of worship and justice, and how they are lived out in the world.
There’s a clue here about the promise, too. Jesus was asked to show a miraculous sign that his authority is from God. Jesus responded, "OK, I’ll give you a sign. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again. Top that one."
What no one realised, except perhaps Jesus, was a clear intimation of the renewed promise of God. John of course painted the listeners as really thick - all they could think of was the physical temple being completely razed, and Jesus somehow magically putting it all back together. Jesus, once again, left them with a zinger loaded with meaning.
On that day Jesus challenged an entire system - the street address that locked God to a specific place on earth, the way business was done, and the confidence placed in a structure that was supposed to last forever. He walked in, claimed a new authority, and another locus of worship: Jesus named himself as the new temple in which the Spirit of God lived.
There are two things outstanding in this reading for me. First, the issue of justice, which was among the commandments given to Moses, and contained in the Torah. Or perhaps I should say the issue of a gross injustice being perpetrated by a group of religious leaders who had themselves lived as slaves, and were now making slaves out of others who only wished to worship and live in peace.
In the book “Christianity for the Rest of Us”, Diana Butler Bass quotes theologian and biblical scholar Walter Wink, about the powers of the world - and I think this quote gets to the core of what really hit Jesus in that moment. Wink says:
“The Powers That Be are not, then, simply people and their institutions as I had first thought; they also include the spirituality at the core of those institutions and structures. If we want to change those systems, we will have to address not only their outer forms, but their inner spirit as well.”
In his sermon “Who Said You Could Do That?”, Rev. Thomas Hall asks if we run through our orders of worship and are more concerned about doing it right, than whether our whole being is attuned to worshipping God. Is it important if every bit of our service is done in the right order and the right place? What does that even mean? Is God counting up the mistakes we make in a service?
In the issues of justice, and belief in a promise, have we allowed lesser authorities to supplant God? Doing justice means first that we have to believe in the promises of God. If we believe the promises, then we move into the world witnessing to others about the peaceable realm of God.
I think in the moments when Jesus turned everything upside down, he realised the connection of worship and justice. If we believe the promises God made, then our worship has to reflect in every way a commitment to those promises. The result of that worship is to motivate us to live that out by engaging the spiritual centre, to ensure God does not get pushed to the side.
The whole story of church renewal and transformation is a story of being willing to engage again with our faith, and make a commitment to discipleship which takes us outside the boundaries and outside the box. A fantasy? Perhaps - but Paul tells us in Corinthians that God’s foolishness is wiser than our wisdom - and we are encouraged, and exhorted, through faith, to confront and take on *any* powers which prevent the coming of the realm of God.
Enrico Morricone wrote a piece of music for the movie “The Mission”, about a Jesuit priest in 18C Brasil; that music was turned into a song called “Nella Fantasia”. The words offer a broad hope, even for life today. The piece speaks to our promises of justice, and a spiritual world where that justice is the foundation.
In my fantasy, I see a just world.
Where everyone lives in peace and honesty.
I dream of souls that are always free.
Like the clouds that float full of humanity
in the depths of the soul.
In my fantasy I see a bright world
where each night there is less darkness.
I dream of spirits that are always free,
like the clouds that float.
In my fantasy exists a warm wind
that blows into the city, like a friend.
I dream of souls that are always free,
like the clouds that float full of humanity,
in the depths of the soul.
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