St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday, March 8, 2015 Lent 3B
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Text: John 2: 13-22 Jesus Cleansing the Temple
Theme: Let’s Not Make a Deal
It is rather hard to imagine the Temple at Jerusalem in full swing. This is a massive
place with huge outer courts and porticoes surrounding the Temple complex. At the
center of the place is fire: a vast area dedicated to a system of slaughtering animals
and offering them up on this high place for the forgiveness of sins; the making right
of what was wrong through the strange and marvelous alchemy of sacrifice; of
giving up that which is dear to atone for estrangement and wrongdoing. At the
center of the Temple was the high altar with smoke ascending continually. Being
part of the priesthood was not particularly glamorous as a vocation. It was difficult,
dirty and physical work, full of blood, slaughter, fire, smoke and the smell of burning
flesh along with the prayers and rituals that the law outlined. If you haven’t yet seen
the IMAX movie Jerusalem at the Natural History Museum, it is worth the time and
can give you a sense of what this operation was like.
We moderns have a difficult time understanding the Temple at Jerusalem and its
sacrificial system. It all seems rather barbaric to us; the slaughtering of animals as
an act of worship, taking the innocent life of livestock to help one get right with God.
In a lot of ways we don’t really even quite know how it worked. There was, of
course, the expense of it all. Spending one’s hard-earned wages for something to go
up in smoke was not an easy thing to do. So there was sacrifice in it. Everyone there
had skin in the game. And there was this other dimension that is hard to get at, that
of taking life to appease God or get right with the divine. We’re not totally sure how
it worked, but one of the key ways of understanding the sacrificial dynamics was
that once a person had purchased an animal for the sacrifice, at great cost to himself
or herself, then he or she was also connected to that animal in its slaughter. One
plausible understanding is that the person making the sacrifice had to be near or
touching the animal when it was slaughtered because the taking of life stirred in him
or her a sense of loss, a kind of emotional connection and remorse for that which
one was seeking forgiveness. It connected the death of the animal to one’s own
wrongdoing and the cost of that was death for a living creature. The sacrificial act
then produced in the worshiper a feeling of loss and a connection to the idea that sin
led to death, that transgressing God’s ways had a real cost and that the animal being
sacrificed was just a part of that. It made physically or viscerally real the idea that
our sinful actions lead us toward death and often have real and negative
consequences for others as well.
It was on the Temple mount in Jerusalem that this story from the Gospel takes place.
Interestingly, this story is told by all four of the Gospel writers, but only John places
it near the beginning while the others put it at the end of their story just prior to the
passion. For many biblical commentators, Jesus’ provocative and prophetic act in
1
the Temple is seen as one of the key actions he took that lead to his death. He did
something demonstrative and public to disrupt temple worship and this drew the
ire of the Temple authorities who were in cahoots with the Roman occupation. Jesus
disturbed the peace, upsetting the normal daily routine at the sacred center of
things. It was seen as a sign of rebellion and insurrection. A person willing and
capable of doing this was also capable of staging a rebellion. The Temple authorities
did not like the sound of that and knew that Rome would like it even less.
That Jesus fellow was someone who needed to be taught a lesson.
It is easy to see how Jesus’ actions might have been seen as rebellious. It is likely
that what he started that day may have taken on a life of its own and become a
religious riot with others joining the cleansing actions. One can imagine the chaos.
For in the vastness of the Temple mount, there were stalls and corrals of animals
with all manner of people vending the needed livestock for sacrifice. It really is a
rather powerful and crazy scene to imagine Jesus, a strong, young man, full of
righteous anger with a whip in his hand, turning over tables, breaking down corrals,
starting a dangerous stampede of animals, people running, vendors trying to get
control of their frightened animals, women trying to pull their children to safety,
animal handlers running this way and that, the priests trying to quiet the people and
restore order, the Temple guards rushing into the tumult and creating even more
panic.
Essentially, the temple traffics in physical and social life in the form of animals and
money. It is a place of commerce and of exchange. In essence, the worshipers give
God something and God gives the worshipers something. The worshiper gives God a
slaughtered animal and God gives the worshiper forgiveness for sins or help in
various endeavors. This temple exchange is fundamental and can accommodate any
manner of quid pro quo (this for that) arrangements. The more perfect the sacrifice,
the more perfect the obtaining of what is desired from God. (John Shea) This kind of
deal-making is part and parcel of the Temple system and it is something that Jesus
seems to be bothered by in the extreme. In fact, the text quotes Psalm 69, “Zeal for
your house will consume me.” In the end, this prophetic act may have, in fact, led to
Jesus being consumed by the Roman authorities at the request of the temple
leadership. (John Shea)
For Jesus, the relationship is all wrong. Jesus’ Father is not a deal maker. He does not
exchange favors for sacrifices. That is the problem. Relationship with the living God
is not a commodity that can be bought and sold. It is not a unit of exchange, it is not a
market to be exploited. For Jesus, the Temple is his “Father’s House,” rather than a
place of commerce. The Father, who Jesus knows as Abba or daddy, is something
radically different than something for sale. The Father is a free flow of spiritual life
and love that cannot be bought or sold, bartered or bargained, or bought off with a
particularly nice cut of meat. So Jesus makes his opposition to this system
noticeable by opening the gates of the Temple Zoo and having a grand old time
chasing out the Moneychangers.
2
Reading this passage in the Message translation by Eugene Peterson is also
enlightening,
Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the
Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan
sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your
things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!”
(John 2: 15-17)
The “loan shark” idea in Peterson’s translation is helpful. The Temple courts had
their own currency as pagan currency could not be used one the temple grounds for
sacrificial purchases. So there were currency exchanges on the Temple Mount and,
of course, as you would surmise, there were exorbitant rates charged to the most
vulnerable people desiring to make a sacrifice. It is more than likely that Jesus was
disgusted by their exploitive practice.
It all put me in mind of the radio program I heard this past week about the Payday
loan and Title loan operations in New Mexico. The report offered some insight into
the practice of these loans that prey on the most vulnerable people at exorbitant
rates, sometimes reaching 2000% in our state. There are more payday loan
operations in our economically disadvantaged state than there are fast food
restaurants according to the research and they are lobbying hard to avoid a cap on
these types of loans of 36% as several other states have created. It made me
wonder what Jesus might do to a Fast Cash loan operation. Or if the church might
offer an alternative to these loans, like one group of churches I read about one time
that formed an All Faiths Credit Union to compete with these predatory lenders and
give hardworking people financial alternatives that had not existed previously in
their poor neighborhood. Perhaps there are moneychangers that need to be driven
out, not of our temple but out of our neighborhood and the business of increasing
human misery in the name of profits.
Jesus is appalled by the deal-making apparatus that has grown up around the
holiness of the Temple. And the truth is that deal-making is part and parcel of our
lives and of the human condition. We know that it is part of our social arrangements.
“If you do that, I’ll do this” or “If you give me that, I’ll give you this” is assumed in so
many human interactions. The problem becomes our easy transfer of this to the
spiritual realm and our relationship with God. Our entrenched understanding of
social bargaining becomes embedded in our spiritual lives and how we get what we
want from God and how God gets what God wants from us. Oh, I realize that it is a
crass way to say it. Many of us might not want to admit to this kind of deal making
with God, but I imagine that it might surprise us how often these kinds of thoughts
or words come into our prayer life when something really important is on the line.
The truth is that I speak with people all the time who are trying to bargain with God.
And while it is natural and normal, it is also ruinous to one’s spiritual development.
This is simply not the way that God desires to have a relationship with us.
3
I wonder if we can allow our reflection on Jesus’ cleansing of the temple to challenge
our own tendency to want to make deals with God. We no longer believe that animal
sacrifice is necessary to get right with God. The author of the book of Hebrews
understood Jesus as being the perfect sacrifice, the most beautiful self-giving
offering to God that the whole temple system was made obsolete. The Apostle Paul
does not believe that we need to sacrifice animals anymore, but rather he sees the
faith community becoming the sacrificial body of Jesus as we grow together in love
and concern for the people and world around us. For Paul, the community of the
faithful becomes a kind of “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1), a temple made of human
beings’ loving acts of compassion and healing in the world.
What does this mean? The spiritual center in Christ has shifted away from the
Temple building and toward the body of Jesus. That shift is embodied in the
communities of those who follow his ways and are shaped by his death and
resurrection over and over again.
I wonder if you can identify the deal-making tendency in yourself. Have you ever
found yourself making God an offer you hoped he couldn’t refuse? Is there a place
where the cosmic Monty Hall of “Let’s Make a Deal” comes into your spiritual life?
In the movie, a House of Sand and Fog, the son of an Islamic man is shot. The father is
distraught and instinctively begins to pray. At one point, he says, “If you let my son
live, I will lay in the park, put bird seed on my eyes, and let the birds eat my eyes
out.” (Example from John Shea) It is deal-making par excellence that emerges from
the dark recesses of all of our lives. We know it is there, and tragedy and stress and
danger bring it out of hiding. We are scared for our children and so we try to make
deals. Our life is spinning out of control and we offer God something in desperation.
We will probably never get rid of it entirely, but we can begin to understand our
relationship with God on a firmer and more intimate footing.
Jesus was not comfortable with his Father’s House being made into a marketplace or
an aquarium for loan sharks. Jesus calls his followers to be people who are simply
grateful for life itself and for the opportunity to serve life in the ways that emerge
for them. When we can begin to understand the mystery of life as a gift from God’s
gracious hand and receive and give that life, we are living out the meaning of God’s
Temple. Our one goal is to find ourselves joyfully collaborating with God,
cooperating in the divine self-giving that makes all of life holy and charged with the
grandeur of God. The joy of life is not in making a good deal with God but rather in
realizing that God is not a deal maker. God desires to know and be known by you.
God desires a relationship that is not based on quid pro quo but rather on the
overwhelming love that flows freely from the very heart of God into the world
through the person of Jesus. (John Shea)
As the prophet Hosea speaks,
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
(Hosea 6:6)
4
In the person of Jesus, we are shown a new temple, a new way to relate to God, a
way that is intimate, available and honest. The sacrificial system of the Temple was a
powerful reminder of God’s presence and a costly way to get near to the mystery of
God. Jesus’ zeal was about teaching us that we can know God without deal-making
behavior. We can know God in the person of Jesus who continues to show us the
way to the Father, the way of steadfast love that never ceases, the way of mercy that
never comes to an end.
Note: I am grateful for the description of the temple worship and sacrifice from
various commentators. I am deeply indebted to the discussion of deal-making with God
from John Shea in his commentary on this passage from Eating with the Bridegroom. I
have borrowed heavily from his writing in several sections, which I note above.
5