“The Passover of the Jews was near.” That’s how John begins this story of Jesus cleansing the temple.
The synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke, all have this story at the end of their Gospels. These are the Gospels we believe to be the most historical. The Gospel of John is the theological Gospel, and John has the story paired with the first miracle – the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. I have to ask why this is. What is the theology here for us?
Interestingly, there is exactly one Passover meal with Jesus in the synoptics. That is the one we will remember at Maundy Thursday. This is when Jesus institutes the Holy Eucharist. John has Passover with Jesus as an adult three times in his Gospel, and this is one of the reasons that scholars believe the public ministry of Jesus lasted three years.
You probably remember the story of the first Passover. I know the children remember it from Vacation Bible School. The Jews were slaves in Egypt and had been enslaved there for four centuries. God raised up Moses to confront Pharaoh and to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go. He demanded freedom for the Israelites.
But Pharaoh had good reason to keep the Israelites enslaved. They were cheap labor. They did the dirty work that Egyptians didn’t want to do. They made it possible for Egyptians to live well. Pharaoh wasn’t about to let the Israelites go.
So God sent a series of plagues to persuade Pharaoh. In the first plague, God turned the water of the Nile to blood. But it was the last plague that gave Passover its name. In the last plague, God struck down the firstborn of every house. Before doing that, God told the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb and to smear the lamb’s blood on their doorposts. When God saw blood on a doorpost, he would pass over that house, leaving the firstborn untouched. That’s where Passover got its name. God PASSED OVER the homes of the Israelites. God spared their children.
Because of that last plague, Pharaoh finally relented and allowed the Israelites to leave Egypt. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness forty years. During this time they bonded and became a nation.
So the Passover was Israel’s beginning. Passover was like their national birthday. It is their Fourth of July. They celebrated Passover every year in a big way. Jews went to Jerusalem to make their Passover sacrifice at the temple. Jerusalem in Jesus’ day was a town of about 50,000 people. During Passover week, another 100,000 came to visit. Can you imagine how crowded it must have been?
Our Gospel lesson is the narrative of Jesus attending the temple as an adult at Passover. Jesus threaded his way through the crowds to the temple, where “he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, …and money changers seated at their tables” (v. 14).
Cattle, sheep and doves in the temple sounds a little strange to us. Money changers are a little foreign to our experience. People setting up shop in the holy temple. The temple was large, and these merchants would have been in the outer courtyard, but still… Given the size of the crowds, there must have been hundreds of cattle and sheep. There must have been thousands of doves.
So, you have this picture in your head. Let me encourage you to consider the olfactory component too. It must have smelled like a barnyard. Barnyards are smelly places. Can you imagine having that smell in the temple?
Then there was the noise. A hundred merchants would be competing for customers. It would be like a middle eastern market in a movie. People would be offering deals. Pilgrims would be going from booth to booth.
That sounds terrible, but those merchants served a purpose. People came from near and far to observe Passover. Those who came from very far could hardly be expected to bring their animals with them. Sacrificial animals had to be perfect and without blemish. You could not really expect to bring a lamb with you from home if you had a long journey and know that it would be perfect when you arrived at Jerusalem. You would have to feed it and take care of it on the way, and what if it came up lame. All that effort would be wasted.People NEEDED to buy sacrificial animals in Jerusalem. These merchants were serving a good purpose.
But did they have to be in the temple? Wasn’t there a better place to conduct business?
The same was true for the money changers. Money changers were performing a needed service. Did they have to be in the temple? Was it necessary to have people haggling and clanking coins in the temple?
Jesus went on what we might call a rampage. He fashioned cords into a whip and began driving sheep and cattle out of the temple. Think about that image for a minute. Think about a place like the University Park Mall on Christmas Eve or the stadium at a Notre Dame home game. Then think about someone using a whip to drive a herd of cattle through the crowd.
And, as Jesus passed by the tables of the money changers, he overturned their tables and spilled their coins all over the floor. This was a floor that probably had more than a few deposits left by all the animals. I have this picture of money changers on their hands and knees, arguing about which coin belonged to whom.
Then Jesus said,”Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” People would have recognized that Jesus was referring to the prophet Zechariah, who said that there would be a day when there would “no longer be traders in the house of the Lord.” Zechariah was looking forward to a day when holiness would return to the temple. When Jesus drove the cattle and sheep out of the temple, he was telling them that the time had come.
The Jewish people believed that the temple was the dwelling place of God. God’s presence in the temple showed his special love for the Jewish people. It was the holiest place in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the holiest city in the world. It made sense to keep it holy by getting rid of the merchants and money changers. There was mention of it in Scripture.
We have a different understanding of God’s presence. God is present everywhere but we wouldn’t want to use our sanctuary for buyers and sellers. We had a rummage sale, but we used the parish hall. That’s one way we keep holy places holy.
Let me mention something else so that you can be thinking of how you are called to keep holy places holy. Paul wrote a letter to the church at Corinth, because that church had all kinds of problems. One of those problems had to do with prostitution. Pagan temples had temple prostitutes, and some of the Christians in Corinth felt free to indulge. Paul told them not to do that. He said:
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Cor. 6:19)
As a Christian, you have God’s Holy Spirit living in you – so your body is a place where God dwells – a temple of God.
I used to have a friend who had what I would call a somewhat wild lifestyle. He used to explain his preferences for things that were not very holy by saying that his body was a temple. Now I don’t want to seem to be critical of Jeff, but if his body was a temple, but it was not what I would consider a temple of God.
Understanding what it means to be a Godly temple in our lives has other implications as well. In the Epistle today, Paul tells the Corinthians that Jesus is “righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” We are called to be in right relationship with God, and we are to be sanctified or made holy through that relationship. Jesus will redeem us.
We have to respect our bodies in the same way we respect the sanctuary of this church. Our bodies are temples of God and they have been sanctified by our relationship with Jesus.
Now there is a temptation to look in the mirror and think, I am not much of a temple. The fact is that God has created a variety of temples, and they don’t all have to be the human equivalent of the cathedral. St. Thomas has its place in the kingdom and so does Holy Trinity and St. Elizabeth’s. Each of us has a place in the Kingdom too.
So I want to get back to my question about the theology of John. Why did he pair the miracle at the wedding in Cana with the cleansing of the temple?
God transforms plain ordinary things into things that are special. I am getting back to that sanctification idea. We are made holy by driving out the things that don’t belong in our lives. God takes you and me and the bread and wine in Holy Communion, and He transforms them into things that are special and holy. This makes sense to me. I get it, and I am glad John helped me connect the dots.
My question for you this morning is this.
Since you are a temple of God, what does Jesus want to drive out?
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas, Plymouth
March 8, 2015; The Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 John 2:13-22