What we just heard read from the Gospel is a big deal. Some say that this is the moment that everything changed for Jesus. In some ways, after Jesus cleared the Temple, the authorities believed that, if you understand the cliché, Jesus jumped the shark. They were at wits end and knew that if they were going to survive the occupation of the Romans, Jesus was simply causing too much turmoil. I’m sure they were upset that this upstart Messiah dared to challenge the way the Temple operated but the threat of Rome was probably their biggest concern. Rome valued law and order, peace and quiet among the people they occupied and clearly Jesus was stepping on far too many toes to just blow it off.
Of course, we usually read this story in different ways. Some make it a diatribe against capitalism; sort of railing against making money by selling items in the most holy of spaces. Others look at how Jesus is anything but meek and mild, sort of making him into a kind of a middle linebacker for the Huskers, an angry muscular athlete who doesn’t mind knocking together a couple of heads in order to make a point. I am sure there are a lot of other things we can tack onto this story, making it sound more like a new, revised Jesus. No more of the meek and mild Jesus, riding on the back of a donkey, or making time for children in the midst of a busy schedule.
At least this is no Franco Zeffirelli Jesus, ignoring anything to keep his appointment with his rendezvous with the cross. Whatever you might think, it’s surprising to see Jesus so animated about a few pigeons and a dove or two being sold in the temple. So, as with so many stories in the Gospel, we need to take a deep dive to find the truth of what is going on.
I think we would all agree that we want to be careful to not just make something up that seems palatable to us and go from there. I’m not sure what you have heard but one of the oddest takes that I heard someone say once is that this episode is why having church garage sales, with all the racks of ill-fitting clothes hanging near the reserved sacrament is wrong.
Since we are about to have a book sale, I think it is incumbent upon me to let you know that there is nothing wrong with having one. Indeed, if you ever run across a Catholic Church having a bingo night, rest assured, it’s ok to swing into their parking lot and try your hand a game of chance. That’s not what this Gospel is about.
Nor is about Jesus being angry because somehow these people were violating one or more of the ten commandments like having no other gods before” the God of Israel. Of course, we play a risky game trying to get inside of the head of Jesus, but that has never been an issue with those who try to make sense of this rather odd scene.
One of the issues we share with our forebearers in the Church is that we often get confused with the stories about how God acts and how humanity consistently responds. What helps us here is to remember that when God revealed God’s-self first to Abram and later to a whole host of others including people like Moses and Miriam, Rachel and Jacob, Joseph and Elijah, Isaiah and Nehemiah, and many, many others, they struggled in the same way we do to understand who God is and how God acts. To cut them some slack, they didn’t have much to go on other than consistent encounters with God. They had a belief that there were a whole host of other gods surrounding them and all these pagan, gnostic gods shared many things in common, they presented their particular god as full of anger, retribution and violence. Because this was the only context they understood, they felt God was violent, capricious and desired getting even with humans who just never seem to get it. For these folks, the cross is a sign of God’s wrath being put on Jesus in order to satisfy God’s anger.
If we have this mindset we people did their best to calm down God by coming up with an elaborate sacrificial system. Somehow, they felt, if they could slaughter some animals, God’s re-tributive justice could be satisfied and they could live in peace, or as close to it as possible. They adopted a custom familiar with the religion of pagans that lived near them by practicing children sacrifice, in an attempt to satisfy an angry god. In fact some scholars believe the refusal of God to accept the sacrifice of Isaac was a paradigmatic shift for the children of Israel. No longer would God allow such horrific action in order to appease God. As I already have said: God doesn’t need to be appeased because God loves; God isn’t angry and God doesn’t practice re-tributive justice. God’s justice is restorative because as we prayed on the first Sunday of Lent, God does not desire the death of sinners but rather, that they be restored.
By the time our Gospel story takes place, the sacrificial system had become quite specific and, if you ask me, quite unsettling. There were all kind of ways to sacrifice but most involved things like birds, and smoke and a whole lot of blood.
Of course as Midwesterners, we find such things a bit over the top. But it would be wrong to simply dismiss all of it. There was a reason sacrifice became a part of Temple worship and there is much to learn from studying it.
When Jesus entered the Temple in the story that is shared this morning, there are people who are selling many things but mostly they are selling animals to be sacrificed. Lest we think Jesus is the first one to take exception with this practice, we ought to take a look at what God had said through the prophet Hosea: “for I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and an acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Even so, this significant reminder that there was no need to appease God through sacrifice had gone largely ignored. I think we understand that. It’s hard to drop traditions that are so meaningful to us. Yet, it would serve us well to remember a seminal belief in the Episcopal Church that in Latin says “Lex Credendi, Lex Orandi” or “prayer shapes believing.” For us, that is why in our bulletin we print the following: “all who feel called are invited to receive communion.” I love that because this table doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to God and God will never turn anyone away from experiencing God through communion. We pray that way and it shapes what we believe.
Jesus walks into the Temple, notices that Hosea’s prophetic voice was still being ignored, turned a whole bunch of tables upside down and then uses a homemade whip to drive people out. Simply put, Jesus was telling people they had it all wrong. It was love that God desired to share and receive, not sacrifice. And this apparently was too much. It was the final straw and soon a decision would be made that for the benefit of all people in Israel, Jesus would have to be silenced.
Here we are two thousand years later. Our task is not to find ways to appease God but to share in the love God has for all people. God is not angry, vindictive or full of re-tributive justice. God is love and in God is no darkness at all. Our task is to realize that God’s love soaks deeper into our world when we take what we have experienced, love, and share it with all, especially with those different than us.