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Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC Mystic,
Connecticut Every
year during
Lent, the Protestant churches in our area would get together for ecumenical
services of Wednesday nights. Churches
would take turns hosting and all the pastors would take turns leading.
Sometimes, the choirs would collaborate for a special piece of music.
Every year, my parents dutifully dragged me to these things even though I
regularly noted that I was the only young person present. The
little Methodist church that volunteered just about every year was always a
place of particular interest for me. The
building was somewhat nondescript, sort of early 20th-century Gothic that, no
doubt, had dust that was older than I was.
Painted on the back of the chancel against what would be this entire wall
was a huge mural. In it there was a
blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus who sat on the shore looking placidly off into the
distance. It was a clear, blue lake
perfectly still surrounded by lollipop trees and gathered under a bright blue
sky with cotton-candy clouds bathed in golden sunlight.
The whole thing was fairly hideous.
I passed time in worship coming up with names for this mural like
“Jesus at Lake Winnipesaukee” or “Jesus of Sweden Visits the Finger
Lakes”. I remember it as a time
when I really hoped that God had a sense of humor. But
it was sitting in that little Methodist church staring at that ridiculous mural
that I first heard, or at least first really listened to, the gospel witness of
Jesus in the temple—turning over tables, brandishing a whip, emptying coin
coffers, driving out animals, shouting in anger.
This was not the Jesus I knew. It
collided with the image of “Jesus at Lake Winnipesaukee”. It collided with every image of Jesus I had to work with at
my young age. The most popular
images of Jesus, even though none of us really know what he looks like, are
things like Solomon’s “Head of Christ” or pictures of Jesus with little
children, Jesus healing the blind Bartemeus.
The image of an angry Jesus at the temple collides with that gentle Jesus
that I think, for most of us, is the one that first comes to mind. But
here it is in Scripture and all four of the gospels record it which, in and of
itself, is significant. The
synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke put it at the end of Jesus’ earthly
ministry as the last, final inflammatory act that sealed the decision of the
authorities to arrest him. John
puts it at the beginning, just after his first miracle at Cana of Galilee when
he turned water into wine. For the
writer of John’s gospel, this is an event that defines Jesus’ entire
ministry, not just those last days. So
we have some figuring on what to do with this text, with the troubling image of
Jesus that it depicts. In all four
of the gospels, this is referred to as Jesus cleansing the temple. But biblical scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer writes, Cleansing the temple makes it sound like Jesus was just trying to
straighten up, purify it by removing things that shouldn’t be there.
The idea that Jesus’ actions in this Sunday gospel are “cleansing the
temple” is predicated on the assumption that moneychangers and dove sellers
didn’t belong in those courtyards when, in truth, at that time, there was no
way the temple could function without them.
You see, the law demanded a sacrifice.
You may remember that when Jesus was born, Mary went to the temple and
offered a sacrifice of a dove as commanded by law.
There were some things that regulated how this would happen—the animals
had to be without blemish. There
was provision for the poor who couldn’t afford to sacrifice a sheep or a cow
that they could sacrifice a dove but it, too, had to be without blemish.
So the temple sellers provided a very practical service for
worshipers—it was easier to buy something once you got there than to schlep a
sheep from the hinterlands only to show up with it and be told that it wasn’t
acceptable because it had a blemish. The
temple coin changers also served an important function as weird as it may seem
to us. You will remember that the
Jews in the first century worshiped under Roman occupation.
All of their coins bore the image of Caesar and the first commandment
says, “Thou shalt not make a graven image.”
So they had to trade their coins that they used in their everyday life
for coins that could be used in the temple and not break that most important
religious law. As odd as it may
seem to us, these folks provided a service and Jesus would have none of it.
He just didn’t think that it was that important.
While he was driving everyone out of the temple, he’s talking about the
end of the temple and the end of temple-worship. To
say that it got everyone’s attention would be an understatement. It’s akin to showing up here on Sunday morning and finding
a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn, except Jesus wasn’t turning over a
couple of hundred years of tradition but a couple of thousands. Temple-worship was the cornerstone of religious life.
Jesus would have none of it because the temple, for all of its splendor
and all of its beauty, had a very dark history.
Solomon had built this temple on the backs of the poor which is what
rulers tend to do. When
rulers launch some major project, they rarely pay for it themselves.
It’s the poor, the blind, the lame, those who have the least to offer a
monarch and, therefore, get the least attention from the world rulers, who pay
the most dearly. Under Solomon’s
reign, people paid dearly with their lives as they labored themselves to death.
When Herod wanted to earn his name as Herod the Great, he set out to
expand the temple and, as with all building projects, this, too, was financed on
the backs and the blood and the sweat of the poor.
Herod got a big building, God got a bigger place for bloodshed and Jesus
said, “I don’t think so.” God
doesn’t want blood. God wants
justice. God wants the hungry fed, the sick cured, the homeless
housed, and the prisoners set free. What
got Jesus so unhinged was the empty piety of it all—the religious system that,
no matter how faithfully conceived, had now spun miserably out of control, a
system that was built on the backs of the poor and was now nourished by
corruption and dishonesty. (Breuer) Daniel
Clendenin in an article entitled “Subtle As a Sledgehammer” which I read
just because I like the title muses on the reaction of the disciples to Jesus’
outburst. He says, “No doubt, the
disciples tossed and turned a long, sleepless night that evening.
It must have been terribly disconcerting to witness Jesus throwing
furniture, screaming at the top of his lungs, and flinging money into the air.
Perhaps they ran for cover with the crowd.
I would have. Did they look
him in the eyes the next morning or did they shuffle around staring at their
shoes not quite sure what to say? I
liken their experience to the ‘crazy uncle syndrome’.
Who could predict the next outrageous act or violent outburst?” The
Scripture itself tells us that it took some time for them to figure out what to
do with all of this. But what they,
and followers throughout history, discover is that this unhinged Jesus is really
no different from the tender Jesus. What
is revealed in this angry outburst is his passion for people, for justice and
for faithfulness expressed in deeds of kindness and care. It
is the same Jesus as the one who loves little children, the same Jesus who heals
the blind Bartemeus. It is that
same Jesus who knew that temple had been built on the blood, sweat and tears of
oppressed people and who desired to see a more authentic kind of worship.
That loving savior to whom we pray while we watch and wait at the bedside
of our loved ones is the same loving savior who weeps at the lack of health care
that is true for so many people. The
gentle savior that we seek in places of our brokenness and pain is the same
gentle savior who cares for those whose brokenness we find so easy to judge. This
Jesus who seems so unhinged, so uncharacteristically bent out of shape in these
acts of anger and outrage, is motivated by the same care, love and grace as when
we see him in his most tender moment because here, Jesus links private piety to
public action—a reminder that compassion is always linked to passion, faith is
always linked to service, and discipleship is always linked to deeds. He comes unhinged for a moment so that, for all moments, his
followers will hinge together faith and action in a whole new way. In
the years since my musings on that mural in the little Methodist church, I have
often wondered what it might be like if we replaced “Jesus at Lake
Winnipesaukee” with a mural of Jesus losing it in the temple.
I wonder if that visual reminder might make it easier for me to keep that
connection between piety and passion, if it could reshape my own tendency to
domesticate Jesus into whatever I need him to be in any given moment.
It’s a thought but not one that most churches would probably take up.
So,
instead, we get to hear this story from Scripture a couple of times during the
year, usually during Lent, in the hopes that we’ll always remember Jesus
unhinged so we can stay connected. Barbara
Brown Taylor writes, “This text is a reminder that our desire to have a
relationship with Jesus will always cost us everything that we value more.”
Amen. |