The Temple and Change

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ ¹⁸The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ ¹⁹Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ ²⁰The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ ²¹But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²²After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

This is a pretty tough gospel. We could take the easy way out and suggest that Jesus doesn't like moneychangers or commerce. Or even more confusing, we might think that Jesus simply doesn't like the business of buying and selling taking place in the Temple--but it would be fine in other places--he's just finicky about where it takes place. Neither of these responses seems to take the character of Jesus into account.

It is interesting that this gospel for this past Sunday was linked with Exodus 20:1-17 which is God's declaration of the Ten Commandments--the heart of the Law. A second clue in the above passage is that it takes place at Passover--a primary Jewish holiday representing the saving grace of God. It is from the lens of law that we should read this gospel.

Next, it must be said that everyone with whom Jesus interacted was following the rules. The Temple was a place of sacrifice. The people selling the animals were authorized by Temple authorities to be on the portico (the porch) on the way into the Temple. The moneychangers were authorized by the authorities to trade foreign or Roman currency for Temple coins. The people changing money and the people selling the animals were not only authorized to be there and doing their jobs, but they were there so good, religious people could properly worship God according to the rules! Without them, thousands of people would not have had the opportunity to worship God in the customary way. Jesus' blowing things up would be like keeping the doors to your church closed on a Sunday morning so you can't go in or taking your Bible or Prayer Book away so that you couldn't worship in the way you knew.

But Jesus was giving us a visual teaching in this moment--he was flipping over the old ways of doing things, reversing them. He was unseating the old rules and replacing them with a simple premise--sacrifice at the Temple isn't the center of worship--God is the center of worship. Worship God. Don't feel that you have to go through these motions to make God present in your life--God is present wherever you are. Shifting to us--this can mean that we don't have to be in church or sticking our nose in the Prayer Book to be with God--we can pray wherever we are.

Just as this was revolutionary for Jesus to suggest, it is just as revolutionary today. For the Jewish people, the Temple, had served as a central place of worship. First built about 1,000 years before Jesus, it was intended to be the central temple of the faith. About 400 years later, it was destroyed, forcing the Jewish scholars to adapt to a new way of doing things, and adapt a faith that had become focused on the Temple. Centuries later, the Temple was being re-built and its place in the center of the faith was being restored. For us, we tend to put our church or our worship or our music at the center of our faith. We make our institutions into idols that are, in some ways, more important than our very faith in God and in Jesus! This is not only crazy (and hypocritical), but it seems to be recreating the very problems that Jesus was railing against.

Think about the ways in which you interact with God and with your faith in God. When do these feel strongest? When are you most interested in building this up? When are you most likely to think about this?

Now think about when you don't interact with God or your faith. When do you feel most separated from God? What is most likely to get you questioning and doubting and feeling nervous about God? Do you ever feel nothing--as in have no feeling one way or the other? How does that make you feel?

In making faith portable, Jesus isn't condemning the Temple or communal worship. He isn't telling you to make your faith private. But he is placing a new emphasis on the personal relationship over the institutional. The way I see it, this gives us more of an opportunity to share in our faith and worship together without the restrictions of the institution. Remember what was going on in the Temple? Individual sacrifice for individual redemption--an individual transaction for salvation. Seems pretty solo to me. Solo in the midst of a big crowd. Jesus got us to live and eat together and to operate in communities. We bring a whole host of talents and viewpoints when we gather together in groups.

So what do you think the future holds now? What can we do about it?