John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After 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.

Sermon Text

As we make our way through Lent we have looked at two different things that happen when we jump into what God is doing in the world. We are set aside and transformed into something more than we once were and that transformation may be upsetting to the world around us. Now we look at a more actionable part of our Christian life. That is the work of joining with God to reclaim the good things in this world that we, well intended but sinful humanity, have twisted to be something other than it was meant to be.

We never have to stretch our mind very far to see how things are not how they should be. People go hungry outside of luxury apartments, government programs meant to help people are so limited in scope they can barely help those who need them, churches are seen as exclusionary places rather than welcoming, and the list goes on and on and on. Anywhere you look, there is ample reason to be disappointed with the world we live in. As soon as we left Eden, we began to build cities and towns and we built them on a foundation of our own human fragility. We may reach up toward the ideals we all know to be good, but the foundational aspects of humanity always leave room for those ideals to be brought down.

The story that we read from our scripture is not a story of Jesus striking out against something that was meant to be evil, it was a necessary part of the work of the Temple on one hand. However, his striking out against them was meant to point toward something that people had denied. God had created the Temple to bring people together in worship and God’s people had begun to use that place in a way that excluded people from worshipping God. Jesus was seeking to reclaim a place and a service that were meant to serve God’s people and this work of recommitting a thing to God is something we have to be constantly willing to do as people of God.

We sometimes forget that the places in scripture were not just flat buildings with single rooms. The Temple is so monolithic in its presentation that we can forget people were using it every day. It was not some far off ideal, it was a place that people could go to and experience a unique encounter with God. In Jesus’s time the Temple was possibly at its most grand size and presentation. The building itself was ten stories tall and just shy of two football fields long. All around it was a massive courtyard that was itself part of a massive, raised platform. All around the outside of the courtyard were covered walkways where people set up administrative and commercial operations.

We do not have a complete catalogue of what was in these porticos, but I imagine they ran the gambit. Gift shops are not a new thing, so you could probably get souvenirs of the Temple and all kinds of other things. The most important stalls were the money changers and the animal sellers. The money changers would convert regional currency into one of several standardized currencies that people could spend in Jerusalem. The animals were sold specifically for sacrifices. It was not feasible for people to bring animals over many miles to offer as a sacrifice in the Temple, so they would bring money to buy the animal once they got to the Temple. It made perfect sense.

The problem is that these shops did not stay in the porticos. They spread out and grew, taking up more and more of the courtyard. The courtyard began to fill and inevitably there was less room in the courtyard for worshippers. In the week of Passover this place was going to be filled to the brim with people, and they were being pushed out for the money changers and the animal sellers to make money. Worse yet, the courtyard that was being encroached upon was the Gentile courtyard – this is where people who had found God outside of Judea were allowed to worship. People were coming to encounter God, and finding that money was more important than their presence. That is a lesson that needed to be refuted – one that Jesus took seriously.

We like to look at this story and see it as a gross abuse of excess. The opening of shops and the encroachment into worship space with them is an obvious evil, something we would never take part in. However, I think we all need to accept that we easily fall into traps where something created for good can become something that causes harm for other people. This can happen in the Church, in government, even in our own homes. If we are unable to review how they perform, what they actually convey to people when they encounter them, then we will inevitably drift into our own versions of the same sin.

If you go to most churches today, the first thing you will notice is how many signs they have up telling you what not to do. “Don’t park here!” “Don’t loiter!” “Don’t have any fun in our parking lot!” Signage that makes it clear, this is our space and you are not welcome in it. Many of them have gates up to keep people out of the nicer parts of the property. Gardens and awning that are locked away to make sure no one improper can use them. All of this for what? Appearances? Insurance liability? Perception by neighbors? None of it is for the Gospel that’s for sure.

If you get in the Church, then there are tons of obstacles to feeling at home. Inadequate signage means you have no idea where anything is. If you do not know about how the order of worship goes, you can easily be lost. Congregational responses that everyone knows through practice and experience can make it obvious you are not a usual guest. Small little things that quickly compound into an implied reality – this building is ours, and all those people who step into it and are aliens until they are completely assimilated.

As I said, these are all small things. Yet they add up to something much larger. There are bigger problems, more systemic in the Church and in the World. Yet, I’ll keep the scope small for now. When come together we do so in a space we have set up for worship. How do we make space to allow more people in, to meet God when they come to find him? For the people in the Temple, Jesus needed to throw over tables and swing a whip to get people to listen. I hope we do not need as much convincing to change our mindset.

Christ has opened his Church, his table, to all people. We must be conscious of how the things we do – even the good and necessary ones – can be twisted to be for us and by us. Let us repent of our shortsighted planning to keep the space for worshipping God wide open. – Amen