PAST SERMON 2009 #5
by Reverend Pat Blythe, delivered on Sunday March 15, 2009,
at the Church of the Holy Spirit. (Lent 3 Year B)
When We Anger Christ
Today’s reading of the 10 Commandments is a wakeup call for us. Do you remember memorizing them as a child? I do. When we really look at them, what they do is convict us of our sins, and as one writer said “send us to the woodshed” where we sit in our sin and wait for punishment. None of us is spared when we try and measure up to those laws. We just can’t do it! They were given to Moses after their flight from Egypt as a way of preventing chaos among the people. They were laws by which to live. The only difficulty was — there were thousands of rules that then needed to be formulated in order to unpack them and understand them. (Try reading Leviticus) This resulted in legalism and sucked the energy and desire to worship out of the people. They just could never measure up!
Hence in Jesus’ time, the job of the Pharisees became a policing of the law. They were the ‘God Squad’ so to speak. They believed it was their job to judge people in accordance with the laws of Moses, and to get them to repent of their sins. It was required that atonement must be made for sin.
And every Jewish male from 15 miles around Jerusalem was required to attend the Passover (The greatest of the Jewish festivals). There could be two and a half to four million people in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, and there were requirements made of the pilgrims. They must each pay a temple tax equivalent to about 2 days pay, but it must be paid in temple currency because any other was deemed profane. They were also required to offer unblemished, or perfect doves, sheep, goats or oxen as an atonement for their sins. Each animal had to be inspected and deemed unblemished in order to be offered for sacrifice, and of course there was a fee for that!
To abide by the temple rules, moneychangers and sellers of birds and animals were necessary at the time of Passover. Wm. Barclay says that if they had been straightforward they would have fulfilled an honest and necessary service.
Instead of being outside the temple, they were in the Court of the Gentiles, where ordinary people gathered to pray and worship. You can imagine the din — something like church on Sunday mornings before the Service. If you want to pray, you just might have to wear earplugs.
Unfortunately, the sellers became corrupt, gouging the poor. They would charge a high fee to change the money (the equivalent of about one day’s wage.). And the sellers of animals and birds for sacrifice charged an exorbitant amount. (As an example: outside the temple courts a pair of doves would cost about 4 pence, but inside they were charged 75 pence.). These money changers and sellers were permitted to be there at the invitation of the High Priests, and you can bet they took a large percentage of the sales and currency exchanges.
It’s into this fray that Jesus entered.
The synoptic Gospels have this story at the end of Jesus’ ministry and life — during the week of the Passover. But John located it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry — because he had a different emphasis than the others. John’s is a theological Gospel, set on showing Jesus as the Messiah. This story of Jesus making a whip of cords and driving out the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals certainly happened with an authority from Jesus that surprised them. Was the Messiah among them?
Think of how you picture Jesus — this was a topic we brought up our Lenten study the other night. Most of us pictured a humble, gentle, passive, loving Jesus who plays with children, heals the sick, forgives sinners and is generally a nice guy.
As a result some were surprised and confused at his white-hot anger in this story. Jesus wasn’t just upset with what was going on — he was furious — enough to take a whip and use it to drive out the corrupt temple extortionists.
Jerome actually thought that the mere sight of Jesus made the whip unnecessary “because a certain ‘fiery and starry light shone from his eyes and the majesty of the Godhead gleamed in his face.”
Because Jesus loved God, he also loved God’s people, and he couldn’t stand passively by while the worshippers in Jerusalem were treated so badly.
What enraged Jesus was the rampant and shameless social injustice — in the name of religion! Jesus acted as he did, because God’s house was being desecrated.- there was no reverent worship. He also wanted to show that the whole scene of animal sacrifice was completely irrelevant. He acted because God’s house was to be a House of Prayer. “The temple authorities and the Jewish traders were making the Court of the Gentiles into an uproar and a rabble where no one could pray ”. (Barclay p 113 John’s commentary)
“Take these things out of here, he said. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
You’ve no doubt been to a farmer’s market. “In that place , the Court of the Gentiles, the lowing of the oxen, the bleating of the sheep, the cooing of the doves, the shouts of the hucksters, the rattle of coins, the voices raised in bargaining disputes — all these combined to make the Court of the Gentiles a place where worship was an impossibility.” (ibid)
So instead of the meek and mild Jesus we know from “Jesus Loves Me”, we have a fiery angry Jesus who is livid about how the poor are treated and exploited. Jesus is the lover of our souls (as the hymn says) and all souls belong to him. He could not abide the abuse he saw happening!.
Today, abuse happens in our churches, just as it did in Jesus’ time. The poor are often marginalized or ignored and not made to feel welcome. We want new people to come because we need their money, not because they need Jesus and we can be conduits for them. Churches are closing because they do very little outreach and thus become ingrown and septic. We find people leaving the church and screaming loudly because of the same sex blessing issue before us now, both for and against it. All the while, gays are being marginalized and treated as less than human.
I saw Milk the other night. I learned a great deal. I recommend it. We see alienation and abuse in our society too. We war against our brothers and sisters just because of the colour of their skin or their beliefs or because we think we have a better way for them to live. Because of our greed, the poor are getting poorer. People in our city don’t have enough to eat, don’t have shelter and don’t have people to care for them.
Another quote from Wm. Barclay:
“Is there anything in our church life – a snobbishness, an exclusiveness, a coldness, a lack of welcome, a tendency to make the congregation into a closed club, an arrogance, a fastidiousness — which keeps the seeking stranger out? Remember the wrath of Jesus against those who made it difficult and even impossible for the seeking stranger to make contact with God.”
These things, among many others, make Jesus white hot angry!
In the Gospel, the Jews were looking for a sign to show that Jesus had authority to chase out the moneychangers and sellers from the temple. He said to them: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The temple had taken 46 years to build and still it was not finished. How could Jesus rebuild it in three days?
Of course he was referring to his death and resurrection. His body is the temple and we, being in him are the living stones he uses to continue to build his church. After his resurrection, the disciples ‘got it’ when they remembered what he had said.
Go back to the comment about the woodshed which I shared at the beginning. Because of our sin, we deserve to be punished …yet…. Christ doesn’t come at us with a big stick or a whip of cords to beat us up. He comes bringing forgiveness and the desire to work with us to change us into the persons we are meant to be. That’s what Lent is all about!
We fail God and break his commandments. We anger Christ when we abuse those who are marginalized or victimized or poor. And the woodshed is not a solitary place — we are all in it together.
But — Jesus gave his life for you and for me, so that we can do his work in the world, to the glory the Father.
AMEN.