Title: Into Sacred Space with Jesus
Text: John 2:13-22
Thesis: Jesus is adamant that sacred space be preserved as sacred space.
Introduction:
The great temptation in working with this text is to cite Jesus as our example to act in righteous indignation against all that is offensive to us in our culture. Some would say that Jesus’ driving the money changers from the temple with a whip is a call to Xtreme or militant Christianity. Some would say it is time that Christians stop being nice and start bashing a few gays and burning some abortion clinics.
I would like to suggest that this text is not a springboard for attacking your favorite whipping boy. It is about something much closer to home and to our hearts. It is about keeping sacred space sacred.
Bonnie and I spent the week between Christmas and New Years in Chicago with our family. On one occasion I was reading the Chicago Tribune, 5 year old Samson was sitting on my lap. I happened upon one of those feel good, Christmas spirit news articles about the seasonal Santa’s who bring joy to children throughout the Chicago metro area. The Santa pictured with the article was black. I pointed to the picture and said to Samson, “Look Samson, there’s a picture of Santa.” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “That’s not Santa. Santa is white.”
Something in me ached as I realized my grandson, a person of color, believed Santa was of necessity, white. A black Santa was an atypical Santa to Samson.
We all have our perceptions and preferred images of Jesus as well.
Most of us have grown up with Sallman’s “Head of Christ” so that may be your image of Jesus.
• Project Sallman’s “Head of Christ”
When I was in college someone came up with a really macho masculine image of Christ.
• Project the Rugged Portrait of Christ
You might prefer what I call the handsome Christ.
• Project the Handsome Hollywood Christ
Or you might be partial to the blond and blue-eyed Christ.
• Project the Blond and Blue-eyed Nordic Christ
Whatever your image of Christ, the most atypical image is that of Jesus Christ wielding a whip, flipping tables over, and driving money-changers from the temple.
To say that Jesus Christ was a wild-eyed, enraged, maniac would not be accurate. However, to say he was passionate about God’s house would be. After the incident the disciples remembered the Old Testament prophecy describing the Messiah as having “passion for God’s house.” So when Jesus saw what was happening in the temple he was angry.
Jesus did not immediately “fly-off-the-handle” when he saw the abuses in the temple, which serves to underscore the idea that the incident was not the reaction of a hothead. The bible says that he made a whip with some ropes and chased the merchants and money-changers out of the temple. In other words, Jesus was very deliberate about what he did.
But non-the-less, the image of gentle Jesus wielding a handmade whip, turning over tables, and chasing people out of the temple is an atypical or irregular picture of Jesus.
What would compel Jesus to do such a thing?
I. Jesus took exception to the social injustice he saw in the temple.
In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; and he saw money changers behind their counters. John 2:13-14
The setting was the Annual Passover observance that took place in the city of Jerusalem. The law required every male living within twenty miles of Jerusalem to attend. In addition to that, celebrating Passover in Jerusalem was a pilgrimage every Jew looked forward to at some time in their life… it might be likened to the Muslims’ pilgrimage to Mecca. So it was big and it was likely that upwards of two million Jewish pilgrims would be in Jerusalem for the Passover.
It was not only a big religious event, it was big
business for the city and for two primary groups doing business at the Temple.
The two named culprits were the merchants and the money-changers:
A. The Merchants
As you know, all sacrifices had to be spotless and without blemish… so every critter offered as a sacrifice had to be approved by Temple inspectors. So not only was it difficult to bring your own sacrifice from home, so to speak, it was also nigh unto impossible to get your own sacrifice approved. So pilgrims who wished to offer a burnt offering to God had to purchase their sacrificial victim from the merchants.
Needless to say, the merchants had the corner on the livestock market and they, as we used to say in Iowa, “cut a fat hog” so to speak, with every sale. They were ripping off the public.
I know nothing like this happened when the Democratic National Convention was held here in Denver. But Bonnie and I got a taste of it when we were attempting to get a motel room in St. Paul just before the Republican National Convention in September of 2008. The downtown hotels were all booked by pre-convention workers early on and the rates during the convention were exorbitant . But we found a reasonably priced room in a nearby suburb where there were a number of Microtel and Homestad extended stay type motels for the few days leading up to the Convention. But on the eve of the convention, everyone was booted and the rates were doubled or tripled for incoming delegates to the convention. If you were a delegate and wanted a place to stay within fifty miles of St. Paul, Minnesota… you forked over two or three hundred dollars for a seventy dollar room.
Jesus saw religious pilgrims being gouged and forced to fork over the money, if they wished to offer a sacrifice to God and he did not like it.
And then there were the money changers.
B. The Money Changers
In the Jewish tradition of that day, money took two forms. One form was secular money that could be used for ordinary or secular debt and the other was sacred money that had to be used for religious debt. Every male over 19 years old had to pay a Temple tax and that Temple tax had to be paid in Galilean Shekels or Temple Shekels. So if you arrived in Jerusalem with another currency like Euros, Japanese Yens, U.S. Dollars, or whatever currency you used where you lived, it had to be converted to Shekels in order to pay the Temple tax.
The Temple tax was equivalent to a day’s wages for the typical laborer and the going exchange rate to convert whatever currency you had to Galilean Shekels was an additional half-days wage… an exorbitant amount. But what was the devout Jewish pilgrim to do but fork over the money.
Jesus was not pleased with the fleecing of people who wished to pay their Temple tax either.
But there is another reason Jesus was angry and it had to do with the exclusion of people from worship. So in addition to the victims who had been fleeced by the merchants and money changers, there were those whose sacred space had been converted into a bustling market filled with hawkers plying their wares and hucksters haggling over exchange rates, plus the clamor associated with pens of cattle and sheep and crates of doves.
They were the people denied sacred space.
II. Jesus took exception when people were denied sacred space for worship.
Jesus went over to the people who sold doves and said, “Get these things out of here. Don’t turn my Father’s house into a marketplace!” John 2:16
“My Temple will be called a place for prayer for all nations, but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” Mark 11:17
A. The people of the nations were denied sacred space
The key to this insight is recorded in Mark 11:17 where Jesus said quoted Isaiah 56:7, “My Temple will be called a place for prayer for all nations, but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”
The key phrase is “for all nations.”
The Temple had a series of courts leading into the inner sanctum or the Holy of Holies. There was the Court of the Gentile which led to the Court of Women which led to the Court of the Israelites, which led to the Court of the Priests. Priests could get closest to the presence of God, so to speak, then the men, then the women, and finally the Gentiles. The Gentile converts or seekers were already relegated to the fringes… and now the only place they could worship was taken over by merchants with their cattle, sheep, and doves, the booths of money changers, and the masses of people doing business in order to go in to worship.
That is the other thing that got caught in Jesus’ craw. The people of “the nations” who had come to worship God were shut out from the presence of God. The Court of the Gentiles had been converted into a place where no one could worship God.
Our faith community was founded by German immigrants. Though the face of our church has changed to reflect the face of our community, it was not always so. The same can be said of nearly every other church founded in America. Swedes founded Swede churches. Germans founded German churches. The Irish founded churches reflecting their heritage as did Italians, and Finns. In our community there are two churches that have been founded by and are predominately Russian. There is a United Methodist congregation down on University that is named the Korean United Methodist Church. The Hmong often rent our facilities for larger gatherings. We understand how ethnic peoples, like birds of a feather, initially flock together until they eventually reflect the stew pot that is America.
So imagine our congregation as it might have been if we were of Jewish heritage at the time of Christ. The German brotherhood would be seated in the front section with the remaining sections left to German women and children. Then imagine the Narthex as an outer court so to speak. Anyone else who wished to worship at 1st German Church had to sit out in the Narthex if they wanted to worship.
Now envision the Ladies Aide Society and the Noodle Group and the Piece Maker Quilters Group all setting up booths in the Narthex for the purpose of fundraising. There would be a row of tables piled high with home-made egg noodles, tables of quilts and lap blankets, and there might be another row of tables where the youth were conducting their chili cook-off. The place would be hopping with so much activity that you could hardly squeeze through the crowd to get into the sanctuary. And if you were not of German descent and had hoped to at least be able to worship on the fringes… there was simply no place for you to worship. The sacred space reserved for you was taken by merchants and chili tasters.
In addition to the obvious injustices related to the sale of sacrificial offerings and the exchanges of currency… the biggie was that there were sincere seekers who were not only relegated to the religious fringe but were literally shut out from worshipping God. People were being denied sacred space. And Jesus was angry over both the injustices that ran rampant to the hurt and detriment of all who were seeking the presence of God.
Let me be perfectly clear… Jesus was not opposed to the sale of sacrificial offerings or the exchange of currency. It was the fleecing of the people he opposed.
Jesus was not opposed to these activities taking place within proximity of the Temple. He was opposed to them taking place in a sacred place set aside for worship.
So there were two issues:
• They had turned the Temple into a pilgrim fleecing den of thieves.
• They had shut out sincere seekers from their sacred place for prayer.
His actions, quite understandably, roused the sensitivities of the religious leaders who challenged his authority to drive out the merchants and money-changers. They asked, “What right do you have to do these things?” And then they threw down the gauntlet demanding, “If you have this authority from God, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.” John 2:18
Jesus responded, “All right, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (But by “this temple” Jesus meant his body…) John 2:20-21
In an astounding leap, Jesus moved the attention from the sacred space that was to the Jewish people the Temple which took forty-six years to build, to the temple that was his body, which would be crucified on Good Friday and resurrected on Easter morning. It was a point lost on everyone until after the resurrection when the disciples put two and two together.
The easy thing to do is transfer the reverence for the sacred space of the Jewish Temple to reverence for the sacred space of the Christian Church building as I did in the illustration a few minutes ago. But there is more at work here than meets the eye…
What are we to make of this transition from temple building to temple body? In keeping with this leap from temple building to temple body, may we assume that that the temple space that is our bodies is also sacred space? And that…
III. Jesus takes exception when there is no sacred space in our lives.
Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So honor God with your body. I Corinthians 6:19-20
A. The God’s Spirit lived in Jesus.
When Jesus came up out of the water at his baptism, he saw the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on him… Mark 1:10
B. The God’s Spirit lives in us.
Don’t you realize that all of you together are temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will bring ruin upon anyone who ruins this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you Christians are that temple. I Corinthians 3:16-17
We who believe are carefully joined together, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also joined together as part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2:21-22
So if we understand that our bodies are the dwelling place of God and if we believe we encounter God in our inner beings…
If Jesus were to take exception to the lack of sacred space in our lives… how would he cleanse our temples so as to reclaim sacred space?
Conclusion:
I’ve been in many homes over the years and have seen just about everything. It seems no matter how fastidious a homemaker may be, nearly everyone apologizes for their mess whether it is messy or not. A mess is kind of a matter of perception. A little or a lot cluttered is kind of the norm.
I know that most of us live in our homes and most of us put out a bit of extra effort if we know someone is coming to visit… and if someone drops by unexpectedly we may resort to shushing everyone and just not answering the door rather than be embarrassed to have someone see our mess.
Let’s take a look at this home and imagine it could be the one in which we live. The clip is entitled: “My Heart Christ’s Home.”
Play YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAdMVhx3SSQ
Years ago Robert Boyd Munger wrote the little devotional entitled “My Heart Christ’s Home” in which he described what happened after he invited Jesus Christ into his life. He likened Christ’s coming into his life as inviting a guest into his home.
In his life he had a library or den, a dining room, a living room, a workroom, and a rec room. Each room represented different areas of his life including what he read, the TV programs and DVDs he watched, his appetites or the things that he loved and longed for, his work, the people he hung out with and places he liked to go. As he gave Jesus the nickel tour of his life he found that he was embarrassed to show Jesus much of the real stuff of his life, so he asked Jesus to help him clean up some of the mess so Jesus would feel more and more at home in his life. Plus, he also had what he called the hall closet, which he kept locked because in the hall closet were the deepest, darkest secrets of his life that he fully intended to take to his grave. No one was to ever see the stuff in the hall closet… especially Jesus. But perhaps most telling was the living room, where he had promised to sit with Jesus every night so they could chat and get to know each other. Munger described his great sadness when one morning he came down stairs and discovered Jesus was still sitting in the living room waiting for him from the night before… he had totally spaced, neglected his guest, and gone to bed leaving his guest sitting alone in the living room.
At the conclusion of the little devotional the owner of the home realized that he did not want Jesus to just be a guest relegated to certain places in his life but that Jesus should be welcomed into every nook and cranny of his life, including the hall closet. So he transferred title of his home to Jesus so that his entire life would be a sacred place suitable for Jesus to live. He invited Christ to do whatever sweeping and cleaning and tossing necessary to make his life that kind of place.
That is the challenge before us today… will we invite Jesus to be more than an occasional guest who is welcome in certain parts of our lives or will we invite Jesus to move in and make all of who we are sacred space where we may live comfortably with Jesus Christ?
This is what we must do:
We must consider our bodies to be sacred spaces where God’s presence is felt, God’s voice is heard, and God’s will is obeyed.
