John 2:13-22
Paonia United Methodist Church
March 23, 2002
Folks, let me start off by being as transparent as possible with you.
I have really struggled with what to say to you today.
I have struggled because I believe that the church has to be
Relevant to the world outside…
And right now, the world is deeply divided and violent.
Anything I say about the conflict in the Middle East is guaranteed to
Tick some folks off because feelings run very deep.
With that said, I still have to give you something
This morning that is relevant to the world we live in.
So, I would as you to set aside your own personal feelings for a moment,
And remember what we are here for today.
We are here to gather together as a body and to worship.
I would like to take this moment to share with you a little more
About myself and my own world view.
As most of you have well figured out,
I have an unusual last name.
Nadasi is Hungarian,
It is a common name, but it is not the name of our ancestry.
My grandfather changed our last name from Mercs,
That the family would not be confused as Jewish,
As a madman by the name of Adolf Hitler was rounding
Up the Jews and taking over Europe.
Thankfully, they did not get as far as to reach my family.
Our name was never changed back.
They were safe up until the invasion by the Soviets in 1958.
When the Russians rolled in,
My Grandfather Yanosh, (John) for whom I am named after,
Told his sons to flee.
Grandpa refused to become a “good communist.”
My father and several of my uncles fought against the Soviet invasion,
But the resistance was inevitably crushed.
Grandpa hid with my aunt underneath a road
In a drainage culvert for several years
When the communists came to take her for “re-education.”
The older brothers ran for the borders.
Several were captured and later escaped under gunfire
Into Yugoslavia and Austria.
My father was held in a former WWII concentration camp
Until he was eventually granted amnesty in the United States.
My Orthodox Catholic father met a Southern Baptist girl,
And well, lets just say they agreed on the United Brethren, now
The United Methodist Church and here I am.
Why do I tell you this story?
For this reason…
We don’t have much love for tyrants in my family,
And I am not going to lose much sleep seeing this one go.
I want you to at least try and understand the lens that
I look through when I see the world.
You do not have to see it the way I do.
In fact, the written polity of our denomination is decidedly
Pacifistic. So, if that is who you are,
There are plenty in the Methodist church
Who are with you.
We are not a creedal church…
We are not forced to all believe the same thing.
We do not all have to have the same world view in order
To belong to this body.
Me personally, I am not a pacifist.
I am not real keen on war either.
What I want is a safe and stable world to one day
Maybe raise some kids in.
As I told my colleagues,
It would be my pleasure to join with them and hold
Hands singing “We are the world”
To the gentle scent lavender aroma therapy candles.
The problem is, ignoring evil doesn’t make it go away…
It only makes us blind to it.
Like I said at the beginning,
I struggled with what I wanted to say to you today…
It is somewhat ironic the choice of the lectionary text for this morning.
It is the one and only violent outburst we see from the person
Of Christ recorded in Scripture.
John 2
13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!"
17His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me."[1]
18Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"
19Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
20The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.[2] 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
This is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, the first thing I should say is that I have seen this Scripture
Used to justify all sorts of insidious behavior on the part of Christians.
And, it usually begins like this…
Well, Jesus got angry…
And therefore…
And you can plug in just about anything from
Kicking the dog to all out nuclear war.
I don’t think that’s a very responsible use of the Scripture.
There is a certain context that this Scripture is placed in.
The first thing I think is important to notice is that in
Jesus’ 33 years of life, and 3 years of public ministry
This is the only outburst like this.
People who have a bad day… everyday…
Don’t get to quote this.
It was a one time event.
The other thing that I want you to remember is that this is right before the cross.
I suspect Jesus was just a bit stressed out.
So, give him a little latitude here.
And finally, the most important thing is this.
He wasn’t angry because of anything that someone had done to him…
He was angry that he was standing in the holy place of God,
The Jerusalem temple… and it was being profaned
By the blasphemy of events that were going on inside.
What blasphemy?
This was a holy time of year, it was the Passover;
and people in the temple courts were doing what was required of them to do
under Jewish law.
So far so good.
They were buying and selling animals for the purpose of offering God
a sacrifice in the temple. It was inconvenient for them to bring their own
animal sacrifices, as they were pilgrims who traveled some distance
to Jerusalem for the Passover.
The money changers were necessary because the people couldn’t
use the Roman money, which had the inscription of the emperor on it.
They needed to exchange Roman money for the Jewish shekel,
which was used to support the temple priests
as well as the maintenance of the temple with a temple tax.
Here is where the problem was.
The money changers were ripping off the citizens in their exchange rates.
They were raising the price of the “sacrifice animals”
In this full service temple.
They were getting rich off of these people’s religious obligations.
The religion had become such a religion of convenience that it
No longer meant anything except to the people making a profit on it.
God got completely lost in their religion.
The truth got lost.
So what happens?
Jesus goes postal and clears the place out.
Again, there is a context here.
He is offended in the name of God his father
And clears the temple out because of it.
Jesus’ anger is not a justification for you
To blow up and say, “Jesus did it too.”
It doesn’t work that way.
This was a righteous anger born
Of righteous indignation to the blasphemy in his father’s house.
And, I suspect with the cross looming in the not so distant future,
It only made his decision to carry out God’s mission that much more complicated.
Why? Because the religion had become pointless.
Why bother dying for it?
Yeah, I bet he was ticked.
Now, that’s what I think happened here.
I think when people get the big picture…
“Jesus got angry too…” ceases to be an excuse for inexcusable behavior.
His outburst was justified…
Ours rarely are.
“Jesus got angry too” is not a justification for war.
Its not now… and it never has been.
What does this have to do with us?
Well, I think that “truth” in this day can be just as obscure and
Hard to find.
The world we live in now is far more complicated than in Jesus day.
You can be shot for looking at someone the wrong way in some cities.
9/11 has us still living on edge.
We get daily “Terror Alerts” on just how afraid we are supposed
To be.
And now, we have a new war.
And, the first casualty in any war is always the truth.
I don’t think that we the American people truly know what is going on.
And, I think if we did, we would only be that much more confused by it
And what to do about it.
I think that our world situation is very complicated and convoluted.
Unfortunately, when the truth gets lost,
We get lost.
This is the first time in a long time that I have
Actually believed a politician, let alone a president, when he speaks.
I hope I am not disappointed again.
Time will tell.
Time will show us where the money goes from the oil wells.
Time will show whether or not these weapons of mass destruction
exist or if this is about some ulterior motive.
God help us if this becomes a modern day version of the Crusades.
God help us if we become like the terrorists and kill in his name.
Time will tell what the truth really is.
It has a way of doing that.
Like you, I have my beliefs and theories,
But when it comes right down to it,
I don’t know any more than you,
And I have yet to get a phone call from Washington
Asking my opinion on the matter.
So, let me offer you a piece of truth that you can hang onto.
Although I remain hopeful in our leadership…
this is not where my true hope lies.
My hope lies in something even more mysterious and difficult to believe.
My hope lies in an empty tomb in Jerusalem.
My hope lies in world peace created by the Prince of Peace.
My hope does not revolve around military might and power.
My hope does not rest in the leadership of the United States.
My hope is that God my father hears me when I whisper his name.
People of God…
And I address you as that for a reason,
Because that is who you are and where your first loyalty
Must be…
People of God, we are called first to be people of the cross.
People who love peace, who work together for justice, who confront evil.
We are not called to hide behind the cross when it is convenient.
We are not called to swing the cross as a club either.
We are called to be a people of prayer who carry a cross.
Hindsight has a way of making clear the legitimacy of conflict.
I suspect this conflict will be no different.
But until then, and even then, we are to remain faithful
To Christ our Lord and his teaching.
We are to pray for our enemies.
Combatants, non-combatants…
We are to pray for our national leaders, whether you like them or not.
We are especially to pray for the decisions that they are making.
Conflicts seldom have predictable outcomes.
We need prayer.
We are to pray for the innocent and the victims of this conflict.
We are to pray for our soldiers’ safety.
And, we are to pray for the observer’s, the journalists,
that after this conflict we might know the full truth.
Folks, prayer may not move political leaders,
But it does move the hand of God.
And politicians and tyrants alike are never out of his reach.
And, that is the truth that I offer to you this morning.
Prayer moves the hand of God…
And we need his hand more now that ever.
Let us join together this morning and pray for our nation,
Our world, and the rest of God’s children.
