John 2:13-25 – Called to be Rebels
You may have heard of Emily Post. She was born in the early 1870’s and died in 1960. She was the Martha Stewart of her day. Although she wrote a syndicated newspaper column and for a time also hosted a radio program, what made her famous was her book, called Etiquette. This book, which ran through 10 editions at the publishers, taught people how to get along politely in society.
Some of what she said was good. For instance, Mrs. Post wrote that, “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.” She also said, “There is no reason why you should be bored when you can be otherwise.”
However, she also wrote, “To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.” Did you catch that? Do exactly what your neighbors do. Someone else said this thought in a more familiar way: “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” Now, I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem very smart to me. Nor does it sound very Jesus-like.
Over the years the church has given the impression of a quiet and calm and reserved Jesus. The Jesus who fit in and never ruffled any feathers. The Mister Rogers/Santa Claus/grandfather/friendly postman Jesus. The Jesus who was so meek and mild that a person couldn’t imagine anyone getting so mad at Him as to kill Him. But that’s only half the picture. Let’s read John 2:12-25.
This is a picture of Jesus we don’t see very often. It’s the angry Jesus, the loud Jesus, the not-so-meek-and-mild Jesus. Let me describe the scene for you. It’s Passover time. That’s the holiday/holy day celebrated in early spring, reminding the people of God’s deliverance from slavery in the land of Egypt. It’s a time of unleavened bread, lamb, and parsley. It’s a time of sacrificial lambs and pilgrimages to Jerusalem. And Jesus has come to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship.
But what Jesus sees at the Temple apparently upsets Him greatly. V14 says that in the temple courts, Jesus finds “men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” The older translations just use the word “temple” there, but the word is different from the verses later in the passage. The word means the outer courtyard of the Temple, not the inner places. The temple courtyards were the places for the Gentiles to worship.
But instead of the Gentiles, the non-Jews, the ones who want to worship God but have not gone through the rituals of becoming Jews, instead of their being able to worship, what’s there is booths. Now, these booths serve practical purposes. Pilgrims, Jews and non-Jews alike, coming in from foreign lands, need to exchange their foreign coins into Palestinian currency. After all, what’s on their coins are images of the Caesar, which would be next to blasphemous to offer to God. In addition to the money changers, those who come from a great distance would need to buy sacrificial animals to offer at the Temple.
None of this in itself is bad. The people there in the temple courts are offering legitimate services to help people worship. The word is “pragmatic”. It means practical. It means useful. It means that something is being done because it works.
But pragmatic isn’t always good. It might be pragmatic for a church not to talk about people being sinners, in order to attract more people, but cutting that out isn’t good. So pragmatic isn’t always a good thing. And the men in their booths serving useful purposes isn’t good either. What they are doing is making it impossible for the Gentiles to come and worship. They are getting in the way of real worshippers coming to do some real worship. What started off as a service has become a dis-service. And Jesus sees this.
There is likely more to it as well. Likely the money changers are doing some price gouging. Likely there is a high exchange rate for foreign currency, a statement that sounds more like a financial report than a sermon. It all smacks of people earning money off other people’s religious experience. As if religious devotion has to put your money into other people’s pockets.
Now, it’s not that money never gets involved in worship. Jesus spoke often about money. He spoke more about money than He did about heaven and hell combined. Don’t think that a pastor talking about money is somehow greedy or self-serving. A preacher who talks about money is only following Jesus’ path.
But milking a person for all they’re worth to put that into his own pockets is unbecoming of a preacher. Or a televangelist. Or a ridiculously priced book club. It drives me crazy to walk into a Christian bookstore and see ugly and cheap merchandise priced way too high, as if to say that a spiritual person would or should buy it anyway.
I like the story of a man who walked into a gift shop that sold religious items. Near the cash register he saw a display of caps with "WWJD" printed on all of them. He was puzzled over what the letters could mean, so he asked the clerk. The clerk replied that the letters stood for "What Would Jesus Do", and was meant to inspire people to not make rash decisions, but rather to imagine what Jesus would do in the same situation. The man thought a moment and then replied, "Well, I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t pay $17.95 for one of these caps."
Ah, there it is. What would Jesus do? What wouldn’t Jesus do? Our passage today shows us that Jesus sometimes went against the grain. Sometimes Jesus rose up against the established religious authorities. Sometimes Jesus was a rebel.
Now, you don’t hear this thought very much. The word “rebel” usually carries negative connotations with it. Rebelling against society. Rebelling against your parents. Rebelling against God. And we usually lump all these together and say that rebelling against the church is bad too. Well, hold on a second. Are they the same?
Is it possible to be a rebel and a believer? Is it possible to rebel against the church but not against God? I have to say, yes. I have to say that you can rebel against the church but not be rebelling against God. I look at Jesus. He was rebelling, fighting back, against the established religious authorities, but not against His Father. He wasn’t saying that the whole system was to be thrown out – not yet, anyway. He was saying there were flaws and problems in how people were acting on it.
And it’s the same for us. We know the church is not perfect. Nobody says it is. But we fight against anybody who fights against it. It’s like we are saying, “Oh, we know we’re not perfect, and we have problems, but we’re the best thing going, so don’t question us or leave us.” We fight against others who have different theologies. We fight against different kinds of music or different instruments or different ways of worship.
But we can see that Jesus went against the grain. Jesus was an upstream swimmer. He didn’t care if He fit in with the other religious-looking folks. It was Voltaire who said, “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.” And that’s what happened to Jesus. He was lashed out at, because He dared to oppose the rulers.
But sometimes as believers, we have to rebel. I don’t mean rebel against God. I mean, rebel against society. Rebel against the way that everybody else does things. Rebel against the norm. Don’t do something just because everyone else is doing it. Don’t go through motions if you believe that there is a better way to do it. Don’t act like anybody besides yourself.
You see, we tell these things to students in high school, but then we turn around and say that you shouldn’t question anything in the church. Don’t ask questions. Don’t go against the grain. Do what everybody else does. Believe what everybody else does. Don’t walk away from what you were taught to believe.
But the problem is, what we were taught isn’t always right. We were taught to wear our best for Sundays. That’s not strictly biblical. That’s a good thought wrapped up in tradition with no scriptural proof. Over the years we were taught that for a man and wife to be intimate, without the intention to conceive a child, was wrong. Without being blunt, a husband and wife weren’t allowed to have fun. That was wrong.
We were taught that any music that had drums or guitars or something loud was un-spiritual. That thought is just plain wrong and un-scriptural. We were taught that a man of God shouldn’t have a beard. That’s not scriptural either. Now, please understand: I am not against tradition as such. I’m just saying that not all traditions are good and useful and biblical. I’m saying that rebelling against tradition is not the same as rebelling against God.
Now, it’s certainly easier not to rebel. It requires less thought, for sure. It means you don’t have to think for yourself if you never question the traditions of the church. It means you never have to try to be your own person if you just blindly accept everything handed to you.
And everybody has traditions. You do what you do, partly by choice, partly by habit. You have traditions in your life. There’s no getting around it, and there never will be. But, and here’s the point, you have to decide for your own walk what you will do and whom you will follow. You need to decide that you will follow the Lord in all your ways. Not because someone else does it, but because you feel that you need to do it. Come to church. Sing the songs. Give the money. Pray. Read your Bible. Share God’s love. Do these things, not because someone told you, but because you want to follow God in all your ways.
And there will be times when what you feel God is leading you to do will be different from what you have been taught, and different from what others around you are doing. That’s OK. That’s scary, but it’s OK anyway. In those times, you need to do what God wants you to do. It might look like rebellion. And maybe it is. But it’s good rebellion. It’s obedience. It’s Jesus. It’s John the Baptist. It’s Elijah. It’s all the disciples who would not tow the party line. It’s being a rebel with a cause.
JB Phillips, who wrote a translation of the Bible, also wrote a book called Your God is Too Small. N it, he commented on the old children’s poem that says, “Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as He.”
This is what he says about the poem: “This word ‘mild’ is apparently deliberately used to describe a man who did not hesitate to challenge and expose the hypocrisies of the religious people of His day; a man who had such ‘personality’ that He walked unscathed through a murderous crowd; a man so far from being a nonentity that He was regarded by the authorities as a public danger; a man who could be moved to violent anger by shameless exploitation or by smug complacent orthodoxy; a man of such courage that He deliberately walked to what He knew would mean death, despite the earnest pleas of well-meaning friends! Mild! What a word to use for a personality whose challenge and strange attractiveness nineteen centuries have by no means exhausted. Jesus Christ might well be called ‘meek,’ in the sense of being selfless and humble and utterly devoted to what He considered right, whatever the personal cost; but ‘mild,’ never!”
Listen: you don’t have to be mild. You don’t have to fit in. As long as God is leading you, you don whatever you have to do to obey Him. You can be rebel, as long as the cause is to please Him in all ways.
