Zeal For God's House

March 3, 2024

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

John 2:13-22

Zeal for God’s House

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Jesus created a one-man riot at the Jerusalem temple that day. What if this were the first encounter you had with Jesus? You know what they say about first impressions! If this experience were all you knew about Jesus, you’d have a very harsh impression of him.

His behaviors at the temple are radically different than the Jesus we’ve come to know. His actions in such a very public place would have seemed downright scary. Who is this mad man? Nowadays, we’d recommend anger management training, for sure.

Jesus’ actions at the Jerusalem temple are very, very different from his usual demeanor. We all have many facets to our personalities. None of us fit into one, neat little box all the time. Jesus was no different. So what happened that triggered him to go berserk?

Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover observation. The population of Jerusalem about tripled during the holiday. Huge numbers of pilgrims descended on the city and the temple area. They were there for temple worship, which included animal sacrifice. That’s something very foreign to us, but typical in that era.

You couldn’t just offer any animal for your offering. It had to be an animal without blemish. How could pilgrims traveling from far away manage that? It would be difficult at best and impossible at worst.

And so animal dealers were brought in to help these people who needed an appropriate and acceptable animal: cattle and sheep, and also doves for the poorer worshippers.

It was all conducted for good purposes, to help people in their worship of the God of Israel. And yet, imagine the sounds and smells – cattle mooing, sheep bleating, the fresh manure, the dust and dirt.

And on top of it, not just any money could be used to make a monetary offering to the treasury. The coinage of Rome and much of the ancient world were not acceptable because they were marked with a human image. The only acceptable currency for an offering had to be without the graven images of people. So all money had to be changed into shekels. The shekel didn’t have a human image.

So people needed to change their money. In order to make this task easier for them, money changers were also located around the temple area.

Of course, the animal traders and the money changers stood to earn a healthy profit for providing these goods! The balance of supply and demand stood in their favor.

So a lot was going on in the temple area that day before the Passover. The rattle of coins, the voices of the animal vendors, the stench. Pilgrims wondering where they could get the best deal, who was trying to rip them off. Overall, just a general sense of mayhem and confusion.

And that’s when something inside of Jesus snapped. It wasn’t supposed to be this way! People had come here for the simple reason to worship God. And all these layers upon layers of complexity really weren’t helping, not at all.

Jesus wanted to clear it all away, all the mayhem, all the price gouging. He set about to do just that when he cleared the temple.

Nowadays, Jesus’ actions at the temple are sometimes quoted as a protest when one church group or another sells something: a youth bake sale; the women’s circle selling a cookbook. We’re told, “The church is not a marketplace.” I remember this protest came up at my first parish.

I think there are lessons to be learned in Jesus’ purging of the temple, but I don’t think it means that our youth shouldn’t have a bake sale. But let’s ask ourselves: What actions do we partake in that may have started as an enhancement of our worship, but have devolved into a detraction? Are there any aspects to our worship that need to be swept away and overturned?

I can think of one thing that has been swept away in my lifetime. When I was growing up, we had little cards in our church pews, next to the stubby pencils. It was a communion card. If you were planning to receive communion, you first had to fill out one of these cards.

Now, the purpose behind the card was benevolent. After worship, all the cards were collected. And then on Monday, the church secretary got out the big book of church membership and put a check mark next to the date of everyone who received communion. The purpose was two-fold. Number one, it helped the pastor who needed to fill out the year-end parochial report for the national church. How many members communed this year? You just had to tally up all the people with a mark by their name. And that attendance record also revealed trends. With a glance, you could see who was missing from worship. Did they need a caring house call from the pastor?