Jesus Came…To Repair the World

Ex. 20:1-7 & John 2:13-25

Rev. Vickie Miller

 

Last Saturday we joined together in a class called Discover Your Spiritual Type and we took an assessment to see which ways we leaned spiritually.  The author of the book, Corrine Ware, has identified four different spiritual types.  Type 1’s like tradition and scripture and words, Type 2 are spiritually emotional, Type 3 like retreat and solitude and Type 4 are the social activists who want to change the world.  We found in the class that each of us are spiritually unique which is what makes the church balanced and healthy. 

 

In our scripture today from Exodus you may have noticed that they are the Ten Commandments – principles for a healthy and balanced society living in right relationship with each other.  Unfortunately, the religious and Temple leaders interpreted God’s law in ways that were very difficult for people.  Take for example, the Sabbath day which we find in the Exodus reading as one of the precious Ten Commandments.  

 

What was meant to be a day of worship turned into a day of rules with over 1500 prohibited acts on the Sabbath.  They defined that doing no work on the Sabbath meant that a person could not comb their hair or wash their face, they could not put out a fire, could not set a broken leg or bind a bloody wound, could not clean up a spill, take medicine, save books from a fire if they mentioned the name of God, remove an outer garment or wring it out if it got wet.  Wow – talk about being spiritually unbalanced.  The religious authorities who thought up this stuff must have been off-the-scale type 1’s! 

 

With all of these Sabbath laws, I have this image of a poor Jewish person attempting to go about the Sabbath day and it being the worst day of the week! 

 

First, waking up disheveled hair, bad breath, and having to go around all day like that.  Having a tooth ache and drinking vinegar for it since he is not allowed medicine.  Spilling the vinegar on the floor, and since he is not allowed to wipe it up, forgetting about it and later slips and falls.  In the fall, he breaks his leg and skins his knee and then hobbles outside to keep the blood from dripping in house because he’s not allowed to wipe it up.  In doing so, he knocks over the candle which he is not allowed to pick up either, gets caught in the rain, has to sit in wet soaked clothes since he can’t take off outer garment nor wring it out.  Then, sitting in pain, watching the house burn down and having nothing sacred to read to console him since he cannot save any of his books from a fire if they mention the name of God!

 

And our Christian ancestors weren’t much better.  Puritans especially had strict laws in New England.  In the mid- 1800’s there’s a complaint written in the law books against Jona and Susan Smith, “that on the Lord’s Day during Divine Service they did smile.”

 

I wonder – how did we do it?  How did our religions get so far away from the core of true worship of God?  Walter Bruggeman, the great theologian says, that in God’s leading of Israel “holiness and justice always come together.” 

 

That’s what religion is about.  The Sabbath was exactly that - a day when holiness and justice was supposed to come together.  It was a day in which the world was repaired of its biases and class systems.  Did you notice?  The Sabbath was for everyone “You shall not work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”  On the Sabbath, all living beings were equal.  God reminded them  day a week that we are all one – one community under God. 

 

Jesus got it.  He got that the purpose of God’s commands was to practice holiness and justice. Jesus knew that the religion with which he grew up had missed the mark, and Jesus came to repair the world.  That’s why Jesus got in trouble for healing on the Sabbath, walking too far on the Sabbath, picking food for his disciples on the Sabbath.  As the reflection of God, Jesus knew what Godly justice looked like, and he did everything he could to try to repair it – even giving his life to do so.

 

This Lenten season we have been exploring the many different spiritual aspects of Jesus.   I wonder, what type was Jesus?   Some may say that Jesus leaned to a Type 1 which appreciates tradition and ritual.  Certainly, Jesus did read scripture, followed his Jewish roots and taught with eloquent words.  Yet, others might say that Jesus was more a Type 2.  He valued sudden encounters with God.  Jesus poured all of his emotion into people, he evangelized wherever he went.  On the other hand, Jesus also spent many days retreating into the wilderness, praying, becoming one with God, which would make Jesus a spiritual Type 3. 

But on this day, in the Gospel reading of the cleansing of the Temple it is no doubt that Jesus was a type 4 – longing for social justice.  Jesus was angry with the injustice he saw, he was assertive in his actions.  He did not care what anyone thought or said about his behavior that day, nor how much trouble he would get into.

 

The sad thing is this Temple incident wasn’t the only time Jesus saw injustice.  Jesus stared injustice in the face every single day. As he traveled around, Jesus saw injustice in the way Samaritans were treated (those who were mixed race Jews and outcasts), in the way lepers were abandoned, in the way the purity and Sabbath laws had become inventions that became binding on people.  Jesus’patience must have been wearing very thin and in this Gospel reading Jesus confronts injustice in the very Temple of God it was more than he could bear.

 

Jesus, had come to the Temple for Passover like all observant Jews, had made the required pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to celebrate the Passover.  The Passover reminded the Israelites that they were once slaves in Egypt.  Like the Sabbath day, Passover was for all people, set aside as a holy week, a remembrance when God’s justice had rained down on them

 

III.  In preparation for the Passover meal Jews were required to come to bring their animal to the Temple.  In the Temple the animals would be dedicated and then slaughtered in a ritual they called sacrifice. 

 

As Jesus entered the Temple, he saw business people selling animals for the Passover meal.  Jesus saw money changers, charging their Jewish brothers and sisters a fee to exchange their Roman coins for the Temple money because that was the only tithe accepted there.  The problem was not that they were there to provide a needed service for these travelers, which they did.  The issue is that the sellers were obviously taking advantage and making an unjust profit from these poor travelers who had no other choice.   It was no secret that the political and religious Temple authorities were raking in the money with this business, taking advantage of those who were simply trying to be faithful in observing the Passover.  Yet, like all places of worship, the Temple, was supposed to be a house for all people as Jesus quoted.  The Temple, a very place that represented holiness and justice for all where – where all were equal before God - had turned into a place of injustice, where robbery and thievery was tolerated.   

 

Last week we talked about Jesus’ compassion.  Often, we think of compassion as a passive, kind, gentle action.  However, in many places in the Scriptures the root word used for Jesus’ compassion can also be translated as anger. 

 

Jesus must have just been fed up with all of the wrongs he witnessed.  Jesus saw that the injustices of society had infiltrated the very walls of God’s Temple and he was angry with an indignant righteous anger. 

 

Various paintings have been done of this story.  Some of them show Jesus poised like a boxer with his fists clinched.  Some paintings show Jesus enraged, seemingly going berserk with his whip.  Other paintings focus on the shocked faces of the money lenders and the frightened animals as they scramble about.

 

This wasn’t a spur of the moment, lose your temper type of anger.  Jesus thought this through.  He took cords from the floor, probably ones used to lead the animals there, and wove them together to made a whip.  Jesus drove out the sheep and the cattle, knowing the men would follow their prized “unblemished” possessions.  He turned over tables and chairs, sending money clanging all over the floors.  In the midst of hundreds of people in this huge Temple, Jesus demanded that they stop this nonsense and he literally cleared the place.

 

This is a very interesting story, isn’t it?  It is also a very significant story recorded in all four Gospels.  We could close the book on it and say, wow Jesus rocked.  The greater challenge is trying to figure out what it means for us today.  This one is a difficult one.  We live in such an entirely different culture than Jesus with entirely different set of circumstances.  We have so many layers in our religious backgrounds to sort through.  How do we follow Jesus’ lead and get back to the core of in our religion of practicing holiness and justice?  Like Jesus we live with so many injustices in our world.

 

Earlier this week, I witnessed injustice. At my school, an instructor brought to me three of her Haitian students who are there to learn English.  Well respected, model students, ages 23, 20 and 19.  They were distraught because they had learned that their 22 year old brother who lived in Haiti had died from a bad case of the flu.  As they showed a photo of their brother to us, we saw a beautiful, well-dressed, bright-eyed young man, a musician in his church, a lover of God.   I found myself trying to be compassionate with these young students while at the same time feeling angry - angry at the injustice of him dying simply from the flu because he lives in a country where people are so poor that they do not have proper water, nourishment or basic medications. 

I was ashamed and embarrassed that our country, who calls itself Christian, had not done more to help Haiti and embarrassed that I personally live in isolation of these situations and do not give more of myself.  The Temple authorities had become so accustomed to the injustices that they promoted that I really don’t think they understood why Jesus was so upset.  We, too, live with so many injustices that I wonder if we fail to really see them.

 

Jesus felt so strongly about the injustices of society that he was willing to give his life to repair the world.  Many scholars believe that this Temple episode was what got Jesus crucified.  In fact he told the religious authorities that the Temple would be destroyed.  But, Jesus predicted the Temple would be restored in three days, an allusion to his own body becoming the new Temple of God.  This life of resurrection in Jesus – this is the new way of repairing an old system.  Jesus giving his life shows us the extent to which we are to go to restore justice and right relations with God and each other.

 

What does Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple say to us, first, as a church?

Is our church doing all that it can to repair the world?  Do we promote a house of prayer for all people, practicing holiness and justice?  Are we making a way for more to come to know God in this place?  Have our actions, either now or in the past, discouraged people from coming here? 

My time with you is scheduled to end at the end of April and are you in a place spiritually and financially to call your next pastor?  If not, what is Jesus calling you to do and are you willing to stand up for your house of God and give your all for it the way Jesus did?

 

Secondly, what does Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple say to our roles as individuals?  As followers of Christ, how are we called to cleanse and repair the world?  In the least, aren’t we called to confront injustice on all levels of society?  That might mean getting more charged politically and quit ignoring the injustices in our community.  It might mean we become more intoned and elect those who promote justice.  Confronting injustice might mean being more aware about the products we buy, in the ways we spend or don’t spend our money, in the way we choose to help people or not.

 

Thirdly, what does Jesus’ cleansing the Temple say about my bodily temple?  During this season of Lent, we are to ask with intense self introspection.  If I am a temple of God, then how does holiness and justice work together in my life?  Is there anything that I do that promotes injustice?  Would Jesus look at my Temple and find things at which to be angry?  In what ways do I need to rid myself of injustices maybe in ways that I might not even realize it? 

 

Only each and every one of us can answer these questions for ourselves.  These are not easy questions to confront, but as followers of Jesus one must ask these questions.  And we ask. O God, please rid us of the layers that are not important.  Please cleanse our temples of any offenses so that we may be partners with Jesus in repairing the world.  Amen.

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