Lent 3, Year B

Exodus 20: 1 - 17; Psalm 19; I Corinthians 1: 18 - 25; John 2: 13 - 22

A homily by:   Fr. Gene Tucker

Given at:         Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, March 11, 2012

 “THE BATTLE OF ALL TIME” 

            Imagine if Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple were described as a boxing match: 

            Can’t you hear the announcer welcome everyone with a description something like this?

            Announcer:  “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the “Battle of all Time”.  Today’s match brings together two of most mismatched contestants it’s been our pleasure to present to you in a very long time.  In this corner, representing the heavyweight class, is the Temple Team of Jerusalem.  Imposing, authoritarian, the Temple Team’s long reign and championship status make them a formidable opponent.  In the opposite corner, our challenger is an unknown, Jesus of Nazareth.  In all truth, folks, we’d have to describe him as foolish to even enter the ring with the Temple Team.  So will this be a ‘slam dunk’ for the Temple team, or will it be the ‘Upset of all Time’?”

            Well, this may constitute a unique way to look at the battle which was joined on that day when Jesus made a whip out of cords and drove out the moneychangers and their animals from the Temple complex. 

            But a battle it was, and is.

            The battle’s goal is none other than to establish a new spiritual order.  But more on that in a moment. 

            Before we consider the causes that have brought these two combatants into the arena of the Temple courtyard, we ought to consider a few details about the cleansing incident.  Noteworthy are the following:

            1.  All four gospel accounts record this incident.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all place it during the time of the Passover season, but place it during the last week of Jesus’ earthly life.  John places it at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, right after the miracle at the wedding in Cana, where He changed water into wine. 

            2.  Given the differences in placement within the gospel accounts, is it possible that there were two cleansings of the Temple?  Most scholars don’t think so.  But it is possible that Jesus did drive out the moneychangers and their animals early in His ministry (as John relates), only to escape the Temple guards (after all, He’d escaped from crowds and from His adversaries on other occasions), and then to have come near the end of His life, doing it all over again.  If there were two such instances, perhaps the priests in the Temple had remembered the first incident, and decided that they’d had enough of this troublemaker from Galilee when the second incident took place.  We won’t know the answer to this question this side of heaven.  But, I think, it’s worth keeping in mind as we wonder why there are varying placements within the timing of Jesus’ ministry for this incident.

            3.  Some questions arise with regard to John’s placement of this account:

                        a.  Was John deliberately ignoring the chronological framework of Jesus’ earthly ministry by recording this incident at the beginning of His ministry?  It certainly is a plausible conclusion, since none of the gospel writers have as their goal the writing of a chronological history of Jesus’ life.  All of them are much more interested in making theological points as they pen out the written accounts they have left for us.[1]

 
                        b.  If the author of the Fourth Gospel is making a theological point, then what might that point be?  Why is the account of the cleansing of the Temple placed at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and not near the end?

             Now, let’s pick up this last point and work with it a little….Is John making a theological point?

            Personally, I think he is.  I am not alone in my conviction, for some biblical commentators think so, too.

            Let’s explore this just a little…..

             John’s gospel account is full of oppositions….It is often Jesus vs. the Jews.  In fact, in John’s account, the phrase “the Jews” most often refers not to the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, but to the ruling elite:  the High Priests, the priestly caste, the Temple complex and all that it stood for, and the Pharisees.

            So, here we have a battle engaged…the arena is the Temple complex itself.  The “Temple Team” is on their own home turf, and Jesus is the little-known challenger from Galilee (which was the “other side of the tracks” in Jesus’ day).

            The home team, the Temple Team, is engaging in a brisk business….

 
            1.  They have the corner on ritual sacrifice, for they offer  the only place where animal sacrifices may take place, the Temple.

             2.  They control the exchange of money from Roman and Greek coinage into a special Temple currency.  This is necessary because the pagan currencies bear graven images of people like Caesar.  The Temple team controls the rate of exchange, and also the price paid for animals.  It is the perfect “religious monopoly”.

            In doing this, what the Temple team has done is to turn a good thing into a self-serving thing:  Offering animals for sale to the many pilgrims who had come a long way to be present for the Passover is a good thing, for many of these pilgrims would have found it difficult, most likely, to bring an animal along with them.  But this good thing has turned into self-serving greed.  It has ceased to be about God, and has come to be about money and power.

            Hmmm….sounds like this might be a good description of sin, turning a good thing into a perverted purpose or use. 

             (Remember this point, and we’ll come back to it shortly.)

            It is this perversion of a good thing which is supposed to be about God into a self-serving, profit-driven enterprise that (most likely) makes Jesus angry.  In some of the gospel accounts, He says that the moneychangers have turned God’s house into a “den of robbers”.

             And so, the battle is joined as Jesus takes up His weapon, the whip of cords[2] and drives out the moneychangers, their money, and their merchandise.  But the Temple Team doesn’t take this lying down…they ask, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?”

            Of course.

            The request for a sign is somewhat akin to a boxer who says to his opponent, “What right do you have to take my team on?”

             Jesus responds, but in a way that isn’t obvious at the time (it will be after His death and resurrection)….He says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.”

            Being the literalists that they are, His opponents respond by saying, “It has taken forty six years to build this Temple, and will you raise it in three days?”[3]

            Here we face an irony:  By the time the early Christians were reading John’s gospel account, the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed, and it was no more.  But the Temple of Jesus’ body had survived the crucifixion, and was alive, unbound by the limitations of time and space.

            Considering the reality of the Temple’s destruction and Jesus’ ongoing, resurrected life, who then is the heavyweight, and who is the lightweight?

            Indeed, a battle was engaged that day in the Temple precincts.

 

            The old religious order was passing away, and a new one was being instituted.

            The old order said that you had to worship on the Temple mount, pay the Temple fees, and be a part of a corrupt system.

            But the new order won’t depend on holy mountains and temples made with hands.  Jesus makes clear what the new order will look like when He spoke with the woman at the well in Samaria.  He said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain[4] nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father….But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.”[5]

             And so, Jesus’ challenge comes to us, day by day.  His challenge is to our own religious “edifice complexes”, those structures of behavior and belief that bend our focus away from God and onto ourselves.  In the process, we tend to misuse good things, and pervert them into bad things.  As we said a moment ago, that is a classic definition of sin.

            The “Battle of all Time” continues, and the arena in which it is being played out is in our hearts and minds.

            Jesus’ words still ring in our hearts, “Take these things away.”

AMEN.

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[1]   We have historical proof that the gospel writers didn’t follow the chronological order of Jesus’ life:  Papias (an early church historian), relates that the source of Mark’s account was the recollections of St. Peter, who told him what he could remember about the Lord, “though not in order”.

[2]   By the way, John is the only one to mention the whip that Jesus made that day.

[3]   Here we might pause for a moment.  The first century historian, Josephus, tells us that King Herod the Great began construction on the Temple in the year 19 BC.  Calculating forward and taking the statement of the Jews at face value, we can surmise that this conversation took place in the year 27 AD or so.  The Temple itself was far from complete.  Its construction would go on for nearly 40 years more. 

[4]  Mt. Gerizim, which was the holy site for the ancient Samaritans.

[5]   John 4: 21, 23