Sermon: "Destroy This Temple" (John 2:19)

Sermon: “Destroy this Temple” (John 2:19)

This morning, our reading witnesses Jesus’ actions in the Temple of Jerusalem. Traditionally, this story has been misunderstood and often mistitled: “Jesus cleanses the temple.” It is quite easy to see it that way; in today’s story, Jesus is “driving out” the people who are selling cattle, sheep and doves along with their animals, and the money changers, seated at their tables. Making a “whip of cords”, Jesus drives them all out of the temple, pours out the coins of the money changers and overturns their tables.

Why does Jesus do this? Is there something wrong with them - the money changers and those who are selling the animals? The fact is the money changers and the animal sellers were perfectly ‘legitimate’ and absolutely necessary for the temple’s normal functioning. Animal sacrifice was not only totally acceptable but an expected ritual. Buying animals or birds on site was the only way Jewish pilgrims could be sure the creatures were kosher, and suitable for sacrifice. Money changers were needed, too, so that the pilgrims could pay the temple tax in the only approved coinage - the Tyrian tetradrachma. The money the Jewish people used daily were Roman coins which had the face of Caesar on them. It was considered blasphemy to pay the temple tax for Yahweh, the one true God, with money that had another god’s face on it.

So again, the money changers and animal sellers were perfectly ‘legitimate’ and necessary. ‘Buying’ or ‘selling’ is not the thing that Jesus has issues with. Of course, on the surface, it seems so. In today’s story, Jesus says, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” The other three Gospels all include the Temple story, but never mention a ‘marketplace.’ Univocally, the three Gospels report that Jesus says, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a ‘den of robbers’.”

I would like to call your attention to the word ‘den’. What is a den?  In this case, a “den” refers to a hideout, a hideaway, a safe house, a refuge. A “den” is not where robbers do their robberies,  but where they flee for safety after they’ve committed their crimes. Does that make sense? A den is not the place for robbery and injustice inside, but the hide-out from robbery and injustice committed outside. In the Bible, Jesus is not accusing people of thievery in the Temple. He is saying that the nature of worship in the Temple excuses injustice in the land. It’s like Jesus is saying “You can’t make this place a “den of robbers”, a “market place”, while making worship a substitute for justice - worship over justice. You can’t own this place as your hide-out, your safe place while you mess up the land with injustice. His opponents are not the lowly workers in the temple; his accusation is directed at the High priests, the elders, the religious elites who collaborate with Roman imperial power and control.

Christ’s accusation is also directed toward all who listen to him, including us, the modern-day worshippers. If the activities of selling and buying were at the heart of the problem, our fundraising and marketing efforts such as selling Jessica Strong concert tickets or promoting our Easter worship event with Gary Patterson, even our pre-authorized remittances would be in trouble. His challenge is not so much with what we do here, inside our ‘temple’, as with what we do outside our temple: at our home, in our neighbourhood, in our city, in our land, on our earth. If Jesus were to enter our church and start kicking chairs around, it would be because of what we do - or don’t do - outside the church. Do our actions help establish right relations, equality, peace, distributive justice? Does our faith in God help us embody the divine model of love - “Loving our enemies”? Do we follow God’s command to “give justice to the weak and the orphaned”?

  

Many who read this passage in John get confused when Jesus makes a “whip of cords” and uses it to drive out the people and the animals. I have an 8-year-old son, and he always likes to know what I am reading. One night he read out loud a passage in a book that I had marked with a question mark: “Jesus apparently violently attacked people with a whip”. The author goes on to explain why this interpretation isn’t true, but both of my boys had the immediate response: “No, Jesus is a good guy!”

It’s a very popular image, though - especially for painters. But - did Jesus ever attack people and animals with a “whip of cords?” Why did he make the whip at all? I don’t agree with the following explanation, which is quite popular, to understand Jesus in this story: “Anger is not a sin. What examples of righteous anger do you see evident in current events?”

Does ‘holy anger’ justify using violence or choosing a violent behaviour or action? Would I ever follow a person as my Christ, my Saviour, who loses their ‘holy manner’ of self-control and respect, and is unable to detach him or herself from such an explosive emotion, even if it is caused by ‘holy anger’ to further a 'just cause’? I was relieved to read this book (showing the book), fresh off the printing press on March 1st, written by John Dominic Crossan (an acclaimed Bible scholar of our generation): How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian with the subtitle “Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis through Revelation.” Crossan assures us that the whip is only mentioned in John, and when you carefully read the other three Gospels in comparison, you can see the whip is used only on the animals, not for the money changers, and there’s no mention that it actually ‘attacks' the animals.

Then what, exactly, was Jesus doing with the whip if it was not for attacking or cleansing?  The whip, when he uses it in the story,  is a prophetic demonstration: Jesus is symbolically “destroying” the temple. (Gesture) In the book of Jeremiah, from which Jesus takes his “Den of robbery” quote, God says God destroys the temple when it is merely a ‘den of robbery’ where worship is substituted for justice. I imagine that Jesus’s demonstration with the whip was not violent, but prophetically symbolic, to demonstrate “Destroy this temple, and I’ll build it up in three days.” I don’t imagine that Jesus was full of anger when he was doing the demonstration. I trust the non-violent, spiritually superb and advanced presence of my Messiah.

This book, How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian is amazing. It truly helped me back to faith not only in Christ but also in the Bible. It really helped me articulate that our faith is the faith in Jesus, the historically true Jesus, who is fully human and divine, who reveals what it is like to fully incarnate and fully embody the radical vision of God. Jesus shows us how to act against injustice and violence - in Jesus’ time, against Roman imperialistic power and the hegemony of the priestly classes - in a non-violent way, based on the ‘new covenant’ he newly established with us.

Today, we hear from our Bible that Jesus says “Destroy this temple, and I’ll build it up in three days”. After Easter, his disciples remembered Jesus was speaking of the temple which was his body. What resurrects is the temple of Jesus’ body. Nowadays, the temple of Jesus’ body is not the church as an institution, but the church as the “body” that we build up together. We do not only build up the body of Christ; we bring the Christ in body to the broken - those who are outside of us and among us, to ourselves as well, generation after generation.  

If Jesus came among us, today, in our worship and in our Annual meeting, and said “Destroy this temple”, He means you. Destroy you. The temple of his body. The temple of his resurrection. We are the followers of the first Easter and 2000 and more Easters. Our life depends on the Easter faith as much as it depends on the path of the cross. Now, if Jesus says to us, “ Destroy this temple", He means us.  We are invited to go through this spiritual, constructive process of deconstruction and reconstruction through the model and the way of Jesus - learning how to live in a non-possessive, non-violent way to enact the love that leads us to the path of the cross, then to the tomb, and on to Easter just like our master, our Messiah, our Saviour. Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again.