I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached on the Third Sunday in Lent, 19 March 2006, and based on the Gospel for the day: John 2:13-22; probably at Our Savior Lutheran church, Arlington, VA

(Outline and core of the text from Henry Rowold, Concordia Journal, January 2003)

• I. Jesus cleansed a temple which had become a marketplace, cluttered with…
• A. Temple tax.
• B. Animals for sacrifice.
• Il. Jesus replaced temple with spiritual temple…
• A. Where the way to God is not eased by money and animals.
• B. Rather, Jesus Himself is the way.
• Ill. Jesus makes that spiritual temple…
• A. A house of prayer…
• B. For all nations.

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Jesus of today’s Gospel is certainly not the tender shepherd Jesus, or the gentle baby, meek and mild Jesus who is so often the Jesus we picture (maybe because we so often need his comfort, love, and support). We do not often picture Jesus the way that our text today pictures Him, whip in hand, overturning tables, driving people and animals helter-skelter from the temple. No, today’s Jesus is displaying a different side of his character.

But this was most certainly not an outburst that should have moved the disciples to reach for the tranquilizers. He was in a particular place, doing a particular thing, for a particular reason.

What He is doing is cleaning house. This is way more than just spring house-cleaning, though. He is also claiming His Father’s house as His own. And, indeed, Jesus is pointing us beyond the Father’s house to Himself.

The occasion for this house cleaning, this Temple cleaning, is the Passover, ordinarily observed in a home, but also an occasion for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As always, but more so on this special holiday, there were crowds of people coming to the temple to offer sacrifices, to worship, to pray, to listen to teachers, and probably some coming just to meet friends and pass the time of day.

The problem Jesus faced is not the Passover, but the temple, and the infrastructure that had developed there to support the Temple worship. In the Lord’s very direct words, it had become a “marketplace” (emporium). Now, what the marketplace was meant to serve, the reason it was created and developed, was understandable, even defensible.

For one thing, money had to be exchanged. Anyone who has been to a foreign country knows that just about the first thing you do when you get to a foreign country, is look for a bank or a place where you can change your money for theirs. And that was no different in Jesus’ day. On high festival times like the Passover, people were coming from all over that part of the world to Jerusalem. And, of course, they brought their money from home with them.

Beyond that simple tourists’ exchange of money, however, there was a special reason for the moneychangers in the Temple courtyard. These visitors would want to make contributions to the Temple treasury (over and above the annual tax that was collected from them), but they needed to use acceptable coinage. The Temple officials didn’t want people tossing in just any kind of currency. So there had to be money-changers.

Does that mean there was abuse, gouging the faithful coming to the temple? Maybe, though that is not what triggered our Lord. What more likely got Jesus going, one suspects, is the strange mixture of money and worship there. Just like today, whenever there are people making money off the worship of others—and they are the first ones you meet at the temple—you likely end up entering the temple turned off, even resentful. Something is out of sync here. It’s the same reaction we all feel about appeals for money from radio and television evangelists, or that we would feel about crass, guilt-based appeals made by our own church.

Beyond the whole money changing business, there were also the animals. Again, we are dealing with something necessary. For one thing, people were coming from around the world; how were they going to bring their own sacrificial animal, from Egypt or Rome or even closer by from Hebron or Jericho? For another thing, those animals had to be inspected and certified as unblemished and spotless—this kosher inspection is tougher than a USDA inspection at least in some ways. So, with the selling of animals, we’re talking about another real service to the worshipers.

We are also talking about a colossal mess. Can you imagine, especially on a high festival with folks from all over, how many cattle, sheep, or doves that might take? Can you imagine the noise, the mess, the smell? I don’t know how many of you spend time around sheep and cattle, but up where I live in Pennsylvania, we are literally in between two small dairies. The closer one is immediately behind the houses that are across the street from us. From time to time, especially when the farmer fertilizes the corn and soybean field which is immediately behind my backyard with the excess manure, well, we get to know the smells of the barnyard animal. And don’t get me started about the flies in the summer.

What a marketplace this was—right in the temple itself! Not only are there people making money off the worship of others, not only are there people grumbling about maybe being ripped off at the temple, but there are people coming to worship who have to fight off the smell and the noise of a barnyard.

We can understand that Jesus cleans house. We need to understand, though, that Jesus was not concerned simply with people making some money off other people or with the fragrance of the animals—as though, if they would be a little quieter or a little cleaner or if they would set up shop outside the temple walls, it would all be okay.

Jesus was really “cleaning house.” He was getting rid of the whole system that presumes that a person must or even can make his/her way into the presence of God with the payment of a tax or the sacrifice of an animal. ‘This is my Father’s house,’ he said, not a place where business is done—not the business of changing money or providing animals for sacrifice, not the business of cashing in on the worship of God, not the business of commercializing our relationship with God. This is my Father’s house, a house of prayer, a place where we meet Him. This place is not here for a barnyard or a bank, but for God Himself. God’s house is a place where money, of whatever currency and whatever amount, buys nothing. It’s a place where the sacrifice God looks for is the heart, not some USDA-inspected beef or kosher inspected lamb or poor person’s pigeon.

What Jesus is doing when he cleanses the Temple is taking the first step—as the later verses of the text indicate—of looking beyond the temple itself. You want to come into the presence of God? You not only do not need the temple tax or the animals, you do not even need the temple. “I will be the temple,” he says. “I will be the presence of God among you. I will take you to the Father.” And the road does not go through the mess or the blood of those animals, no matter how unblemished they are. The road to the Father goes through the mess and the blood of the cross, through the death of God’s Son Himself.

When the startled and indignant Jewish leaders asked Jesus for some sort of sign that he had the authority to run the animals out and overturn the moneychangers He gave them a clear, but mysterious answer. He said “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”

Some years later, St. Paul wrote in our epistle for today that the Jews were still seeking signs (and the Greeks were seeking what they would consider ‘wisdom’). These are, incidentally, the same things today’s agnostics and atheists ask for. Paul said the preachers of the early church gave the same reply that Jesus was giving here at the Temple: ‘You want a sign? I’ll give you a sign: Christ crucified.” It’s God’s simple replacement for the noisy, messy Temple worship of the 1st century. Christ crucified; Christ risen; all His people’s sins forgiven.

Talk about cleaning house! This is something completely different, something new.

There is still more, though. The house—John does not say it, but the other Gospels do—the house was to be a house of prayer for all nations! In the old house, the Temple that Jesus was cleaning, where do you suppose the nations/Gentiles got to worship? There was a Court of the Gentiles, on the outer edge of the temple, outside the Temple building itself, but inside the walls. That is as close as Gentiles could get in that temple.

Where do you suppose the money changers set up their tables? And where do you suppose the animals got bought and sold? Where do you suppose the noise of haggling and the smell of the animals centered? Right there in the outsiders’ court, the Court of the Gentiles/nations. When Jesus cleans house, therefore, He is not just cleaning out a mess; He is also making room. He is opening up the house for all nations. He is beginning work on a spiritual temple that does not charge admission, that does not position anyone on the outside, and does not make anyone second-class, but brings life and joy to all. When Jesus cleans the temple, He opens it for every person in this world.

Just as the Lord had a replacement for the noisy, messy hub-bub in the Temple at Jerusalem, so also does He have a replacement for the noisy, messy lives of people in the century. It’s the same one Paul wrote about to the Corinthians. And it’s again the same solution that Jesus offered when He was asked for a sign justifying His actions that day in the Temple: Christ crucified; Christ risen; all His people’s sins forgiven.

He who cleans the temple also cleans the world while He is at it. He removed messes and stinks from every tribe and nation and group of people, from every individual person in this room and in this world. And once cleaned, there are no more outcasts, no second-class people, no one beyond help and hope.

Be glad it is not just a matter of dealing with noisy money-changers and messy sheep and smelly cattle. If that was all that this was about, we would likely find them back in our churches today. When the Lord cleans, He cleans temples and people—and He cleans our way to the Father forever. Be glad that Jesus, Himself, prepared a way for us to come into fellowship with God, and be glad that this path depends on Christ crucified and risen. Thanks be to God!

S.D.G.