John 2 :13-22 Common English Bible
It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple those who were selling cattle, sheep, and doves, as well as those involved in exchanging currency sitting there. He made a whip from ropes and chased them all out of the temple, including the cattle and the sheep. He scattered the coins and overturned the tables of those who exchanged currency. He said to the dove sellers, “Get these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a place of business.” His disciples remembered that it is written, Passion for your house consumes me.
Then the Jewish leaders asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? What miraculous sign will you show us?”
Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.”
The Jewish leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?” But the temple Jesus was talking about was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered what he had said, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
The beginning of Jesus’ ministry according to John’s Gospel is very different from the other gospels which are often called they synoptic gospels --- because they are seen together.
Following the baptism and the calling of the disciples --- which, despite their unique Johannian twists are pretty similar to the synoptics --- Chapter two goes in a whole new direction.
Chapter two opens with one of the few “miracles” or “signs” as John called them --- found in his gospel --- and this one is only found here --- the story of the Wedding at Cana in Galilee
In many ways it is John’s way of introducing us to Jesus
As Raymond Brown says:
“The first sign has the same purpose that all the subsequent signs will have, namely, revelation about the person of Jesus.”
You can find a multitude of explanations in various commentaries on what this story might be telling us about Jesus
It is the next story that is even more fascinating to me.
John does not seem to have a very good sense of the geography of Israel
In three verses we jump from Cana to Capernaum to Jerusalem
It is not what I would call --- a recommended itinerary
Getting around was not that easy in 1st century Judea
And the sequence makes absolutely no sense
Regardless --- in our text this morning we find ourselves outside the temple in Jerusalem as Passover draws near.
This story is found in all four gospels --- the three synoptics place this story at the start of what we call Holy Week --- when Jesus enters Jerusalem for that fateful last week of his life.
John puts this story at the very beginning of his Gospel
One of the questions we have to ask ourselves is WHY?
Why here in John’s chronology?
If you study John’s gospel --- I believe the answer is fairly evident.
John --- more than the other Gospels --- wants to show Jesus’ divine authority and his unique relationship with God
Remember how John starts:
“In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
The Word was with God in the beginning.”
For John, Jesus is that unique and creative Word from God.
And so this second story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is enlightening.
Eugene Peterson in The Message records the story this way:
[Jesus] found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.
Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!”
So much for the mild and meek Jesus!
What is it that has put Jesus into such a lather?
It is a question that has consumed scholars for 2,000 years.
Was Jesus upset with the idea of the Temple becoming a marketplace?
If that is what we conclude --- it certainly puts some of our practices into jeopardy.
Or is it something else?
According to Jewish law --- all Jews were required to come to the temple annually and pay the temple tax and present their animal offerings.
You were not allowed to pay with foreign coins --- so if you had foreign money (which was the common currency) you had to exchange it for the Jewish coinage before you could give your offering.
And you would not want to cart your animals all the way from Galilee since it would slow down an already tedious and dangerous journey.
The money changes and animal sellers were performing a necessary function.
It is believed that what Jesus objected to was not the actual exchange --- but that these money changers and animal sellers were ripping off the average Jew who lived on the very edge of existence.
That seems clearer from the synoptic version of the story where we are told:
Then Jesus went into the temple and threw out all those who were selling and buying there. He pushed over the tables used for currency exchange and the chairs of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It’s written, My house will be called a house of prayer. But you’ve made it a hideout for crooks.” (Matthew 21:12-13)
John, as I said earlier has another agenda --- he wants to make it clear that Jesus has divine authority to do this and it becomes a prediction of the future kin-dom. John tells us:
But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.” (The Message)
Rev. T. Denise Anderson writes:
The cleansing of the temple is only the second vignette in John’s narrative and shows Jesus disruptively asserting authority over temple activities. He upends the business of the sellers and money changers, objecting to these things happening in the temple (or perhaps at all). He’s effectively inciting a riot, and the religious leaders demand of him a sign to prove that he has any standing to do this. In John’s gospel, Jesus is divine and powerful, but doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone, particularly those who insist on being intransigent. He often rebuffs calls for signs and answers, choosing instead to turn the proverbial tables on the inquirer.
As I was meditating on this story --- I pondered times in my life where I have witnessed disruption like this.
I certainly could focus on many events from the last decade or so --- but they are often too fresh that we cannot fully see the forest for the trees.
So I want to hark back almost 60 years.
The date is April 12, 1963, some of you may remember --- I was just a wee child.
A group of clergymen wrote a public statement to Martin Luther King, Jr.
The signatories included the Roman Catholic Bishop of Alabama, the Bishop of of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, the Moderator of the Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church, the Senior Pastor of the large Baptist Church in Birmingham, along with the head Rabbi of the Birmingham Jewish synagogue.
But also on that list of eight signers of this letter were Bishop Hardin and Bishop Harmon of the Methodist Church.
They wrote (I am editing the from the full document which you can easily find):
We the undersigned clergymen are among those who in January, issued "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense," in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.
. . .
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations . . .We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.
. . .
Just as we formerly pointed out that "hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political tradition." We also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.
. . .
Martin was in the Birmingham jail, arrested for peacefully marching, when this letter was published in the newspaper. And since he had no paper --- he wrote his now famous Letter From The Birmingham Jail, around the edges of the newspaper.
Again you can (and should) read it in its entirety, I am sharing just a brief portion.
Martin responded much like I image Jesus did as he came into the temple and saw the unjust actions of the money changers and sellers.
My Dear Fellow Clergymen,
While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas...But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
. . .
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
. . .
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" . . . This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." . . . We must come to see . . . that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
. . .
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of
Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.
. . .
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens' "Councilor" or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ...
. . .
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
M. L. King, Jr.
Jesus, Martin and so many others are calling us to practice what is known in Judaism as Tikkun Olam --- we are to become repairers of the world --- through social justice.
And then, in the second text I asked you to read this week, Paul in his letter to the Church at Corinth identifies what is the biggest stumbling block to our joining in becoming repairs of the world.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 NRSV
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
The biggest stumbling block to us following Jesus isn’t the resurrection.
We kinda get that.
The biggest stumbling block is the CROSS
How can the cross represent redemption?
It is a symbol of humiliation
Of degradation
Of the state exerting influence over the lowly and oppressed
Of course, it is a stumbling block.
Of course, it is foolishness.
How can anyone believe in a messiah who is subjected to the electric chair?
To the hangman’s noose
Or to the cross?
In the Hebrew bible we read
“anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23)
Paul reminds us --- that is only through this crucified Jesus that we can join with God in repairing the world in Tikkun Olam.
“we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
The Good News is --- you are invited to join in this crazy, upside down vision of the world.
And when we decided to follow --- then --- and only then --- can we experience the power of the resurrection.
Again and Again --- we are invited to follow the way of Jesus.
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