Lent 3 Year B – George Yandell
When Jesus went onto the temple courtyard, he erupted in violent anger when he saw the Court of the Gentiles desecrated by the traders who set up shop there. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and threw them out. Why? Because they filled their pockets by ripping off the poor. He screamed at the vendors of sheep and cattle and doves. Anger coursed through him, he was outraged. What was Jesus really doing? Jesus might have waked up one morning, walked out of his house, seen the poverty and the hunger of all those around him and said, “This Stinks!” He was enraged at those perverting the true worship God intended.
What was the worship God intended? Jesus seemed to be channeling the great prophets’ teachings: Amos 5:21 ff., speaking God’s word to the people of Israel 750 years before Jesus: “I hate, I despise your festivals…. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… Take away the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the melody of your harps… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Isaiah 1:17 “Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Hosea 6:6 “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Micah 6:8 “[God] has told you….what is good; what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
The Rev. Lane Denson, a good friend, authored the online commentary Out of Nowhere. Lane was fond of saying: “We Episcopalians are prone to worship our understanding of God, rather than worshipping the God of our understanding.”// What does he mean? I think it has everything to do with Jesus disrupting the commerce in the temple precinct. Our understanding of God can be a strong idol distracting us from God.
Over time the temple court became defiled by the traders and money-changers, who were aiding folks in worshipping a perverted understanding of God– that God needed placating, and the priests held the means for keeping God’s anger at bay. This understanding of God that flew in the face of what God had said over and over to the people of Israel.
When Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up,” the authorities misunderstood completely. They were in charge of one of the wonders of the ancient world. The Jerusalem temple was a huge tourist attraction in the days of Jesus. It was built by Herod the Great through crushing taxes and slave labor.
We hear this cryptic explanation about the Jesus saying: that even if his body is destroyed, God will raise it up. Not even the death of Jesus will block unhindered worship of God through his Son. I believe Jesus is driven even now to upset the tables of distracting trade in our courtyards. Many of the trappings of our lives divert us from worshipping the God of our understanding.
A friend of mine was the urban minister in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Her name is Debbie Little, and she spent her days working with the homeless and the poor of Boston. The Boston Globe ran a long article about her and people she served. The worship in which she and the homeless engaged is like what Jesus desired for God’s people. From that article:
“On Boston Common, the Rev. Debbie Little, an Episcopal priest, arrives at her church- a church with no walls, no steeple, no stained glass, but one that does bear witness to the passion, commitment and spiritual hunger of the minister and her congregation. Ms. Little’s congregants are the dispossessed: Gary, Larry, John, Bill, Rita and Barbara- as many as 30 people on a given Sunday, people who tend to go by first names only, people the well-dressed churchgoers and tourists usually rush past. They need God too, but shun churches because their dress and smell embarrass them or might embarrass others. They have no brunch plans, just the peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches Debbie Little brings….
This “church”- “Common Cathedral”, as Ms. Little calls it- lacks the ornate adornments of St. Paul’s. But what Common Cathedral does not lack is spirit and the desire for redemption.
“Gary, one of the folks who comes regularly to Common Cathedral, says, ‘When I come here, I feel welcomed. I know that as long as I have God, I have hope. It’s hard out here, and I pray that I stay good. I need God; I need this; I need Debbie to give me strength.’”
Debbie always wanted to be the kind of pastor she thought Jesus had been: a minister to people on the margins of life. Debbie says, “Part of my story is trying to understand who this man Jesus was and why he kept telling us that, if we really wanted to get closer to the heart of God, we had to stay close to the poor. More and more, I think that what we consider resources- housing, food, friends, jobs- are layers between us and God. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Those are important. And people on the streets need them, too. And we’re working on that. But I think that Jesus said to stay with poor people, because there are no barriers between them and God. God is right there for them. I’m learning that.” In Atlanta, the Church of the Common Ground is modeled on Debbie Little’s Common Cathedral.
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, the translation from the New English Bible says it best: “Blest are those who know their need of God, the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” I think Jesus was born into history to offer everyone the chance to know their need of God, and in his fellowship to offer the kingdom of hope. He gave himself completely in public ministry to confront us with our poverty of spirit, so that we will shrug off the layers between us and God. And to be close to our brothers and sisters who are poor, so that we might know how cumbersome our “stuff” really is, when God is so close, so simply present to us. That’s still the hallmark of the Jesus fellowship.
Paul says it this way in I Corin, 24 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection: “We proclaim Christ [executed by the Roman Empire], a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called…, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” The word stumbling block is literally in Greek, skandalon, a scandal. The execution of Jesus came just after he confronted and drove out the money-changers on the temple precincts. His execution likely scandalized many, if not most of those who had followed him.
Yet God’s foolish love raised Jesus. The God of his understanding vindicated Jesus. Images of the resurrected Jesus in the early Church always bore the wounds he had received in his execution- those mosaics and images told the world clearly that the empire who had killed Jesus had failed, that God had raised Jesus up. Jesus was alive after execution. Those images in turn scandalized Rome and the Jerusalem authorities that had collaborated with the empire. The death and resurrection of Jesus will always scandalize us and the world, and also is the door leading to true worship of God. That’s why we hang the empty cross in Episcopal churches- “He is not here, he is risen,” the angels told Peter, Mary and the others who came to his tomb.
Our understanding of God can make us fall away from God. Or we can permit the God of our understanding to reach into us, shake us free from our burdens, and release us into new life. That’s why the temple of Christ’s body was offered for you and me. To worship in that temple is to know love. And to live with Jesus creates our understanding of selfless love and grace-filled living. That’s how to worship the God of our understanding.