Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn

Temple Talk
Text:  John 2: 13-22

NRS John 2
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." 18 The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" 19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." 20 The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

            Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Son our Lord Jesus the Messiah.  Amen.

            We live in a spiritual marketplace.  Over the last fifty years or so many churches have grown and developed by following a business model that’s been very successful for all sorts of commercial enterprises.  The key is to pick a market demographic, like young marrieds, or retirees, or empty nesters, or singles, and then design your programs and ministries to appeal to that market.  This strategy has led to an explosion of all sorts of market-driven churches and Christian fellowships, typically Baptist or Pentecostal in theology, but often not affiliated with any denomination.  Many call themselves Bible churches, or community churches, or even life-style churches.  Pretty much all you have to do is drive up or down any major American highway and you’ll see churches pitching to traditionalists, or churches for country western fans, or churches for National Public Radio listeners, or churches for Fox News watchers.  You name it, and there’s a church out there somewhere offering help, hope, and comfort for just about anything that floats your boat. 

            About ten or twelve years ago I had a young, entrepreneurial pastor ask me what was the target audience for my ministry.  I’d never been asked that question before.  I always assumed that I was ministering in, with, and for sinner/saints like myself, so I had to think a bit.  But then it hit me:  “Recent lottery winners.”  I mean, if you’re going to target a group, why not go after the people with some cash in their pockets?  They need Jesus, too!

            This approach to and way of doing church has become so much a part of our cultural DNA that it’s very hard for us to imagine a time when there weren’t cowboy churches, hip-hop churches, pick-up truck churches, or Mercedes Benz churches.  In the Holy Land of Jesus’ day there was no such thing as a spiritual marketplace, but there was a spiritual monopoly.  In that society and environment, if you wanted contact with God, the only show in town was the Temple. 

            Now you have to remember the Temple was not a church.  If you looked up “the Temple” in a Bible dictionary, you would probably find a diagram that looks sort of like a square bull’s-eye.  At the center was the Holy of Holies, which was believed to be the exact point where heaven met earth.  Remember, too, people didn’t go to the Temple for church services; they went there to offer sacrifice.  The acceptable sacrifice offered on that holy ground was widely believed to insure the flow of God’s blessings – timely rain, good crops, healthy livestock, family fortune.  There was not another Temple down the street or around the corner, with a better minister or snappier music.  The Temple was it. 

            Most people refer to today’s gospel from John as “the cleansing of the Temple,” with cleansing understood as Jesus ridding the Temple of the commercialism evidenced in the moneychangers and the animal traders.  Actually, though, Jesus’ attack went much deeper and was much more radical than Temple business.  The Temple, you see, couldn’t really function without the moneychangers. Their job was to exchange your pagan coins for the image free coins you needed in order to pay your Temple tax.  (Yes, there was a Temple tax that you had to pay before you could offer your sacrifice. If you were behind on your Temple tax and couldn’t pay, tough luck.)  Likewise, to make the required sacrifice, you needed a blemish-free animal, something you were unlikely to bring with you to the Temple over a long journey.  If just to insure your animal wasn’t injured on the way, people bought their sacrificial animals from markets on the Temple premises. 

            In setting free those animals and overturning the moneychangers’ tables, Jesus was protesting more than just buying and selling. (This was not about exchanging money for fish fry tickets or collecting coins for the Malaria Campaign.) As John tells the story, Jesus was really attacking the Temple’s claim to being the one and only way for Israel to commune with her God.  Even more radically, Jesus was claiming that he is the true Temple. 

• Not the real estate known as Mt. Zion,

• not the complex of courtyards and porticos on the Temple property,

• not even the sacred space known as the Holy of Holies,

but Jesus himself is the meeting of heaven and earth.  Jesus is where God meets man and man meets God.  Jesus is the Temple, and though the authorities might attack and kill Jesus, God would raise him on the third day, a new Temple, imperishable and as close to you as the prayer in your heart. 

            Anytime anybody challenges a monopoly, you have to know that they’re in for a fight, and in challenging the spiritual monopoly of the Temple, many scholars believe that Jesus was signing his own death warrant.  But as Jesus himself prophesied, in his death he is also raised that new Temple, through whom we have a way to God that can’t be limited to time or space or the systems of human making.  Jesus is raised the Temple open to everyone, available to all, whether you come flat broke or flush to the gills, on hands and knees or dancing and laughing, after great pain or in great joy.  In other words, God is made known and visible, God is met and experienced, not in the rituals of the Temple, nor in the hymnbooks and worship programs of any church, but in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (Gail O’Day, Journal for Preachers, Lent 1997, page 211).  

            We live in a spiritual marketplace, and all sorts of people, programs, and communities are constantly bombarding us with their spiritual wares, some old and some new, some fake and some authentic.  Some things we wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, and others things we might want to try out.  But nothing -- no spirituality, no prayer technique, no worship style -- nothing works without Jesus. 

            In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.