A Meditation on John 2:13-22
In preparation for Sunday, I was overjoyed to read our Gospel passage and realize that being a “Christ Like leader” sometimes means fashioning a whip and getting things done. What good news! While I am just kidding (I think?) about using these means for getting things done, this strange story about Jesus cleansing his Father’s house is worthy of our attention as a Christian community.
This story is strange not only because we see Jesus doing something unexpected, taking up a whip to clear out the marketplace of animals for sacrifice in the temple, but because the location of the story in the Gospel of John is different from other Gospels. In John, it appears that Jesus has just left the Wedding in Cana where he turned water into wine and went up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. It is the first of three times that John’s Gospel will tell us Jesus is in that city where he would one day die as the Lamb of God for the Passover feast. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we are told that it is this clearing of the Temple that marks the beginning of the end for Jesus. In those three Gospels, called the “synoptics” because they see Jesus through a similar lens, the Temple leaders see Jesus turn over the tables and drive out the moneychangers and decide to kill him as a direct result of these events. But in John’s Gospel it is not this particular confrontation that leads to the decision of the religious leaders in Jerusalem to kill Jesus, but Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead later in the Gospel that is the final straw for Jerusalem’s leaders.
While we could emphasize this discrepancy as a chronological problem, it is more appropriate and consistent with historical readings of Scripture to say that John is making a theological point through the way he constructs this story. The point that John is making is that this act of cleansing the Temple is a defining moment in the ministry of Jesus, it belongs at the beginning like a thesis statement of his ministry, even if it took place at the end, as the Synoptic Gospels suggest. Jesus has been sent from His Father to completely upend the ways that human beings relate to God, and to create a people who will worship the Father “in spirit and in truth.” Jesus is there to remind the Temple leaders what the Temple is really about. It is not a marketplace, it is a house of God.
How the Church today needs to hear this word! The temptation to make Christ’s Church into something other than a house of God is strong in our day and age. I will be frank with all of you in saying what a challenge it can be to minister to this Parish. There are as many expectations for what a church should be as there are individual members of this Parish. I do not say this to elicit your sympathy. In fact, this is to some degree a sign of health, a church where its members agree entirely on every question is a cult. Yet, my experience here often raises the question, how can we move forward?
The answer to this question is found in Jesus’ answer to the Temple leadership when they request a sign from him to justify his cleansing of the Temple. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It was a puzzling statement to those who first heard it, clarified in the light of the resurrection because Jesus was speaking of the Temple of his body. What is true worship? What is the purpose of the house of God? What can unite a church in a divisive age as our own? The answer to each of these questions is found in the power of the resurrection.
In the light and force of the resurrection, we find our proper orientation for worship in spirit and in truth. While God’s people are called to worship him in beauty, the church is not a concert hall or art museum. While God’s people are called to serve the poor and seek justice, the church is not a charity or an agency for social change. While God’s people are called to enjoy the fellowship of the saints, the church is not a country club or social club. While the Gospel proclamation that “Jesus is Lord” has political implications, the church is not a propaganda wing of the Republican party or the Democratic party.
The church is and can only be the place where the truth and power of Christ’s resurrection are believed, proclaimed, and enacted. When the church gets this wrong, as it so often does, it loses everything: beauty, justice, fellowship, and a voice in the culture worth listening to. But in Christ we have everything.
Fr. Matt