13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15Making 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. 16He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Clean House and Come On In!
I don’t know if your family had this rule or not, but when I was growing up it went something like this: “Before anyone can come over, the house must be picked up.” “Picked up” meant that everything was in its right place. The beds were made. The dishes were done. The floors were vacuumed. And the halls were swept. The house where I grew up was quite large so there was plenty of room to store our junk so that it was out of the way when guests came. My Mother was smart enough to suggest that the Barbie’s house was simply shelves in a closet that could be simply closed up when company came. Cleaning up was no one’s favorite chore, but for friends to come over, we engaged in its necessity.
We have the same rule at my house now – no one comes in unless the house is cleaned up. However, the house I live in today is much smaller than the house where I grew up. There is not nearly as much room to store all of the “stuff” that seems to creep into our living space everyday. But I LIKE a clean house. And my girls would really like to have friends over some time. So I began to clean. I scoured the sink and scrubbed the counters. I got rid of the sticky patches that I found on the table. I swept up the crumbs and filled up the trash can with junk mail that was still sitting around. I dusted the TV and polished the piano. And just as I started feeling pretty good about what I had accomplished, I decided to look at my clean house through the eyes of a guest, to see if they would also appreciate my hard work. Do you know what I saw? Not clean counters or a polished piano, but boxes piled with keepsakes in the corner because I hadn’t made room for them yet. I saw art supplies spilling out of our craft closet because the closet was full. I saw handprints on the glass doors to the lanai. I saw that even though I thought I cleaned my house, things still weren’t cleaned up.
Jesus traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover, joining people coming from all over. For Passover you were supposed to bring an unblemished sacrifice to atone for your sins. Remember that Old Testament story where Moses asked everyone to kill the unblemished lamb and place the blood over their door so that the angel of death would pass over them, sparing their first born? The Passover is the Jewish ritual of remembering God’s faithfulness to the Israelites at a crucial time in their history. People traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, to celebrate God’s faithfulness. But it is awfully hard to travel a long distance with an unblemished animal for your sacrifice. Animals got bruised and tired and hungry and worn. So the temple had come up with a plan to help – they would provide unblemished animals for people to buy as their sacrifices. The animals could remain at home, without blemish.
There was more to it, of course. They realized that travelers would have only the money of the Roman Empire. The money that people carried had Caesar’s face on it, thus it was considered idolatry to carry this coin into the house of God. So the temple set up tables where people could exchange their idols for temple coins so that they could enter the temple as faithful servants of the Most High God and make a pure sacrifice for Passover. The temple leaders thought they were doing the right thing – helping people come to God by having everything set up for them. They thought it was a good thing to help people get rid of their idols when they entered the temple. They thought it was a good thing to offer unblemished sacrifices for the people to have, saving their own animals the possibility of becoming blemished on the long journeys to the temple. But Jesus didn’t think it was a good thing.
Jesus turns over the tables and pours out the idol money and the temple money, pointing out the boxes that are still piled high in the corner and the crafts that are spilling out of the too-full closet. Jesus rants and raves because the handprints are still on the glass doors. Jesus takes out a whip and lets all of the unblemished sacrifices run loose! Jesus sees things for what they are – a mess, a shambles, a marketplace. And Jesus asks, “Did you really think you were doing a good thing?! Did you really think this place was cleaned up?”
Now if a man came in here, ranting and raving about something that was commonplace to us, something that had been rightly approved by the session and accepted by the congregation, would we listen to him? No! We would get on the phone with 911 and have a police officer out here in no time flat.
But the Jewish leaders listened to Jesus. I wonder why. Maybe it was because something that he said resonated with them. Maybe it was because they too felt that something was out of place. Maybe it was because they could see the boxes that were piled high in the corners, the crafts spilling out of the too-full closet and the fingerprints on the lanai door. Maybe it was because they thought that perhaps Jesus was right.
So the Jewish leaders asked Jesus to tell them why they should believe him. And he made this crazy comment about tearing the temple down and rebuilding it in three days, a comment that his disciples began to understand only later, after his death and resurrection. Only upon later reflection did the disciples understand that Jesus was talking about his own body as the temple where God lived – his own body that would be rebuilt after his death.
In 2001, a musician by the name of Karl Paulnack lived in Manhattan. He writes of heading down to the conservatory on September 12th to do what he always did. He sat down at the piano at 10 AM to begin practicing as he always did. Out of habit, without even thinking about it, he lifted the cover on the keyboard, opened his music, and set his fingers on the keys. Then he took his fingers off the keys. He writes, “I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost. And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing.” (from a speech by Karl Paulnack of Boston Conservatory posted on facebook, 2009). And, as you can imagine, what was once a routine habit of daily practice became instead an expression of the soul.
Sometimes it takes a tragedy to help us see things in a different light and change our responses. Sometimes it takes a raving mad man claiming to know something only God would know. And sometimes it takes a conscious effort to open our eyes and see the boxes, the spilling crafts and the handprints that still need to be worked on.
We are still walking with Jesus through the season of Lent. One of the spiritual disciplines we can take on is the task of taking a closer look at ourselves – as individuals and as the church. What, in our lives, is just not quite right? Are there habits that we have for seemingly good reasons that we may need to examine a bit closer, asking why? Asking how God could use that time or that habit or that routine? The “A Team” (our membership and outreach committee) is asking us to invite someone to come to church with us. And in being asked that question, we have to look at ourselves a bit more. We have to reconsider why WE are here and what WE have found redeeming in Christ. What has become a routine act of coming to worship every Sunday has been tossed before us by your pastor and your session (all of us raving lunatics!) so that we take a closer look at why we are here. When we search the scriptures we discover that we have been called to share God’s love – not simply to come into worship for an hour every week but to respond to God’s love and pass it on!
It is my hope that during Lent, no matter how much you have scrubbed and swept and polished and dusted you will join me in seeing the boxes in the corner and help me find a place to store them; that you will notice the crafts spilling out of the craft closet and help me clean it up; that you will see the fingerprints on the glass doors and take a few moments with me to wipe them off; that you will notice your fingers on the keys and play from the heart; that you will hear God’s voice to you while you are here and decide, with me, that our faith is much too important to keep to ourselves. I hope, with me, you will decide to share God’s love with someone else.
Amen.
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