3 Lent Year B John 2: 13-22
All four Gospels contain a story about Jesus making a scene in the Temple. In the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the story happens later in each book. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is disrupting standard Temple practices. In the Gospel of John, this account happens exceedingly early for a reason. John wants us to know of Jesus’ divinity from the beginning. This story has at least three levels.
The first level has to do with the physical Temple space itself, and the marketplace, which involved selling birds and livestock for sacrifice on a very normal day. Jesus comes in, though, and makes a statement about the Jewish powers exploiting the poor and the non-Jewish worshipers. If you were Jewish, and male, you worshipped within close- proximity to the holy of holies, which included the altar where the sacrifices were made. Next would be the area for Jewish women and then what was known as the Court of the Gentiles. The problem, on this day, when Jesus enters the Temple is in the Court of the Gentiles, which was being obstructed so that the Gentile worshippers could not worship freely. The other issue was with the exploitation, (price gouging). You see, the Gentiles and especially those who came from outside of Jerusalem, in other words non-Jerusalem citizens, had to exchange their currency for Temple currency to buy a pigeon…. So Jesus is angry about these concerns, the first being a gradation of proximity which excluded many of the Gentiles and the bias against non-Jews with the price gouging that put the poor in a difficult spot.
In terms of our Lenten connection, this passage is chosen for this season of repentance because Jesus is saying that the real Temple for worship is Himself, which is the second level here. Of course, to the average worshipper, this concept would have been revolutionary. To all those in power, this would have been a huge controversy. Jesus calling Himself the Temple? So this brings up the question, what is holy? And what is holy space? The building, whether it is a church or a Temple, is where we practice what we are going to do outside. It is difficult therefore to separate what is sacred and what is secular. If the Temple is the building and we need to be respectful in our religious places of worship, then the way we practice our faith inside these walls should determine what we do outside these walls. We cannot say that this is sacred space and that our faith has the power to transform us only to go outside these walls and to be about something that does not reflect our worship and formation here. This is why we consecrate the worship space, and this is why some people choose to have their houses blessed with a small service and prayers; this is why some people make a corner of a room or some small space a place of worship, too. It can look like a chair next to a window where devotionals are read and where prayers happen in the morning. Sacred space in the house can look like a kitchen table with a candle in the middle where evening prayer is said before dinner, remembering together that Christ is the light of our life. As disciples, we are also sanctified. We hear this word every Sunday in our eucharistic prayers. It does not mean that we are holier than anyone else; it simply means that we are set apart through God’s grace for God’s work in the world. We carry the church with us. The separation between sacred and secular diminishes, and we come to realize that if God is indeed everywhere, then there is nowhere that is not sacred.
Again, the Lenten bridge for us here with Jesus being the Temple is that just as Jesus went out into the world to teach, to preach, and to heal, we are the body of Christ, blessed to be a blessing, which is the third level of this Gospel story. We worship Jesus here in this beautiful space and in the everyday context of our lives. Jesus is already in the world. We are simply following as his disciples.
I have a friend in Lexington who is a veteran pastor and preacher. He is fond of saying the older he gets, the more he is moving toward being a disciple than being a Christian. What he means by this is that sometimes we relegate what it means to be a Christian to how we act at church. But being a disciple means following Jesus into the world.
None of us is perfect of course, and none of us is without sin. But at the same time, none of us is left without the grace of God present in our life. This is what it means to be sanctified. To realize with greatest humility that we are holy. We are God’s beloved. And we are sent each week out to preach the Gospel through our words and through our actions. Another way of thinking of this is that while we worship together, we have this beautiful liturgy to guide us. Let us remember that the word liturgy means the work of the people. This may be the one place where we gather to practice what I call developing our outer liturgy and our corporate worship and strengthening our inner liturgy, which is our individual prayer and formation.
Often, we refer to the church parish as being this congregation gathered, the people in our membership rolls, all those listed on our phone directory. This idea of a church parish comes from the physical geographic area surrounding a church building in an English neighborhood or town. The people who live in that church’s district, whether they attend or not, are known as parishioners. Our understanding of course has changed to where our parish family could come from other areas of town. At the same time, I learned several years ago now that the parish does not need to be limited merely to the membership rolls itself. I learned this first in Harrodsburg serving our sister congregation of St. Philips. St Philips is an old church that has a long-standing presence. Therefore, it could be said that the whole town becomes part of the Episcopal priest’s parish. Obviously, townspeople are members of many different churches and denominations. But in a small town with one Episcopal church, the Episcopal priest is often asked to participate in local events, service group functions, and civic programs.
More recently, my idea of parish expanded again during Covid. Now I grew up in a church with a tv ministry that had started back in the 50s and broadcast the main service live every Sunday morning on the CBS affiliate station. My home church growing up would often receive notes, cards, and letters from the tri-state area of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. Anywhere people could catch the live broadcast on their TVs was a way of preaching the Gospel out beyond our physical membership and geographical parish. But when Covid hit, in Lexington, we began to use our website as a broadcasting tool initially to get our service out to our church members, but then the nature of the web, as you know, is that it can be seen worldwide. We began to get emails, phone calls, and Facebook hits from many different states. Some people heard through a friend, for instance, that we were broadcasting our service. And not only were we broadcasting it live, but we were also archiving it on our website so that people could watch it Sunday evening, or a few days later, or even months later. When Covid lockdown began, we really did not know what was going to happen. Would this be the time that our churches would close? For us, it proved to be fruitful beyond our understanding. This is why I am such an advocate for having our 10 am service livestreamed and archived on our website in a similar way. I believe that our church has something very special to offer the community around us. I am not saying that we are more special than any other church. But I believe that whatever it takes for us to get this going, we are going to see God do amazing things! The concerted effort that we put forth to preach the Gospel and to be the church through this medium, God will multiply. You and others can tag this livestream and our church formation opportunities on your social media. This is not a new idea; it is just new for us. I believe we all know that there are people whose lives would be touched by hearing God’s message. This is the point that Jesus was trying to get across in this Gospel account. On the one hand, the Temple is here in this physical space, and on the other hand the Temple is Jesus himself. Our relationship with Christ becomes our worship in the Temple.
Just as Jesus stood up for the Gentiles, we are to make this physical space and our congregation as inclusive as possible. Our hospitality to others is hospitality practiced to the body of Christ Himself. Hospitality means that we make room for all of God’s beloved children. Our scripture text today speaks of the zeal in God’s house which begs the question what then is appropriate zeal in God’s house? Jesus is saying that God’s house is a house of prayer, a house of reverence, a house of holy joy, and a house of inclusivity. Not a place of exploitation and exclusivity. Jesus serves as the chief disruptor of the powers of the Temple that excluded others. What does Jesus the disruptor have to teach us in our day? Are you willing to be disrupted by Jesus?
Another pastor friend of mine told me once that he made a pilgrimage to churches in Scotland—a trip he had planned for months. One day he went to a church service in a beautiful cathedral that sat 1600 people. But for that worship service, as was usually the case, there were less than 25 people in attendance for the service. He picked his seat, sat down quietly, and began to pray. He felt a steady tap on his shoulder and looked up to see a woman standing over him, with a stern look on her face, saying, “You’re sitting in my seat.” Here they were in this huge, cavernous space, with plenty of seats from which to choose. He said that he could not believe what was happening but chose to move to another section. I wonder if she would have asked Jesus himself to move. Hospitality was obviously not in her wheelhouse that day.
Sometimes lifelong churchgoers talk about those who come to church who are not “church broke.” This means newcomers are not broken in and aware of the church family rules, where people sit, and what coffee hour means. I saw a lot of this also through our live streamers who were regular attenders online who would often email us questions about the lingo we used and our congregational language. We did not realize it, but we were not including new church goers in our descriptions of various aspects of church life. They were out of sight, out of mind for us. Perhaps you have been in a similar situation of being treated like an outsider when visiting another church; I know I have. Again, we cannot be perfect, but we can keep in mind what is the inclusive and hospitable thing to do here? Jesus said that he was the new Temple. As followers of Christ, as the body of Christ, we are therefore carrying the Temple of Jesus Christ into our lives and into the world. Whether it is in these walls or outside these walls, Jesus’ message of hospitality serves as an unassuming yet important part of our witness. It used to be that a sacrificial animal was required to worship. Now Jesus has served as the ultimate sacrifice, and we are also asked to make a sacrifice. Our sacrifice is not always comfortable, of course, or convenient. Our sacrifice is one of praise and thanksgiving. We make an offering to the Lord of our praise and thanksgiving. We make an offering to the lord of our presence, the time we can give out of our busy schedules, our daily decisions and actions, the resources we can share to support the ministry of the church, within these walls and outside these walls.
So, we are the stewards of our worship space here. We are the stewards of all those who attend, new and not-so-new. This is part of our Temple, where we practice what we will hopefully preach outside. Jesus is also the Temple with whom we have our deepest ongoing life relationship. Where He goes, we can go. As disciples, we are invited to follow Him day by day. Finally, we are the Temple together. We are the body of Christ, partnering with God to make a difference wherever we are. As your pastor, I want you to know how immensely proud I am to be associated with you and for all of the good work and witness I know is coming out of this church. It will be wonderful to see what God can do in us and through us in the years ahead. Thanks be to God. Amen.