Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“The message about the cross is foolishness …
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles …”
What Christians were saying was the center of their faith 2,000 years ago
was hard to take by those around them in that place and culture,
just as much as it is today.
And if we take a closer look at what is in the Gospel for today,
with the talk about Temple sacrifice
and the significance of the death of Jesus,
again this kind of discussion
might seem like a stumbling block and foolishness.
So let’s tackle it!
The setting for this Gospel story is the time of the feast of the Passover,
and the feast of unleavened bread,
the time for purging out all the old leaven from the house,
- that’s the custom: get rid of all the old leaven -
and Jesus comes to the Temple, the House of God, in Jerusalem.
Now the Temple is the place where the sacrifices for sin are offered,
the life of animals exchanged for the life of the humans
for those who recognize that they have not kept the Covenant, or those 10 Commandments we have now read twice,
- and all the other commandments -
they haven’t been able to keep them all,
and are therefore deserving of death.
That is the point of the Law of the Covenant:
Keep the Commandments, and you choose life.
Deviate from the Commandments, and you are on the path to death.
And since humans are so devious, we deviate so much,
well, there we are, in need of the sacrifice to save our lives.
The cattle and sheep and doves at the Temple were there for one purpose,
to be slaughtered, a continuous effusion of blood,
and then to become meat on the table.
And in this gospel lesson Jesus comes and sets them free.
Startled and wide-eyed cattle and sheep
scattering and stampeding out of the Temple courts
into the streets of Jerusalem!
The flurry of wings!
I can almost hear Jesus yelling at them, “Run for your lives!”
Well, the idea of blood sacrifices
as substitutions for people whose lives are under sentence of death may seem strange and remote to us in our 21st Century culture
especially where our view of these animals
comes in sealed packaging arrayed in sanitary rows,
as steaks and standing rib roasts and lamb chops
and de-boned pigeon breast or thigh,
de-personalized bits and pieces of a once whole, live animal,
an animal whose life was sacrificed that you might live
through the nourishment derived from its flesh.
The Temple was the center of the religious practice of Jesus’ day,
the sign of God’s presence with the people,
and of God’s action in the Covenant and Law to save and make people holy.
And by the action of clearing the temple
of the sacrificial animals necessary for the practice of the religion, Jesus is making a radical shift
a radical shift away from the Temple and the whole religious enterprise
to himself, his own body,
as THE Temple, the Holy of Holies, the House of God.
We can look back just a few verses just prior to this Gospel lesson
into the end of Chapter 1 of John’s Gospel,
and you may recall the conversation Jesus was having with Nathaniel.
Jesus was describing himself for Nathaniel,
as a ladder connecting heaven and earth
with angels ascending and descending,
the very vision Jacob had
as he slept out in the open of a vast deserted place
with a stone for his pillow,
a place he then called Beth-El, the House of God.
Jesus is Beth-El, the House of God,
the vessel conveying the divine presence,
the One, whom to look at, is to see God.
It is his sacrifice, his blood
that will stand in the place of that endless line of creatures
facing their doom in the Temple courts.
Jesus is both Temple, the House of God, and sacrifice.
His disciples observed Jesus and the radical action he was taking
and they remembered the verse from Psalm 69,
“Zeal for your house consumes me.”
Zeal, fire, love, passion consumed him entirely
as is seen in his perfect union with the Father
so that in him one will is being expressed,
and therefore his Presence in the Temple in Jerusalem cleans it out, purifies it.
“Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?”
the Apostle Paul asks in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth.
Just as Jesus is the House of God,
so we in him are temples of God,
built to offer worship and praise to the Creator,
to overflow with the love of God.
This temple of our hearts, our being, is also in need of cleansing.
As Paul so aptly describes in his Epistle to the Romans,
our human struggle to be holy brings us to frustration.
We are not able of our own power and effort
to accomplish a perfect observance of the commandments of God,
the laws of God which demonstrate to us
the way of holiness and harmony with God.
Something else is dwelling in us, in our flesh and bones and spirits,
that frustrates our intention and effort.
Paul identifies this as sin,
defined as that which moves us off target in the path of holiness.
We are a vessel, a temple, of sin,
that which moves us away from harmony with God.
The condition of the temple within us may appear to be hopeless.
We may wonder at times
if this temple is in even worse shape
than the one Jesus found in Jerusalem.
Jesus said that it is what comes out of the heart that defiles a person,
and one look at just the words proceed out of our mouths,
and we can see the defilement
the defilement of words spoken in anger,
words with a sharp edge of sarcasm, criticism,
words meant to cut another down,
words that kill the life in another person.
We are given the gift of language, speech, words,
the very thing God used for creation and life,
and we use it for destruction and death.
Words can be just as deadly as weapons of war,
and words proceed out of the heart,
which is the temple of the Living God.
Well, it IS Lent, a good time for spring house cleaning.
We need Jesus to do some cleansing in our own temples,
cleaning out whatever beasts may be lurking there,
and the moneychangers and livestock dealers comfortably seated there,
to send them startled and wide-eyed stampeding out.
But there is a difference between
Jesus entering uninvited into the Temple in Jerusalem
and Jesus entering our temple hearts.
Here he asks permission, so to speak.
Here we are wooed by the Holy Spirit to open the door and invite him in,
and to continue inviting him in.
There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that Jesus does the work in us to make us holy.
The bad news is that Jesus does the work in us,
and he does it effectively and thoroughly.
So if resistance comes up, we may wonder,
Will he take a whip to us like he did in the Temple in Jerusalem?
John the Baptist had said that the One coming after him
would baptize with fire,
that he had a winnowing fork and fan
to separate the chaff and burn it clean from us.
Violent imagery!
Will we too be consumed in his zeal?
Yes, it may be that what we have identified ourselves so closely with
will be burned away,
and what will remain will be identified as the true self.
And so the need for the old temple sacrifices of blood is gone.
We are not required to manage our own expurgation
for the sins that plague us and frustrate us
and make life miserable for us.
There was one sacrifice in the Temple, the House of God,
offered once and for all,
the full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,
and we all eat of the flesh of that sacrifice week by week.
Does that shock your sensibilities?
Listen for that word sacrifice to come up as we continue with the liturgy.
Notice how often it appears.
But don’t we have to do something?
What is left for us to do?
There is a sacrifice that we can make:
the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,
the offering of our selves, our souls and bodies,
as a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice,
by simply opening the door to receive what’s given.
Recall these words from the Epistle reading for today:
“The message about the cross is foolishness …
we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,
and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore let us keep the feast.
