Decalogue & the Temple (sermon)

Preparing for today, I learned something. If you listen up you also may learn something, I pray so. Please be seated.

Along with many other denominations, we are a liturgical church. From Greek, liturgy is literally “the work of the people” - - meaning that instead of coming to church to be - - “fed” (is the trendy self-centered term) and “blessed” as the entertained audience of a music program on a stage up front, we the people ourselves do the work of worship. Our liturgies are in our official worship Book of Common Prayer, the red book in the pew rack in front of you. 

This morning, worship began with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. In my growing up years as an Episcopalian, the church required that we hear the Ten Commandments one Sunday a month. In my grandfather’s growing up years before me, the church required the Ten Commandments be read every Sunday at the beginning of worship. 

The current Book of Common Prayer never requires the Ten Commandments be read at all, it’s discretional. I suppose this has both good points and bad. I’m no judge, and I’m certainly not in charge of Episcopal liturgy, that’s GeneraI Convention’s province. But we are missing something, and so when I saw that the Lectionary’s “first reading” for today is the Ten Commandments, I decided to do it as part of the liturgy. So now you not only heard the First Lesson, you’ve also experienced the liturgy of The Episcopal Church as it once was, “the old ways in the old days.” Just because “the old ways were best” is a tired old proverb does not mean it’s not so!

And now we hear this gospel from John; scholars title it “Jesus Cleanses the Temple.” In the synoptic gospels Mark, Matthew and Luke, Jesus does this at the very end of his ministry, on his visit to the temple in Jerusalem; and in fact, in the synoptics, Jesus cleansing the Temple is the precipitating cause for Temple authorities becoming so offended by this brash new-comer, outsider, rabble-rousing Galilean foreigner, visitor to Jerusalem that they conspire to put him to death. 

Many people are certain about something, and may be so certain that they demand everyone else comply with their certainties. This is especially true, including in America today, with religion, social issues, and politics. Life is filled with brash young men (and women), wild-eyed, obnoxiously overzealous - - especially new religious converts, getting wrapped up in a “cause” such as a religious, political, or social issue, and becoming self-righteously indignant when they encounter something that does not fit their square peg of certainty. Someone said, for example, and please don’t be offended because they said it anyway, even if it offends you, “Beware of a born-again Christian rising from his knees and going forth to do the Will of God.” It’s been true throughout Christian history and human history, that we hate and persecute those who are different from us.

So, in today’s gospel, this impetuous young man Jesus goes into the Jerusalem Temple for the first time (remember, in John’s gospel today, this event occurs at the very beginning of John’s story), Jesus goes into the Temple, sees a hustling, bustling market bazaar going on, and he goes berserk. In Gospel John, it sets the stage for all that follows, where all the religious authorities and legal professionals become instantly Jesus’ enemies: he’s offensive, obnoxious. Different.

But you see, the Temple marketplace did not begin as a shrewd, profitable business enterprise. It was Jewish law and practice, that their holy Temple, the House of God, could not be desecrated by bringing in filthy things of the world - - including dirty Roman money could not be brought into the temple and used for charitable alms or to buy animals for the traditional, required Temple sacrifices. So, there was a money-changer to convert your dirty Roman coins to Temple coins. And of course they made a profit, because working people have to make a living. And there were people selling animals that met the strict requirements for Temple sacrifice. Unblemished male lambs a year old, for instance, as prescribed by the Law of Moses: you could not sacrifice an animal with a broken leg, or a torn ear, or castrated, or missing a tail, it had to be perfect for sacrifice to God. You could not sacrifice a dove or pigeon missing a leg or tail feathers, or with a broken wing, it had to be perfect to be sacrificed to the Lord. So they had a marketplace in the outer area of the Temple. And, quite naturally, besides the honest merchants, there were crooks, cheats among the market stand proprietors, who would sell you a ten cent dove for ten dollars. 

So Jesus, raised way up north in Galilee, comes down to Jerusalem of Judea and goes into the Temple (for the first time, in John’s gospel), thinking it will be a quiet, reverent holy sanctuary. And is shocked at what he sees: not hushed and quiet at all, but a busy hubbub where friends meet and visit; poor folks and widows line up at the Temple treasury for their monthly dole, merchants laugh and shout and talk, birds chirp, animals bay & bleat loudly, and stink; there’s the smell of bloody, burning sacrifice, scammers are hawking counterfeit Rolex watches and knock-off purses. You can buy lunch or supper, enjoy the day, visit with friends and relatives - - it’s no reverent sanctuary at all as Jesus eagerly anticipated, but a circus, a bustling arena of social activity and commerce. 

Jesus goes berserk. This is not at all what he expected, he is stunned, astonished, offended, and he goes crazy. Consumed with pious, religious zeal, he goes into a rage.

Then we come to the reason this event is so important to John the Evangelist that he records it sixty or seventy years after Easter, for us to read two thousand years later, what? GospelJohn sees it retrospectively, as a sign (Greek semeion; semeia, signs are Gospel John’s specialty) - - a sign that from the very beginning of his earthly ministry, Jesus the Logos of God knew that he would be a  sacrificial lamb, crucified, dead, buried - - and God would raise him up on the third day. Why is GospelJohn telling us this? John’s an evangelist, a storyteller, a late first or early second century historian of sorts. He lives in a violent, frantic age of the Roman Empire when Christians are being persecuted. He wants his audience, you his reader, to know that the divine Jesus came to suffer and die, himself a sacrificial lamb, who came to be sacrificed by you, for you, a perfect sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. And God raised him up on the third day and sent him back to us, as Jesus knew God would do, because God so loved the world. 

That’s pretty basic Christian theology. That’s the gospel. Now you know the rest of the story. Is that so hard to understand? Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.

So now, one more thing while Jesus is cleansing the Temple. This is Lent, the Third Sunday in Lent. You’ve heard the Ten Commandments read to you in liturgical format. You've read and heard the Gospel. Do you not see that all this ties, fits neatly together? And First Corinthians 6:19 “Do you not know that your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have from God, and you are not your own?” A Lent sermon should give you a charge. Not a thrill, but a charge. My charge to you this Lent, is to get busy cleansing your own Temple with all good haste. And be done by Easter.

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Sermon, Sunday, March 4, 2018, Lent 3B, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. The Rev Tom Weller. Text: John 2:13-22, Jesus Cleanses the Temple.

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