The Cleansing of the Temple
Hmm? What is Jesus talking about here? The public Temple in Jerusalem or the personal temple of the soul? Could it be both?

OPENING IN COMMUNION WITH THE ANCIENTS
From Psalm 19
Adapted from “Psalms Now”, by Leslie Brandt & Corita Kent, Concordia Publishing House, 1973

Wherever I am, wherever I go,
I can sense something of the power of God.
The grandeur of the mountains,
the vastness of the oceans,
the breathtaking wonder of interstellar space –
all this proclaims the glory and majesty of God.
Even amid the clutter of our cities,
built and abused by human hands,
there are reflections of divine splendor.
Heaven’s silence or Earth’s clamor
may not be very articulate;
yet God’s voice can be heard
making God’s presence known through the world.

God has made for us a path to walk in.
In God’s intention there is order and purpose.
God has proclaimed and demonstrated lasting truth
through the lips and lives of the children of the Earth.
There are set before us
precepts and principles which direct us
in the way of peace and joy.
God gives meaning to life,
goal and objective to our existence.
Therein is the answer to our inner need,
the fulfillment of our deepest longings.
These things are more precious and of greater value
than anything any of us could ever experience
or even dare to imagine.

Such is the path on which I long to travel.
It is not easy; I make so many mistakes.
I am plagued with faults and obsessions.
O God, forbid that these should destroy me.
Set me free from their tenacious hold on me.
Encompass me with your love and grace
that these things may not stand
between you and me.

O God, these are the thoughts
that crowd my heart today.
Accept them and respond to them,
and enable me to realize anew
the security and serenity
of your loving presence in my life.

HYMN: “Let Us Build a House”, More Voices #1

SCRIPTURE: John 2:13-22

This story might be familiar enough in its general outline. It is interesting, though, how its significance can shift as it is told in one Gospel or another. I will say more about that after we read it in John’s version.
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making 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. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After 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. (New Revised Standard Version)Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church: Thanks be to God.

TED’S REFLECTIONS
GIVING UP OUR ILLUSIONS FOR LENT

The story of Jesus “cleansing the Temple” appears in all four of the New Testament Gospels. I am most familiar with it as part of the Palm Sunday account in the other three Gospels, where it comes near the end of Jesus’ life and public ministry and strikes me in those accounts as part of a two-part, premeditated, and very carefully staged public demonstration – a bit of guerrilla theatre to draw attention to himself amidst the throng gathering for the Passover festival and to dramatically make a point. In the Gospel of John, where we read it today, it comes near the beginning not the end of Jesus’ public ministry and has more of a feel of a spontaneous and very personal outburst. As one who dabbled in street theatre in my younger years, I have a tendency to prefer the accounts in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. But on a closer reading of John’s version this week, I notice a twist that John includes that the others don’t. It is in the dialogue between Jesus and his accusers after his outburst that Jesus shifts the focus from the actual Temple in Jerusalem to the inner “Temple” within himself and, by extension, within each one of us. This is a nuance that the other Gospel writers don’t include. It is this shift that grabs my attention this week and upon which I will make a few observations for your reflection.
First of all, though, let me focus on the literal level of the cleansing of the actual Temple, the spiritual centrepiece in Jerusalem for observant Jews there and a pilgrimage site for faithful Jews everywhere else. Jesus himself is there as a Passover pilgrim from the north and seems to be appalled to find the sorry state into which has fallen this supreme symbol of his personal devotion. Perhaps he lashes out because of his disappointment and rage at the compromise, secularization, and commercialization of the Temple that he expected to experience as the place among all places where he could feel closest to God. Was he overly idealistic in his expectation and unduly harsh in his response? It could be argued that the money-changers and the sellers of animals were simply providing a needed service for pilgrims, even if it was a profit-making business opportunity for them. After all, many of the visitors needed to exchange the money from their homelands for local currency, just as any one of us does when we make an international trip. And most of those visitors would have wanted to offer a ritual sacrifice when they got to the Temple and, for that, they would need a dove or a lamb or a calf that they couldn’t possibly have brought with them. But Jesus saw something else at work: the gradual but inevitable settling of something that sprung from an idealistic vision into a comfortable and compromised institution whose vision had grown dim over the generations. As a reformer at heart, Jesus retains the original vision of the Temple and signals his intention to call it back to its true purpose.
I wonder if there is something in all this that can help us in our times as we seek the reformation and renewal of the church. What has time and tradition and complacency and opportunism and plain wrong-headedness encrusted onto the movement initiated by Jesus and his little band that needs to be stripped away to rediscover its core significance and its originating vision? How can church live up to its promise to be sacred ground where one can experience intimacy with Divine Presence and to be a community that brings wholeness to its members and an advance guard for a just peace globally? I suspect some part of my fading mind will be wrestling with such questions even as I use my last breath to gasp out “I love you” to those gathered around my deathbed and “thank you” to the world and its Creator for the gift of being able to sojourn here in my lifetime.
But Jesus goes on to extend the meaning of “temple” in John’s account. In the heated exchange that follows the incident itself, Jesus – rashly? – throws down a gauntlet challenging his opponents to a do or die contest. And if he dies, he suggests, he will still triumph because even death will not be able to kill that which is essentially true. He speaks in words that still confuse us now as much as they did his opponents then. Words that speak of death and rising from death. Words that tangle together reference to the Jerusalem Temple with reference to his body. I am not sure I can fully untangle what Jesus was getting at then or the way subsequent generations have layered further interpretations onto the bare bones of what he said at the time. So I will not take on that task. But what I will offer is to point to the flash of brilliant insight inside Jesus’ words that suggests that the true dwelling place of the Divine is not in symbols but in life itself, so that we – and I would go further and say with the Celts that all life and all matter – are the true dwelling place of the Divine. From that perspective, a similar set of questions pose themselves. What illusions within us need to be stripped away to allow us to rediscover ourselves and each other as temples of Divine Presence? What compromises and opportunism and cultural assumptions have taken up residence in our hearts and minds that, if “cleansed and driven out”, will allow us to see, be, and act authentically? Such questions are the reason I keep harping away at the critical importance of developing a personal practice of spiritual formation and why I keep at it in my own halting way.
One final comment. Jesus lived within the context of Judaism and his efforts (unintentionally I think) spawned a new religious movement that came to be known as Christianity. That said, what he grasped and longed to communicate, I think, has nothing to do with which religion is true and deserves to prevail in the end. I think what Jesus was onto – and which other spiritual forerunners have also been motivated by – is something that transcends religion and speaks of what is essentially and universally true in lived experience. Across traditions and cultures and ethnicities and mythologies, we are all simply human beings together, trying to make sense of it all. He so wanted his tradition and its expressions to open a path into the Mystery rather than get in the way. So do I with mine.

For Further Reflection:

Sometimes I have trouble grasping what it is that I am trying to say. My words seem to set up a screen that obscures further the lack of precise clarity in my thinking. This feels to me like one of those times. My suggestion for your reflection is for you to feed back to me – in simpler, more straightforward language – what you think I am trying to get at this week!
How might any of your reflections or current concerns lead you into prayer
before you continue with what follows?

OUR DEDICATION
From the United Church of Canada’s Song of Faith

We sing of a church seeking to continue the story of Jesus by embodying Christ’s presence in the world. We are called together by Christ as a community of broken but hopeful believers, loving what he loved, living what he taught, striving to be faithful servants of God in our time and place. Our ancestors in faith bequeath to us experiences of their faithful living; upon their lives our lives are built. Our living of the gospel makes us a part of this communion of saints, experiencing the fulfillment of God’s reign even as we actively anticipate a new heaven and a new earth. The church has not always lived up to its vision. It requires the Spirit to reorient it, helping it to live an emerging faith while honouring tradition, challenging it to live by grace rather than entitlement, for we are called to be a blessing to the earth. So be it.

HYMN: “Lord, Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary”, More Voices #18

CONCLUDING BLESSING

I give Mary Oliver the next to last word this week:
“Everything”, from New and Selected Poems, Volume 2, Beacon Press, 2005

I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don’t go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister

the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

Peace be with you
In the name of the Creator, Christ, and Spirit, One with all Creation.
Ted