Musical Prelude and Service.

Psalm 19 & John 2:13-22
Across the breakfast table with Ellie earlier this week, I noted that I was reflecting on the story of Jesus turning over the tables in the temple.
She noted in the church of her childhood and youth, they prohibited sales and various other money-making ventures because of their reading of this story. She added that some greater education on the context of the sale of birds and other animals and the money changers provide some greater context for Jesus’s anger. And all of this is very true.
To reiterate, it is Passover. And thousands; some estimate up to 300,000 people of Jewish faith have made their way to Jerusalem to worship and leave a sacrifice at the temple. To facilitate the provision of sacrifices, the temple authorities are selling cattle, goats, doves etc. But, to make those transactions in the temple, it must be done in temple shekels, so money changers are happy to exchange people’s Roman currencies for the shekels. Of course, a profit is made on those transactions.
The authorities are increasing their wealth based on the structural hinderances to gaining access to God’s house. And in witnessing this on that day Jesus loses his temper.
Most of us, I assume, know this story, but as usual, what do we take from this story, today?
Psalm 19 speaks about the beauty and wonder of God’s law. It is a reflection on how we find God’s beauty and promise in the wonder of creation.
The Psalm is an expression of God’s wonder and how we experience that beauty and awe in so many ways as we move about our days.
It is significant to note that the Hebrew scripture assigned for this week is the commandments given to Moses in Exodus. It states there shall be no other God’s before our God. We shall not create idols, nor shall we worship those idols.
There is a strong suggestion that what Jesus sees in the temple is the authorities worshipping the God of wealth above the God who liberated his people from slavery. It is very possible that Jesus saw the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals creating an idol out of the coins they demanded from the people who came to worship the God who led them to this land.
In their commitment to process and order they have lost sight of what God truly desires, a celebration of life and freedom and just relationships between all of God’s creation.
On this day we celebrate and bless the many, many ways the people of this congregation offer their tie, their skills and their energy to making this community of faith function. It requires a host of people and a host of ideas and energies and talents. Perhaps it is correct to say sacrifices are made.
I’m not really sure where to go with that, but I am struck by that thought.
I am also struck by the idea that Jesus arrives at the temple as the community and the temple authorities are going about their regular business. They are doing all the things they have been taught need to be done in order to create the right circumstances for people to gain access to God. And as they do so, God appears and walks among them; getting angrier and angrier with every step he takes.
And even after he has exploded in anger and turned over the tables and driven the cattle the sheep and the money changers outside the walls, they don’t recognize God’s presence in front of them.
We gather here every week. We go about our business creating the circumstances to worship, to sing, to pray and to reflect on how God communicates with us and how we can discern God’s presence and work in our lives. But I wonder, if our tables were turned over; if our way of doing things were to be completely disrupted, could we see God at work in that moment and in the aftermath?
Much of my reading this week has noted that we can and often do, easily fall into the trap of thinking we have Jesus and God figured out. We can set Jesus in well crafted boxes or images that tell us just who he is and what he looks like.
But Jesus, God, has a peculiar habit of escaping our narrow definitions and our well-maintained images. As much as we have reflected and sorted out who God is for us; God is so much more. God comes to us and lives among us in the person of Jesus and Jesus is so much more than we give him credit for.
There’s a joke I come across frequently in my progressive Christian circles. It goes something like this:
What would Jesus do? Well, according to scripture, turning over tables and beating people with a whip is sometimes an option.
I recently came across an interview with scholar Walter Brueggemann in which he makes the point; Jesus was not crucified because he was a nice man. Jesus was crucified because he disrupted and threatened a status quo and insisted there was a different way to be in relation with the world. He challenged the view of the world that set some people as being more important than many others and kept saying the world could be a very different place.
Jesus did not rely upon polite interaction to get his point across. Again, to quote from this interview with Brueggemann; and I will admit that some of these words may seem jarring, but they are well worth considering:
“We live in a bourgeois cocoon of niceness and anything that breaks out of that is very threatening and disruptive to people. We must work towards having honest speech with each other. When we have honest speech, we have to speak out about the things that are unjust and unfair. We need a more honest and abrasive speech to bring our talk into connection with our social reality. Any intent to curb that kind of speech is a desire to not have reality pointed out to us. But if we don’t have reality pointed out to us nothing will ever change.”
Jesus was a nice man. Jesus was the revelation of God’s love in the world. But his kindness, his message to love one another was not what led him to the cross. It was his pointing out the unjust nature of the empire. It was his announcement that the empires of the world were not forever, but God’s reign would never end that threatened the powers of the world.
Jesus disrupts our comfortable world. Jesus lets us know where we can do better, where we have forgotten our way. Sometimes that is uncomfortable. Sometimes it is scary. But even as we are shaken out of complacency, God is inviting us into a deeper relationship and a new life with God at our centre.
And we are moved once again to say Thanks be to God.
Amen

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789