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 marketplace!" 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.
I found a few folks who argued that Jesus is not acting violently here. That Jesus does not set aside his pacifistic ways here. I didn’t read the entire articles, but I think that later, they suggest that Jesus drove a Prius with a “save the Whales” bumper sticker next to their Obama Got Hope? sticker. Sorta like the article (linked in textweek last week) that said that in calling us to take up our cross, Jesus did not mean for us to be self sacrificing. That would be a fundamental misreading. It is the suffering of persecution - not suffering of self sacrifice - that is included in the call to take up your cross.
ok
I am not sure I like Jesus turning over the tables any more than the next person. Yet, I’m not sure that one can find Jesus the pacifist here. “He turned over tables, did not do violence to people” sorta thing. (Of course, if it was your table, you couldn’t exactly describe it as “an economic stimulus” either.)
I wonder.
It seems folks want to talk about this event in terms of systems. It was the “sacrificial system” Jesus went after. It was the systemic economic oppression of the common people.
yeah
Maybe he turned over the tables in the temple.
Maybe the questions to ask might be more about how Jesus turns the tables on us. . .
Perhaps the talk of systems and non-violence and such - seek to keep this story at a distance.
Jesus turns the tables, here in John, at the beginning of his ministry.
Rather than make apologies about Jesus. Rather than try to figure out a way to keep Jesus in the box we’ve placed him. . . I wonder if we might best wonder at how Jesus enters the temples we’ve constructed and turned things on their head.
Jesus turns over all our pretensions - all our self-righteousness - our selfishness - our certainties - our self-sufficiency - all.
Jesus turns over whatever we set as our center - our palaces (I meant to write place, accidentally added an a, and that looked strangely right) - the lives we construct and defend.
It is Lent. . . a season of repentance.
A season to re-center - on God.
A season to re-center on our mission to love.
Jesus turning over the tables shows how urgent and radical this is. It is time to throw off those things that separate us from God. Throw off, the self-absorption that blinds us to the needs of the poor. Throw off, the selfishness that makes us so uncharitable. Throw off, the violence we justify in the name of security. Throw off, perhaps even our religious answers to life, and to take on the way of the cross.
It crosses my mind that Jesus already did the throwing. Then he did the lifting.
Time to follow. . .
3 comments:
Underminer..thanks for your proding and reflections. Last week the gospel seemed to me to raise the question: What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus ? This Sunday's gospel seems to raise the question: What does it mean to be the church that Jesus.. the Spirit called together? I suppose we could argue about what it is that should be the center focus of the church (ie. evangelism, Word & Sacrament, preaching, disciple making, doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with our God...all of the above & then some..) Tis true, there are a number of things which need to be "over turned" or "shaken up" or "reformed" within us..the church so that we keep our focus on the central things. A verse (vs. 2) of a song (Spirit of Gentleness, ELW # 396)comes to mind.."and when they were blinded with idols and lies..then you spoke through your prophets (and Jesus) to open their eyes.." I can only imagine the deafening sounds of the marketplace, animals bellowing, turtledoves cooing, money clanging, people yelling. Jesus would have had to do something dramatic (not necessarily violent) to get the people's attention. I like your line..."throwing off" the things which would separate or distract us from our worship & service. That will preach ! I'm re-reading a little book, titled, "From Brokenness to Community" by Jean Vanier. Jean started the L'Arche Community in France. A community of handicapped people. Henri Nouwen served as pastor in one of these L'Arche communities. Vanier describes Christian community as a place of pain..a place of loss..a place of conflict and a place of death & resurrection. Jesus invites us into relationship..into community and into mission. It is impossible to accept Jesus'invitation to community without experiencing pain, loss, conflict, death & resurrection.
Thanks VOV. I like your concluding line there, (a crescendo, as it were!)
"It is impossible to accept Jesus' invitation to community without experiencing pain, loss, conflict, death & resurrection."
That'll preach too, won't it? or - as we say in the hinterlands of WYO - "That dog'll hunt"
ok
we don't say that here.
We should.
One reality - is that the experience of pain, loss conflict and death is often more clear to the eye than the experience of resurrection. Thus, I suspect, the imperative call to proclaim the resurrection!
In the back of my mind, as I wrote this, I was thinking of this quote from The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross. It is kinda heavy. . . but might be worth slogging through.
"For the prophets were true monotheists, and nothing they said so stressed their monotheism as the idea that God was free enough of his chosen people to transform them in the crucible of destitution into a community whose members could themselves be free of every institution which in his providence he might give them. Their real hope, according to these prophets, lay in the God who had given them their existence in the first place, in his giving it to them again. Normal folk, in their right minds, know that hope is in having things turn out the way they think they should - by maintaining their view of life without let, threat or hindrance. And normal folk believe ina god who will simply make things turn out that way. For them it is not a question of what God ought to do, that is clear: he will do what we know is right for him to do, if we simply trust and obey. Nobody in his right mind could possibly believe that God would want us to die in order to give us life again, or to take away the old institutions he first gave us in order to gave us new ones."
- James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon, Fortress 1972 quoted in The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross by George L. Murphy pg 32
Bracing. Especially the notion that God's freedom includes the freedom for God to set aside something which God might have given as gift in God's providential goodness. i.e. the Abrahamic covenant as central - and now, what of the Church. Tables turn, and perhaps, by the grace of God, repentance follows.
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