Allen Junek
The Third Sunday in Lent
Year B: Lent III
The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle
Exodus 20: 1 – 7
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 25
John 2:13 – 22
In the name of the one, holy and undivided Trinity + Amen.
How foolish this Jesus, our Jesus, is.
Today we read about one of the most important accounts of Jesus’ life: the “cleansing” of the Temple. So important, in fact, that it’s one of the few of stories each Gospel writer includes. Though they each remember it differently, it would seem that the Early Church wanted this story to be told. This event was to be remembered.
Sts. Matthew, Mark, and Luke remember it near the end of his life. They place it as one of the main reasons that Jesus is arrested and put to death. In fact, Matthew and Mark tell us that this is the only specific charge brought against Jesus at his trial in the early hours of that Friday morning. According to Mark, the Romans soliders reference this event, throwing it in Jesus’ face while he hangs on the cross (Mk. 15:29). Ultimately, this event in the Temple gets Jesus crucified.
How foolish this Jesus, our Jesus, is.
The Gospel of John–today’s gospel–on the other hand, places this episode at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It comes just after that wedding in Cana where Jesus proves himself to be the ideal, and perhaps most economic, party guest.
Chances are if you grew up in Sunday School or going to church reguarly, you learned that Jesus cleared out the Temple because the merchants were cheating people in God’s house. People were being exploited, and that pissed Jesus off–and for good reason! And while this may very well be true, I think there’s something else at play, if we could but pull back the veil.
The author, or authors, of John’s gospel do something the other gospel writers don’t. They use this incident in the Temple to set the stage for one of Jesus’ most unprecedented metaphors.
Imagine for a moment, Jesus strolling into the hustle and bustle of Temple life. It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Temple to Jewish life and identitiy in the 1st century because in a very real sense, it’s where the Holy One of Sinai, YHWH, God could be found.
It was where the divine intersected with our human existence. Within the Temple was the “holy of holies,” that innermost chamber which once housed the Ark of the Covenant. This is, the vessel which held the tablets of stone that Moses carried down from the mountain of God. The holy of holies was separated from the rest of the Temple buy a curtain, that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It was this same curtain that was rent in two from top to bottom the moment Jesus died. The Temple was where God was present in a unique way.
And along comes Jesus, saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” This Temple that has been under construction for 46 years? Go home, Jesus. You’ve had too much to drink.
How foolish this Jesus, our Jesus, is.
“But,” the text says, “he was speaking of the temple of his body.”
I think this is the most interesting part of Jesus’ time at the Temple–not the overturned tables, nor the petting zoo that had been let loose in the courtyard. No, the most interesting part I think, is that Jesus displaces God. This seems to be an overarching theme of John’s gospel.
John begins with God’s movement towards us: “And the Word became flesh,” we’re told, “and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Some translations say the Word (aka, Jesus) dwelt among us, or tabernacled among us. Either way, God has come near.
Later in this same gospel we read of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman. As a Samaritan, she worshiped God on Mount Gerizim, but as a Jew, Jesus worshiped at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In this encounter, Jesus disrupts this entire system, saying, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.”
Time and time again, we’re shown that God is not necessarily where we think God is. God is not confined to the highest heaven away from the sorrows of this world. Neither is God “over yonder” on that mountain, rather than here, in my kitchen.
I think Jesus underscores this in today’s gospel.
The most interesting part of today’s gospel reading is that Jesus displaces God. The transcendent One is present in his own body. Through all the events of his life, Jesus’ body is the point of connection between the divine and human life. The holy of holies.
Now lets connect the dots, shall we?
“But,” John writes, “he was speaking of the temple of his body.
The Gospel of John makes the claim, that a human body—unique, but also a lot like your body or mine, warts and all— is the holy place of God. This is why it’s so important to recognize that Jesus was not just “wearing” a human body like a suit or costume. He was a human body, as inseparable from his body as I am from mine and you from yours. God was with him, and since we have been united with Christ, God is with us too.
During this holy season of Lent, we follow Jesus’ body as he journeys up to Jerusalem, as his hands braid pieces of rope into a whip in order drive out moneychangers and cattle from his Father’s house, as he weeps in the garden before his betrayal and arrest. We watch him share a meal with friends. We attend his trial. We watch helpless as his body is scourged, mocked, and pierced. We weep with John and Mary, his Mother, as his limp form is removed from the cross.
You see, we are not naive about what it means to have a body. To have hands that grow calloused. Joints that don’t work as they used to. Hair that sprouts from strange places. To have a heart that can be broken. We are momentary carbon stories who are here one day and gone the next. Entropy will have its way. We are not naive about such things, and should we forget, this season of Lent reminds us of the sad state of things. The good news, however, is that God is not naive about such things either.
The Good News is that…
If God was committed enough to our bodies to become one in Jesus Christ;
if God was committed enough to our bodies to endure the pains of death;
and if God was committed enough to our bodies to raise Jesus from the dead–with a body able to eat fish on the lakeside, to walk the road to Emmaus, to bear his scars to Thomas–then we can be foolish enough to hold to this abiding promise that in life, in death, and in life again, God is with us.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
