Jesus 'cleanses the temple' - but why?

Judi Hattaway's sermon of 11th March 2012

Reading: John 2:13-22

It’s over!

After many weeks that have run into months, the ‘Occupy’ Protesters outside St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Cathedral Green in Bristol and elsewhere, have been, or are in the process of being evicted.

The slogan, ‘What would Jesus do?’ comes to mind very sharply in these true-life stories.

We could probably run a six-week course working out what we all feel about what has taken place, as people took matters into their own hands.

They wanted to send a large and potent message out to the government that the ways of the bankers over many years has been unacceptable.

Tax payers, that’s you and me, bailed the banks out, because they could not be allowed to fail.

Public sector workers’ pay is being frozen, pensions are being eradicated and pension-funds raided, private sector workers are being made redundant, along with public sector ones too, and our young people are struggling to get a foot on the employment ladder, or pay off their large debts, created out of necessity by gaining an education or training, to fit them for a presently, non-existent, future job.

Angry? I am! I hope you are too. We should be angry!

This is the right reaction to all of this.

But we have to bear some of the shame too. Yes, there has been wilful, abandoned, unprincipled, and unethical business practices in the City of London, and around the world’s financial sector, but we may have to wonder what part we played in all of this.

Christian Aid is highlighting the way tax havens and tax evasion cost poor nations millions of pounds. At root it is stealing. We should ask ourselves how honest we will be about untaxed income when the next round of tax forms arrive.

There is no way to escape the public effects of our private actions. It is in our private actions that our public trustworthiness is revealed.

Something for us to ponder during the rest of Lent perhaps?

So this gospel story, from John, that we have heard this morning, feels very timely.

The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, have a similar story, with some variants, but they place the incident near the end of their gospels when Jesus enters Jerusalem for Passover, in the week he was executed by crucifixion.

In John, the incident occurs toward the beginning of the gospel and is distinctively different from the brief synoptic versions.

Scholars agree that the gospel accounts are almost certainly grounded in an historical incident. Most concur that the synoptic placement is more plausible historically, because it provides the provocation for Jesus' arrest and execution.

This scenario implicates both temple functionaries and imperial rulers in the temple institution, a historical reality in Jesus' time.

Interestingly, the Revised Common Lectionary includes only John's version as a reading, and assigns it to the season of Lent. 



The Gospel of John places the scene in the first of three pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

Jesus' angry demonstration at the temple is the second sign (sometimes referred to as a miracle) in the narrative. The occasion of the first sign is among family and friends at a wedding in Cana, which you will remember we encountered a few weeks ago. Cana is a small town in Galilee (2:1-11).

John records the second sign that follows only few verses after the first, but the context is by contrast urban, public, and politically charged.

Crowds swell the population of Jerusalem at Passover, bringing an increased need for services, not least of all access to the temple's sacrificial rites.

Crowds heighten the potential for disturbance and therefore the increased presence of Roman troops for crowd control.

In this volatile setting, Jesus makes a whip, drives out animals and the people selling them, and moneychangers; he pours out their money and tips over their tables.

I hope you can capture this scene in your imagination. It didn’t quite get like this outside St. Paul’s, but I see and hear echoes there.

This second sign pertains to the temple, but what invokes Jesus' wrath?
 


The temple was a complex institution in the first century until its destruction in 70 CE.

For Israel the Temple in Jerusalem was God's permanent dwelling place, a sign of the covenantal promise of eternal presence.

According to biblical law, sacrificial rites were administered at the temple by priests, descended from priestly lineage. Jews throughout the diaspora made pilgrimages at feast times. The temple was a potent symbol that bound Jews in a common identity.

At the same time, the temple priests provoked resentment because of their inherited status, their connection to Roman authorities, and their distance from those who suffered under imperial powers. The temple priests were not in any sense religious leaders of the people. 

Under Roman rule the priests were not autonomous in their authority -- even over religious matters. Roman officials appointed the chief priest, and he served their interests. Roman coffers benefited from the marketplace that supported sacrificial rites.

A disruption at the marketplace, at one of the temple courts, during a festival season like Passover, affected Rome's revenues. During the Roman occupation, they controlled the temple. This all sounds very familiar, when one of the recent arguments put forward about the Occupy protesters was that by their presence outside the Cathedral, they were affecting St Paul’s revenues.

We cannot know what Jesus had in mind by his angry demonstration, but he must have been aware that it would draw the attention of the Roman authorities.

A reasonable speculation is that his anger was fuelled by the unhealthy relationship between Roman bureaucracy and the temple authorities.



The gospels were written after the devastating loss of the temple in the Jewish war against Rome. These narratives reinterpret the loss in terms of victory.

According to John, Jesus asserts that he himself is the temple (verses 19-21). Rome did not destroy Jesus by crucifying him; the temple endures through Jesus Christ.

Although Jesus' confrontation against the money changers, occurs towards the beginning of the gospel of John, it foreshadows Jesus' trial, death and resurrection. 



In the lengthy trial scene, imperial titles for Jesus play a prominent role. Pilate mocks Jesus by calling him "King of the Jews" and putting this inscription on the cross, despite objections from the chief priests (19:21-22).

Pilate taunts the Jews on the day of his execution: "Here is your king!" 



The people reply that anyone who claims to be a king "sets himself against the emperor" (verse 12).

The chief priests confirm their loyalty to the emperor claiming; "We have no king but the emperor."(verse 15).

The exchange between Pilate and the people and the chief priests exposes the irony of Pilate's taunts. He unwittingly gets it right. Pilate demonstrates the failure of those who refuse to claim Jesus as King for fear of antagonizing the imperial powers.

For his first-century audience, John insists on appropriating imperial titles for Jesus. Followers of Jesus confess that Jesus is King and the emperor is not.

If the consequence of challenging the imperial powers is death, as it was for Jesus and many of his followers, so be it. 

 


During the weeks of Lent we consider what it means to follow Jesus, or to walk the way of the cross.

John’s gospel portrays Jesus in a public act that confronts religious and government institutions. Those who joined the Occupy movement and protest -- were not all Christians. There would have been mixed motives among those encamped outside St Paul’s. Some would have been homeless, and some would have been addicts, and yet even if those folk were simply looking for a place to lay their heads, their very presence was an indictment of the capitalist society that has created such an underclass. The contrast of the haves and the have nots was writ large and clear.

In this story Rome holds the ultimate power. This observation is important because it is implicit and because Christian listeners tend to miss it.

The traditional heading for this story, "Jesus Cleanses the Temple," contributes to the perception that the problem which evokes Jesus' ire is the corruption of Jewish rituals and Jewish leaders. 



I think the account of Jesus' demonstration at the temple invites us to consider more deeply, the complex relationships between civil and religious life.

When does Christian faith lead us to challenge civil authority?

When do secular laws compromise Christian values?

When does one interfere with the other?

America values the separation of church and state, but in reality it is not so neatly separated. What do we here in the UK feel about the relationship between church and state? Is it OK for the House of Lords to be populated with male, unelected, bishops from the Church of England? 



Many American Christians have defied civil law because of their Christian beliefs concerning human rights.

We recognize Martin Luther King as an exemplary American Christian who confronted civil authorities. We can think of Florence Li-Tim Oi, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, John and Charles Wesley, Donald Soper, William Wilberforce and many, many, others who challenged the status quo in their own country’s history – and please note that some of these people were women.

Canon Giles Fraser and Dean Graeme Knowles have paid for the disturbance and its handling at St Paul’s with their jobs and possibly their vocations. The newly appointed Dean, David Ison, will have his work cut out to put things back on an even keel, and rebuild the fractured relationships between St Paul’s and the City of London.

What does it look like to follow Jesus -- for us in our own time and place?

Who are our models of faith and why?

What can we do about our own little piece in the Capitalist trap?

Lent is a good time to think about difficult or unpopular decisions we make -- as we try to walk the way of the cross.