Sermon-Sunday March 15 2009
Third Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What are we to make of this angry Jesus who confronts us in this morning’s Gospel lesson? Or perhaps more to the point; “What is Jesus making of us, with the anger that He displays in this morning’s Gospel lesson?” And this is not simply one of those “That’s a lot of anger for Jesus” moments. This is a lot of anger for anyone to display.
He comes into the temple and He sees that the temple is filled with people selling all sorts of livestock. There are money-changers which would indicate that the temple had been turned into a marketplace as Jesus would say later. In response Jesus pours out all the change, overturns the tables, makes a whip of chords, He doesn’t use it to actually whip anybody but to get their attention and to drive them out of the temple.
This flies in the face of the contemplative, sorrowful, merciful and compassionate image of Jesus that we seem to so often limit our understanding of Jesus to. Jesus is angry here. Jesus, a circumcised and faithful Jew, comes to Jerusalem on the dawn of Passover; the holiest day of the year for Jews; and He sees nothing but contempt and disregard for all holy things.
The reason people were selling livestock around Passover was because, the male members of the Jewish nation were required to come to Jerusalem three times a year; Passover being one of those times. But because of their distant travel they would not have been able to bring their own animals to sacrifice, which would have been a big part of the celebration, so local merchants began selling livestock. It was a profitable business and it had been going on for a long time. Captialism was not the sin here, as some might like to suggest.
You see the problem was the location. The market was in the lower part of the city. Then it had worked it’s way to the gates of the temple. And now it had finally come into the very courts of the sanctuary. Today, it would have been as if, parading around in this very sanctuary there were people selling cows and camels and donkeys and doves. And today, instead of money-changers, we’d probably have credit card machines and ATM’s.
And this would not have been just in the narthex or outside the church. I am talking right here in the sanctuary. And it’s not like any of the money would have been going to the church. Because the people the in temple were all raising money only for themselves. And so, you can see why Jesus would be so angry. And for Jesus this wasn’t simply a sacred place of worship, it was His Father’s house. These people had turned the place where Jesus could go and commune with His Father probably in a way that He couldn’t do anywhere else, into a marketplace and filled it with the stench of these animals. And so Jesus gets mad and makes a scene and turns over some tables, pours out some coins and drives people away with a whip.
And when He is confronted about this by the Jews who ask Him to show a sign that would validate His authority because He had made such a mess, Jesus tells them to destroy the temple and in three days He will raise it up. This is of course a reference to His death and resurrection, but the Jews of course did not understand that. And in fairness, neither really did the disciples until the resurrection.
And with this declaration of His coming death and resurrection, Christ Jesus is saying much more about His death and resurrection than that it would be a validation of His authority as the Son of God although that is part of it. But with this declaration of His death and resurrection, Jesus is declaring that He Himself is the temple.
Christ Jesus is here pronouncing Himself as the great sanctuary for all mankind over all the ages. You see, before Christ Jesus, the temple was considered the holy place because it was the temple. It was where God’s law was heard. It was sacred because it was confessed to be the very house of God, and not just in the folksy way that we say it today about church. They literally believed and confessed that the temple was the house where God lived and God was present there because that was where God’s Word was heard. And so an offense against the temple was considered an offense against the Father. And so in Jesus’ case an offense against the temple was an offense against His Father.
But now Christ Jesus comes, proclaiming Himself to be the temple. And Christ Jesus, being the Word incarnate means that an offense against God’s Word is an offense against Christ Jesus. And so an offense against the Gospel is an offense against Christ Jesus, it is an offense against God. And in this truth, that an offense against the Gospel is an offense against God, in this reality, we see that we are every bit as guilty as those merchants in the temple. We have made just as much a mockery of the holy temple of the Lord as those merchants that our Lord Jesus drove out of the temple.
For our natural inclination is not to embrace the Gospel, but to reject it as foolishness. Don’t believe me? Look all around at the state of American Christianity. All across America the largest and fastest growing churches are churches where the preachers have replaced the biblical Gospel of redemption with a revisionist gospel of pop-psychology and good advice. The Gospel has been reduced in many churches to a message of advice to save us from temporary unpleasantness, as opposed to the biblical Gospel of eternal redemption from God’s eternal damnation. The biblical Gospel of eternal salvation has been reduced to something that needs to be made relevant with trickery and deception, as opposed to the biblical Gospel which is relevant and authoritative unto itself.
But our rejection of the Gospel does not need to be so overt as these examples. For every time we sin we show our natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness. The law was given to expose our sin to us. So every time you hear “You shall have no other Gods before me.” You are reminded of those things that you daily make into other gods. When you hear the 8th commandment you are reminded of your predilection to gossiping. We are commanded also not to covet. Try walking through a new car lot without coveting. Jesus Himself says that by even holding an angry thought against someone you are guilty of murder. Does this sound harsh to you? Well if it does, then once again you are showing your natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness.
For as Paul says in the second lesson “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” And Paul says in Ephesians that we are born dead in our trespasses. And so, on our own, even in our most wise and imaginative moments, we are merely among the perishing for whom the message of the cross in mere foolishness.
But our Lord Jesus, being the temple who redeems us, is true to His Word. And so when it looked like we had destroyed Him with our sin and deceit and prideful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness, Christ Jesus showed Himself true to His Word and the temple that He is was raised for our salvation.
And the price for all the sin that we thrust upon Him in our attempts to destroy the temple that is Christ Jesus with our sinful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness has been paid. And in the waters of baptism, He claimed you as His and then brought you, kicking and screaming into your death, and with His word raised you as a new creation. And now the Word that claimed you in baptism and called you to new life in Christ Jesus dwells richly in you, and so you are also a temple. For it is the Word of God that makes something sacred. This pulpit is just a wood structure by itself, but when the Word is preached from it, it is a sacred instrument of God’s grace. The water in that font is merely water, but with God’s Word a means of grace by which sinners are cleansed and claimed for the Body of Christ and made temples. The wine and bread are merely food by themselves, but with God’s Word they are the precious gifts of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus bringing to you His good gifts of faith, forgiveness, redemption and sanctification.
I am merely a sinner, but when the Holy Spirit comes to me in God’s Word and the Word flows through me out to you, I am a preacher and a newly-raised temple. And you, having receivied God’s good gifts in Word and sacrament, have the Word of God flowing through you and you are newly raised temples, and every time you recveive these gifts you are raised anew. And so you have been freed to go forth to your neighbor and bring the temple that you are to them, spilling forth to them, the love, faithfulness, mercy and Word of Christ that creates faith and frees you from your blind rejection of the Gospel as foolishness and opens up to you the truth that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
Amen
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What are we to make of this angry Jesus who confronts us in this morning’s Gospel lesson? Or perhaps more to the point; “What is Jesus making of us, with the anger that He displays in this morning’s Gospel lesson?” And this is not simply one of those “That’s a lot of anger for Jesus” moments. This is a lot of anger for anyone to display.
He comes into the temple and He sees that the temple is filled with people selling all sorts of livestock. There are money-changers which would indicate that the temple had been turned into a marketplace as Jesus would say later. In response Jesus pours out all the change, overturns the tables, makes a whip of chords, He doesn’t use it to actually whip anybody but to get their attention and to drive them out of the temple.
This flies in the face of the contemplative, sorrowful, merciful and compassionate image of Jesus that we seem to so often limit our understanding of Jesus to. Jesus is angry here. Jesus, a circumcised and faithful Jew, comes to Jerusalem on the dawn of Passover; the holiest day of the year for Jews; and He sees nothing but contempt and disregard for all holy things.
The reason people were selling livestock around Passover was because, the male members of the Jewish nation were required to come to Jerusalem three times a year; Passover being one of those times. But because of their distant travel they would not have been able to bring their own animals to sacrifice, which would have been a big part of the celebration, so local merchants began selling livestock. It was a profitable business and it had been going on for a long time. Captialism was not the sin here, as some might like to suggest.
You see the problem was the location. The market was in the lower part of the city. Then it had worked it’s way to the gates of the temple. And now it had finally come into the very courts of the sanctuary. Today, it would have been as if, parading around in this very sanctuary there were people selling cows and camels and donkeys and doves. And today, instead of money-changers, we’d probably have credit card machines and ATM’s.
And this would not have been just in the narthex or outside the church. I am talking right here in the sanctuary. And it’s not like any of the money would have been going to the church. Because the people the in temple were all raising money only for themselves. And so, you can see why Jesus would be so angry. And for Jesus this wasn’t simply a sacred place of worship, it was His Father’s house. These people had turned the place where Jesus could go and commune with His Father probably in a way that He couldn’t do anywhere else, into a marketplace and filled it with the stench of these animals. And so Jesus gets mad and makes a scene and turns over some tables, pours out some coins and drives people away with a whip.
And when He is confronted about this by the Jews who ask Him to show a sign that would validate His authority because He had made such a mess, Jesus tells them to destroy the temple and in three days He will raise it up. This is of course a reference to His death and resurrection, but the Jews of course did not understand that. And in fairness, neither really did the disciples until the resurrection.
And with this declaration of His coming death and resurrection, Christ Jesus is saying much more about His death and resurrection than that it would be a validation of His authority as the Son of God although that is part of it. But with this declaration of His death and resurrection, Jesus is declaring that He Himself is the temple.
Christ Jesus is here pronouncing Himself as the great sanctuary for all mankind over all the ages. You see, before Christ Jesus, the temple was considered the holy place because it was the temple. It was where God’s law was heard. It was sacred because it was confessed to be the very house of God, and not just in the folksy way that we say it today about church. They literally believed and confessed that the temple was the house where God lived and God was present there because that was where God’s Word was heard. And so an offense against the temple was considered an offense against the Father. And so in Jesus’ case an offense against the temple was an offense against His Father.
But now Christ Jesus comes, proclaiming Himself to be the temple. And Christ Jesus, being the Word incarnate means that an offense against God’s Word is an offense against Christ Jesus. And so an offense against the Gospel is an offense against Christ Jesus, it is an offense against God. And in this truth, that an offense against the Gospel is an offense against God, in this reality, we see that we are every bit as guilty as those merchants in the temple. We have made just as much a mockery of the holy temple of the Lord as those merchants that our Lord Jesus drove out of the temple.
For our natural inclination is not to embrace the Gospel, but to reject it as foolishness. Don’t believe me? Look all around at the state of American Christianity. All across America the largest and fastest growing churches are churches where the preachers have replaced the biblical Gospel of redemption with a revisionist gospel of pop-psychology and good advice. The Gospel has been reduced in many churches to a message of advice to save us from temporary unpleasantness, as opposed to the biblical Gospel of eternal redemption from God’s eternal damnation. The biblical Gospel of eternal salvation has been reduced to something that needs to be made relevant with trickery and deception, as opposed to the biblical Gospel which is relevant and authoritative unto itself.
But our rejection of the Gospel does not need to be so overt as these examples. For every time we sin we show our natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness. The law was given to expose our sin to us. So every time you hear “You shall have no other Gods before me.” You are reminded of those things that you daily make into other gods. When you hear the 8th commandment you are reminded of your predilection to gossiping. We are commanded also not to covet. Try walking through a new car lot without coveting. Jesus Himself says that by even holding an angry thought against someone you are guilty of murder. Does this sound harsh to you? Well if it does, then once again you are showing your natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness.
For as Paul says in the second lesson “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” And Paul says in Ephesians that we are born dead in our trespasses. And so, on our own, even in our most wise and imaginative moments, we are merely among the perishing for whom the message of the cross in mere foolishness.
But our Lord Jesus, being the temple who redeems us, is true to His Word. And so when it looked like we had destroyed Him with our sin and deceit and prideful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness, Christ Jesus showed Himself true to His Word and the temple that He is was raised for our salvation.
And the price for all the sin that we thrust upon Him in our attempts to destroy the temple that is Christ Jesus with our sinful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness has been paid. And in the waters of baptism, He claimed you as His and then brought you, kicking and screaming into your death, and with His word raised you as a new creation. And now the Word that claimed you in baptism and called you to new life in Christ Jesus dwells richly in you, and so you are also a temple. For it is the Word of God that makes something sacred. This pulpit is just a wood structure by itself, but when the Word is preached from it, it is a sacred instrument of God’s grace. The water in that font is merely water, but with God’s Word a means of grace by which sinners are cleansed and claimed for the Body of Christ and made temples. The wine and bread are merely food by themselves, but with God’s Word they are the precious gifts of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus bringing to you His good gifts of faith, forgiveness, redemption and sanctification.
I am merely a sinner, but when the Holy Spirit comes to me in God’s Word and the Word flows through me out to you, I am a preacher and a newly-raised temple. And you, having receivied God’s good gifts in Word and sacrament, have the Word of God flowing through you and you are newly raised temples, and every time you recveive these gifts you are raised anew. And so you have been freed to go forth to your neighbor and bring the temple that you are to them, spilling forth to them, the love, faithfulness, mercy and Word of Christ that creates faith and frees you from your blind rejection of the Gospel as foolishness and opens up to you the truth that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
Amen
posted by Steve at 2:31 PM
1 Comments:
Really nice sermon. You found one of the problems I ran into-you have to spend a good amount of time explaining what was going on-but you did that well. You really tied it in at the end-I really liked the way you handled what the Word and sacraments are-looking normal, but being changed.
I do have to take exemption with this phrase: "The biblical Gospel of eternal salvation has been reduced to something that needs to be made relevant with trickery and deception, as opposed to the biblical Gospel which is relevant and authoritative unto itself.."
What do you mean that the Bible is authoratative ;-)
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