March 7, 2021: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
Okay at first glance, it might seem that Jesus, in the gospel today, is taking March madness a little too literally, right? I mean we are only in the second chapter of this gospel and already he is taking a whip out and turning over tables. So, let’s look at this temple encounter story a bit more closely.
Now before we begin, let’s remember that this gospel is one we always need to be cautious about. This is the gospel where we have to flip all those “The Jews” statements, right? Notice today that I did not read the text as written, and you know why by now if you’ve been coming here for any length of time, but for those who have joined us recently, or today for the first time, we always need to be careful when we read this fourth gospel. Who is Jewish in this story? – EVERYBODY – Jesus too. So it would be like saying “The Jews said to the Jew Jesus…” The community that wrote this gospel was trying at that time, late in the first century, to set themselves apart from the Jewish faithful, not to mention also from other groups who followed Jesus, so this is why this language is used. Through the centuries however, it has led to some Christians to set themselves against those of the Jewish faith, forgetting that Jesus himself, and all those who followed him from Peter, to Mary Magdalene, to Paul were Jewish. So, we set the anti-Semitism aside, as well we should, and I do this by intentionally changing the text to its more true meaning – the temple elite, or the people.
The other thing we need to know, as I have mentioned before, is that money changing itself wasn’t wrong. The temple was the place people brought their best offerings as tithes to show thankfulness to God, and this setup outside the temple was needed. The Jewish faithful, of which Jesus and all his followers were a part, believed that Roman coinage, which depicted an image of the emperor, was not only the currency of the oppressors, but was idolatrous, and therefore a violation of the commandments of the covenant. So, just like we exchange our dollars for the local currency when we enter another country, the Jewish faithful believed they were entering God’s country in the temple, and therefore needed to exchange the secular coinage of the Roman Empire for that of the temple. Denarii for shekels of the sanctuary, so to speak (or more likely half-shekels, the temple coin).
As for those selling animals, in Deuteronomy it clearly states that if you cannot bring your offerings to God across a great distance, it is acceptable to sell your offering for money, then exchange that money at the temple for offerings of animals, or whatever. Sadly, animal sacrifice was a thing then – I know, it’s enough to make you want to be a vegetarian in penance, but there you have it. If folks who wanted to offer a sacrifice didn’t have one handy, or had to travel a long way to get to the temple, they needed to buy one.
So, if changing money or buying an animal for sacrifice wasn’t against the law, or was actually supported in biblical law, why on earth then did Jesus drive them out – ahhh, see now we are getting somewhere.
You know, recently I have been thinking a lot about Queen Elizabeth I. No, not the Queen Elizabeth everyone is watching on the Netflix series The Crown – that is the second one, and while she and the series are fabulous, it isn’t the Elizabeth I mean here. Her predecessor in royal name ruled from 1558-1603. She is also, in my heart and mind, the true founder of our Anglican Communion, of which The Episcopal Church is a part.
Yes, it was her father, King Henry VIII who broke the kingdom away from Roman Catholicism, for reasons far beyond that of a desire for a divorce, but it was his daughter, Queen Elizabeth who saved both church and country from destruction. Just a quick recap (and for those who are in tonight’s confirmation class – take notes…kidding, sort of):
Having ascended to the throne following the brutal and disruptive reign of her half-sister, Queen Mary (Bloody Mary, it’s not just a breakfast drink), Elizabeth faced a deeply divided church and country. Her half-brother, Edward VI, ascending after the death of good old Henry, was still only a young boy. He was also under the influence of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who wrote our first Book of Common Prayer, and several others, who pushed him to move the Church of England in a distinctly protestant direction – far beyond the vision established under their father in a separation from Rome. Edward died, and Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary then turned the tables back and slaughtered hundreds of protestants, including Cranmer, in a move to return the country back to Roman Catholicism.
And so, when Elizabeth came into power, she not only would have been forgiven by the people for taking revenge against the Roman Catholic adherents of her realm, but was even encouraged to do so. She did not. Instead, she put her love of her people above all else, and recognized that this intolerance of difference had devastated her country and was not the path forward. She found a middle way.
The Elizabethan Settlement, as the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity came to be known, developed into what we now call the via media. Without it, our beloved Anglican comprehensiveness may not have come into being – by that I mean our willingness to agree to disagree – to find a middle way or via media within the church. Was this settlement perfect? Far from it, but perfection wasn’t the goal – peace and stability for her people was the aim. While Roman Catholicism was still effectively illegal, any action against them was for not attending church, not for simply being Roman Catholic, and the fines applied equally to anyone else, including Puritans. As she famously put it, she had “no desire to make windows into men’s souls,” so she would not persecute people for what they believed, but for what they did – this despite attempts on her life by factions on the side of a return to Roman Catholicism. Ultimately, Elizabeth essentially managed what no one else had been able to achieve – a religious compromise which allowed her realm to be less divided, and out of that tenuous unity, to grow and become stronger.
So, why would this gospel have me thinking about Queen Elizabeth I and our via media? Well, because some folks have used this passage about the temple cleansing to justify hate, anger, or violence, at those with whom they disagree. They point to Jesus’ overturning the tables to say that sometimes you just have to cleanse the temple of those who defile it – and those who defile whatever temple is in question are of course the ones on the other side. Does this mean our via media, or in the secular – the working toward compromise – goes against what Jesus would want? Not at all.
There are times in our prophetic witness when righteous anger is needed, when tables need to be overthrown, when social systems need to be cleansed from our daily lives. But we need to be careful about this gospel and using it to justify our actions. First, we are not Jesus, the fully divine incarnate God. And second, Jesus overturned tables, and drove out animals, not people.
Let’s start with the first thing, which returns us to the question asked earlier – if these folks were doing what they were supposed to do, why did Jesus do this? I mean, he came right into the temple court with a bang. He didn’t grab a cup of coffee first, or chat it up with a few people to get to know his surroundings. He flew in there and stopped what everyone was doing, told them explicitly what they did wrong, and that it needed to end. He knew something about what was going on there that went beyond the religious requirement to exchange coinage or buy a couple of pigeons. What was it he knew, and how did he know it?
While the text never says what it was explicitly, there is a term that is used that gives us a hint. Jesus tells them to stop making his “Father’s house a marketplace!” Marketplaces, then and now, are not for purification or to ready oneself to worship God, as the sacrifices or coinage exchange was intended to do, but are where profits are made. Jesus was saying that this wasn’t a sacred set of actions meant for God, but those selling the animals and exchanging the coinage were getting rich in the process. It was an unfair system which further oppressed the poor and benefited the rich, and they were doing it under the cloak of the covenant of God. It would be the equivalent of some of those TV pastors today who want their people to break their backs to pay millions for a new jet for their use, and making that pitch within a worship service that should be about God. So yes, those tables needed to be overturned and the temple court returned to its rightful use of preparing people for worship in the temple.
Yet Jesus did not take the whip to the people doing this, nor does he toss them violently on the ground. Jesus is the Son of God, and he certainly could have done anything to them he thought needed. Instead he told them to stop what they were doing, but did not physically harm them or the animals for that matter.
Why is that important for us?
Well, Jesus could see into their hearts, and knew as well that violence against them wasn’t the way to change the system. He had righteous anger, and he made it clear that he would not stand for oppression of any of God’s children. He did not allow that oppression to continue, and toppled over the systems that supported it. Yet he did not use violence to do this, even though his fully divine self had the power to do it.
Does that mean we should attack all systems of oppression in the same way? Yes, but pay attention to what that really requires of us.
Look, there is a time for overturning tables, and a time for an Elizabethan type of settlement that opens the door to a better world. In this season in our nation, where wildly partisan politics cripple our forward progress, Queen Elizabeth I reminds us that truly great statespersonship lies in the capacity to compromise for the sake of the public good, while Jesus reminds us to be zealous in our fight against oppression. These are not incompatible ways of being, quite the contrary – they are essential one to another.
They are both needed, in different measure at different times. When is the time for each is a matter of more difficulty for us than it was for Jesus because, well, he is Jesus, the Incarnate One, and can see into the hearts of men and women. We are not Jesus, which is why barging in and making assumptions (money changers had a purpose remember) is not the best start. We too should not try to make windows into men’s or women’s souls, not because we aren’t royalty, but because royalty or not – we aren’t God, and we can’t do that.
We, not being Jesus, are of the more fully human variety, will therefore have to do more work before we can know the right path. And right now, everyone is quick to the whip and forgetting the anguish of our past when those with whom we disagreed were burned at the stake, guillotined, or hung in the town square.
Still, when forces of oppression will not listen, or willfully impede in the reconciliation, healing, and wholeness of the people, it is time to overturn tables with zeal. And we are living in that time now.
For we hear the cries of our sisters and brothers who die under the suffocating knee of oppression in all its insidious forms.
We see the pain of poverty, the inequality of healthcare, and the lack of compassion for the stranger, the imprisoned, and the addicted.
We know the sinful destruction and abuse of God’s creation.
We must have zeal in our hearts and overturn these tables of injustice.
So where does that leave us? What does it mean for us who seek to do the work of Jesus in the world?
It means we fight until our dying day against racism, sexism, heterosexism, religious bias, and economic injustice, and do not stop until all are free.
We overturn those tables, and drive out the systems that support it.
It also means we do not become the oppressors.
We do not commit violence against them.
We do not make assumptions about people, including those who stand in opposition to what we believe.
We listen to one another, and remember that we are not God. We too are fallible. We also must confess our sins each day.
There is much to do in the world – tables of injustice must be overturned, systems of oppression must be cleansed from our world, and we must be steadfast in this gospel work.
Yet let us seek first to do this work together, hating only the acts, not those who commit them. This is how we will tear down the walls that divide and build bridges that lead toward the Beloved Community. And I believe that we, who are part of a heritage of the via media that Queen Elizabeth I gave to us, have a role to play as followers of Jesus in bringing that vision of shalom, of God’s dream for us all, into reality.
The heart of our identity as members of the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement is found in the willingness to agree to disagree, yet still come to the table of our Lord and Savior together. Sadly today, compromise, or working with those on another side of an issue, has become a sign of weakness – a thing to be avoided at all cost. Everything has become a winner take all proposition – a zero-sum game.
Yet we are most broken – not when we differ, but when we turn our backs on one another – when we fail to see in the other the very image of God. We need to refocus on the common ground, building bridges where we have previously built walls. This vision of shalom, of unity, is not about conformity, everyone agreeing or believing in the same way, but about living into God’s vision of the Beloved Community, where all are free to be who God created them to be, to live in wholeness, to be reconciled to one another in love.
This is how we overturn tables of injustice.
This is how we change the world!
By God’s grace, may we be the transformative agents of God’s love, now and in the days to come.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
March 7, 2021
Third Sunday in Lent
1st Reading – Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
2nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Gospel – John 2:13-22
