Readings
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
Looking at today’s gospel I am reminded of a saying my mother was quite fond of: “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
In the first part of the Gospel, we hear of Jesus’ clearing of the temple. We see him drive out the merchants and the money changers. We hear him say “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
If we simply stay on the surface of the story we would be tempted to think that Jesus is making a religious protest. We would think that he is making a distinction between what is sacred and what is profane. We might be tempted to think that he sees religion and commerce as separate and incompatible categories of living.
But if we do that we are missing so much that is going on in this story.
Let’s take a step back and look at temple worship. It is very different than you might assume. Ancient temple worship was about being in communion with God. Yes, believe or not, ancient Jews had a form of communion. It wasn’t the sacrament we celebrate today, but it was an act of communion with God. The way it worked was this: you would bring an animal to the temple, it had to be without blemish. You would then offer it to God by giving it to the priests to offer on the altar. The altar was a giant open fire contained in a stone box with horns extending out from the corners. The priests would butcher the animal and put the blood, skin, bones, and organs in the fire for God’s consumption and cook the remaining meat. When the meat was cooked it was returned to you for your consumption and the consumption of your family. By doing this you shared a meal with God, you were in communion with God.
Over the years it came to be that few people who didn’t live in close proximity to Jerusalem had easy access to animals that they could offer for sacrifice. This led to the practice of offering animals for purchase in the court of the gentiles. The temple, seeing Roman money as profane, had their own money for use within the temple precinct. Accordingly, much like today’s foreign money exchanges there were merchants who specialized in exchanging roman coins and other foreign currency for temple money. On the surface this doesn’t sound like a bad practice does it? All they’re really doing is providing a necessary service for visitors to Jerusalem.
The problem was that by the time of Jesus the system had become corrupt. The exchange rates were unfair. This meant that they lost a significant amount of the value of their original money. On top of that, the livestock market was a closed system with little real competition and prices were exorbitantly high. Ordinary people, if they wanted to make sacrifice, would have to spend months’ worth of income just for a couple of doves. Increasingly, temple worship … communion with God, was becoming something only for the wealthy.
It is into this reality that Jesus steps. His rebuke of the money changers and the merchants is a critique of the brokenness of the system and how it fails to reflect the Kingdom of God. The issue of the temple becoming a marketplace is that it had become about unchecked profit rather than worship.
But Jesus’ lived in a society where religion and secular life were intertwined, and so his action in the temple was not simply a religious critique, but a social and economic one as well. Biblical scholars agree that this action not only set him up to be in conflict with the religious authorities, but with the Roman ones also.
The Gospel calls us to be like Jesus. But, it is not sufficient for us to simply be kind, loving people who do good deeds and acts of charity. We are also called to be prophetic voices in the world today. We are called to speak out when the instruments and institutions of our culture fail to reflect the fullness of God’s intention for humanity.
The difficulty is that, like the people of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, we are accustomed to the patterns of society. And it becomes very easy to be complacent or unaware of where the temple markets are for us today.
Well, let me risk your and my discomfort and try to be like Jesus. I have an example that is very personal to me and my family.
As many of you know my wife, Liana, has over the last few years been quite ill and spent a significant amount of time in the hospital. Needless to say that was a very expensive reality. Her care cost about $350,000. Fortunately for us we have health insurance that helped to either discount or pay a significant portion of that bill. Unfortunately for us, even with insurance, we racked up an out of pocket of expense of about $15,000. Now, I am happy to report that we have an income that allows us to pay this off over time, but even after a couple of years making payments, it will likely take us a couple more years to eliminate the debt. This is difficult, but not impossible … much like buying doves in the temple would have been for the average person.
But imagine this reality for someone who makes just $20,000 less than me. They make too much for medicare, but now because of their income they are looking at multiple years of debt repayment and perhaps bankruptcy. Those temple doves are now out of reach.
As persons of faith, we believe in supporting the wellbeing of all people. That’s not only about making sure that they have food and lodging. It’s also about things like healthcare. This is just one example of a topic where we might be a prophetic voice in our world today.
Please notice I am not advocating any specific solution. That is something that we must discern together as a society. There will be different approaches and different opinions as we do that work and we must respectfully listen to one another. What is not acceptable is to simply tolerate the system as it is. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be that prophetic voice that disrupts the status quo, making those around us look at the world in a different way.
There are many other examples we could explore, but I invite you to reflect on those in the days and weeks ahead.
If we are brave enough to be a voice for the world the way God intends it, if we are willing to risk our own discomfort and the discomfort of others for the sake of the Kingdom of God, if we are willing to set aside our assumptions and disrupt the status quo so that others might look at the world in a different way, then we will be following Jesus, then in one very real way we will fulfill our call to be like Jesus.