“The
Price Is Right”
John 2:13-22
Third Sunday of Lent
March 15, 2009
Dave Russell,
----
Chris
Lockley shares that shortly after becoming a Christian, at age 19, he attended
a Bible study. The participants were asked to describe Jesus – what
characteristics and personality traits stood out? Lockley said that he
had only started reading the Bible, really wasn’t very familiar with it, but he
did remember the line drawing in the Good News Bible he had of Jesus, whip in
hand, driving the money changers out of the temple.
He
suggested that Jesus must have had a commanding physical presence to be able to
do that – why didn’t someone stop him? He said that Jesus had a lot of
passion and channeled his anger in a very focused way.
The
rest of the group, more mature Christians, had trouble with his answer.
For one, Jesus never used a whip. As a
new Christian, he must have been mistaken. And they assured him that
Jesus never got angry. After some discussion, he acquiesced, although
deep down he still thought that he was right.
What
stood out most for him was that these people whom he had really looked up to
because they had been Christians for years seemed to believe in a different
Jesus than the one he was meeting in the Bible. Their Jesus was
super-spiritual, but not very human, and not very real.
Well,
you have to admit - Jesus, whip in hand, driving the moneychangers out of the
temple - this is not the way we usually think of Jesus.
Matthew,
Mark and Luke tell this same story. But
unlike John, they put it toward the end of their gospels. At the end, during the last week of Jesus’
life, his rage is more understandable. His
critics have been after him for months, trying to trap him. His patience has finally worn thin after
months of their hypocrisy and cruelty, after observing again and again the
callousness and self-serving actions of so many of the religious leaders.
But
in John, this comes towards the beginning of the gospel, and it is a lot harder
to explain away Jesus’ rage. At this
point, there have been no big controversies.
Everyone has been quite impressed with him. Andrew and Simon Peter and Philip and Nathaniel
gladly follow him as disciples. Everyone
marveled as he turned water into wine at the wedding in
And
it is Passover. The greatest celebration
of the year. The holiest, highest,
happiest feast of
Imagine
Easter morning, the closest analogy to Passover for the Christian church. We are here with bright clothes and Easter
bonnets. We have a great Easter
breakfast. The place is packed, the
choir has a soaring anthem, it is a wonderful day. Family members have traveled to be here. Joy can be felt in the air – there is a
feeling of celebration. And then, this
guy barges in, overturning tables, kicking over Easter lilies, causing a
commotion. The crowd is stunned as he
shouts at us to get out, we have turned God’s house into a Wal-Mart.
What
is Jesus’ problem? What is he so mad
about? He is not mad at the Pharisees
for their legalism, not mad at the scribes for their elitist attitudes. He is not coming down on the pagans down at
the bar or those who practice crooked business dealings or those who are violent
and abusive. Jesus is attacking the
righteous, right here in church.
A
lot of explanations have been offered as to why Jesus gets so upset. It may help for us to understand what the
temple was like. The temple was an
enormous complex that covered acres. There were four parts. The
most outlying part was an outside court, the Court of Gentiles. Anyone
could go there. For a Gentile who was drawn to God, this was as close as
one could get. Closer was the Court of Women. Closer still was the
Court of Israelites—only the men could go there, and this was where worship
took place. And then there was the Holy of Holies, where only the priests
could go.
Jesus
was observing what was going on in the Court of Gentiles. Everyone who
came to worship had to pay the temple tax.
People brought their Roman money with them – it was the coin of the
realm. But a Roman coin, bearing the
image of Caesar, was considered a graven image, and the temple tax had to be
paid with temple currency. And so, as a
public service, a person could exchange one’s money for temple
currency. The problem was, they killed you on the processing fee.
Of
course, this comes as no surprise. We
sent Zoe off to
The
Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the law, said that when worshipers came to
exchange their currency for temple shekels, the moneychangers had a right to
some gain. This was their livelihood and
they were providing a useful service.
The fees they charged, however, could be exorbitant.
But
the money changers were rather benign compared to the animal sellers.
Offering a sacrifice was a part of temple worship. According to Leviticus, animals for sacrifice
had to be perfect and unblemished. There were animal inspectors who
approved the animals used. Outside the
gates of the temple, you could buy a dove or lamb or even an oxen for a reasonable
price. But it was the darnedest thing--those animals hardly ever passed
the inspection. Once inside the temple gate, the same animal might cost
10 or 15 or 20 times as much. It was practically extortion.
Did
this make Jesus angry? I expect that it
did; it certainly makes me angry.
Last
summer, Christian business directories just kind of showed up here at
church. There was a quantity available
on the table in the narthex. A number of
local businesses had advertised in the directory, and there was a listing of
churches. Most every church in town was
on the list, and the directory said that these churches had proudly endorsed
this Christian business directory.
Except
that they hadn’t, at least we hadn’t. We
didn’t know anything about the directory until it just kind of appeared, and
other churches had similar experiences.
What
would make a business Christian, anyway?
Would putting a fish on your front door make it a Christian
business? Would having a Christian owner
make the business Christian? If the
owners were Christian and there were Bible verses all over the place and some
of the profits went to a children’s home, but the work was shoddy and customer
service was poor and the accounting was suspect and employees were not treated
well, would it be a Christian business?
The
Christian directory was basically an attempt at using God’s name to cash in,
which was part of what was going on at the temple. Money changers and animal sellers were using
the worship of God as a chance to cash in.
They were taking advantage of folks who had come to worship.
This
is a common explanation of why Jesus gets so upset. But as you read the text, it does not say
that this is what got Jesus so worked up.
While I expect Jesus didn’t approve of shady practices concerning selling
animals and currency exchange, I’m not sure that is the main reason he blew up.
Well,
what is it then that made Jesus so mad?
If not the way people were using religion as a way to rip off others and
get rich, was it perhaps the circus atmosphere that prevailed at the
temple? Imagine people hawking all kinds
of things outside the temple. Imagine
how many animals it would take to provide sacrifices for all of the people who
came for Passover. Even if the majority
were poor families who gave a dove as a sacrifice, not a lamb or ram or oxen,
this was still a huge operation.
But
again, Jesus doesn’t say, “Stop taking advantage of people.” He says, “Stop making my Father’s house a
marketplace.”
Jesus
was moved to anger. He is livid. He is out of control. He overturned tables, coins are going
everywhere, and he drives everyone out. And
the text tells us, “He was motivated by zeal for his Father’s house.”
Zeal
for his father’s house. Jesus concern
had to do with the temple itself - his Father’s house. Jesus wasn’t simply protesting economic
exploitation; he was protesting the entire sacrificial system.
Without
a system for selling animals, temple worship would have been impossible. Without a currency exchange, temple worship
would have been impossible. Jesus does
not condemn how the changers and traders go about their business. Rather, he seems to be attacking their very enterprise. He is protesting the way the entire temple
was run. And to mike it clear, Jesus
says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John tells us that he is talking about the
resurrection, and the implication is that Jesus himself will replace this
temple.
Back
to our question: why does John include this story at the beginning of his
gospel? Perhaps John chose to tell this
disturbing story so soon because he wanted us to know right up front the kind
of God who had come among us. Jesus was
not just a nice young man who turned water into wine at weddings and called
fisher folk to join his prayer group.
Jesus was angry at the domestication of the Good News. The kind of cause and effect religion that
temple worship had become was an affront to the holiness of God.
The prophets had
spoken against this kind of religion for a long time. Samuel said to King Saul, “Has the Lord as
great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the
Lord? Surely, to obey is better than
sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams.”
And
the prophet Micah had asked, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams
or ten thousand rivers of oil?” And the
answer was, “What does the Lord require but to do justice and love kindness and
walk humbly with God?”
But
the sacrificial system had not only grown to overshadow doing justice and
loving kindness and walking humbly with God, it had become big business.
By
Jesus’ actions, he was saying No to the selling of salvation. He was saying No to cause-and-effect
religion.
What
does this have to do with us? Well, a
lot. Because we too can make the church
into a marketplace. We too can
domesticate God.
How
do we make the church into a marketplace?
In the fairly conservative Baptist churches where I grew up, there were
often controversies about whether it was OK to have things like rummage sales
or bake sales at church. Some thought
that it was absolutely forbidden – because Jesus drove out the money changers. You could not exchange money for such things
at church. Being one of the more liberal
churches – and liberal is a very relative term - this was OK at my church. But all of this debate missed the point. Jesus wasn’t angry about selling used
children’s clothing or paperback books – or about selling pancakes and
sausage. He was angry about selling
salvation.
But
in more subtle ways, we can be guilty of making the church into a neighborhood
supermarket. Get out of bed, get dressed
up, open the hymnal, sing the songs, try to stay awake, stand for the
benediction, go back home. There. We did what we were supposed to do.
When
we make the Gospel into a “this-for-that” bargain with God, such as I’ll
acknowledge God and in return God will bless me, we can make God’s house into a
marketplace. When we have rules about
who is welcome in church, we are basically saying that if you pay the price of
admission by dressing a certain way, then God accepts you, and we are making
God’s house into a marketplace. When we
give the message that those of certain education or with a certain
sophistication or with a certain kind of political or cultural point of view
are more welcome than others, we are setting a price of admission to worship
and making God’s house into a marketplace.
And maybe more common, when we give the message that you need to have
your life together, at least to a certain extent, before you can really fit in
here, we are setting a price of admission and making God’s house into a
marketplace.
There
are all kinds of subtle ways that we can sell the gospel instead of just giving
it away.
I
went by to see Marion Mehle in the hospital earlier this week. She said she hadn’t slept very well the night
before, and that morning she planned to take a nap right after “The Price is
Right.” Maybe that’s why I have “The
Price is Right” in my head, but it occurs to me that we can make all kinds of
guesses as to the retail price of the gospel, attaching certain values that
those who would worship need to have paid to truly gain admittance. But our guesses have all gone over the true
price. For while the value is beyond
estimation, the gospel is free. When we
make it to be otherwise, Jesus gets angry.
Amen.