What's Going On?

 

God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. … My sermon is entitled What’s Going On Here? and my focus is our Gospel (John 2:13-23). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

Have you ever come upon a situation and asked, “What’s going on here?” Perhaps you entered a space where your children or grandchildren were playing raucously and rambunctiously. Maybe you were coaching or teaching a group of high school students and wondered if they were paying attention to anything you just said. I’ve walked into hospital rooms and asked parishioners, “What’s going on?” We can also apply it to our Gospel passage today. Without citing any books, movies or songs, with the exception of a Marvin Gaye classic, let’s ask what is going on with John’s Jesus? What’s going on in our lives as Church.

First, what is going on with John’s Jesus? Our passage today treats Jesus’ attitude towards the Temple. It has parallels in Mark (11:15-19, 27-28) and Matthew (21:12-17, 23-27) which occur not long before Jesus’ death. The accounts do not contradict one another, but a closer look helps us understand what’s going on with John’s Jesus.

The differences between John and the Synoptics include not only timing, but also motive. At the end of Matthew’s and Mark’s narratives on Jesus’ public ministry, the chief motive for Jesus’ arrest is what he said and did in the Temple. In those, the witnesses during the trial falsely testify that Jesus said that He would destroy the Temple sanctuary. In John, the scenes are combined and placed early in Jesus’ ministry. The chief motive for Jesus’ arrest in John was not what He did in the Temple, but culminated after what He did at the tomb of Lazarus (11:45ff.).

Why does the cleansing appear at the beginning of John? Why did Jesus act this way on His first trip to Jerusalem during Passover? Does it have anything to do with His last Passover? Does it have anything to do with the structure of John?

A key figure early in John’s Gospel is John the Baptist. Those of you who were here on January 14, may recall my sermon on John the Baptist’s role in this Gospel. The Baptist fulfilled the first clause of Malachi 3:1, “I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.” The second part of that verse is fulfilled in our Gospel today. The words are, “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.”

The language John uses – the Passover of the Jews – indicates a hostility to this feast which is replaced by Jesus Himself. The Temple precincts were the outer court of the Temple or the Court of the Gentiles. This is where Jesus came upon people engaged in selling animals for Temple sacrifice. Note that only John states that oxen and sheep were being offered.

The people engaged in these activities made a living exchanging coins and selling animals for sacrifice. Roman money had to be changed to Jewish money to pay the Temple Tax. In itself, exchanging money is not a sinful act. Today, if you don’t want to take your coins to the bank, you can have a machine sort and count your coins for a fee. If you have travelled outside the US, you know that there is always a service charge for exchanging money. If you don’t have the local currency, the shopkeeper may tack on a convenience fee.

 Seeing all of this, Jesus made a whip out of cords, a sign that no weapons, including sticks, were allowed in the Temple area. Weapons could violate the sacred space. With his whip, Jesus expelled the animals, spilled the money-changers’ tables, and scolded them for replacing the house of God with a marketplace.

In response, the Jews, here meaning the chief priests, scribes, and elders, demanded a sign. A sign was a miraculous apologetic proof requested by unbelievers. Elsewhere, Pharisees, Sadducees and Herod demanded a sign (Mt. 12:38-39; 14:14; Lk 23:8). Jesus never obliged unbelievers who demanded signs.

Jesus’ response was simply, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, we know that Jesus was speaking metaphorically about his body and not the building, but the phrase “to raise up” can refer to a building or to the resurrection of a body. Destroy did not mean, “I will destroy.” Rather, it is an imperative for a condition, “If you destroy …” It is an ironic statement found in the prophets. In Isaiah, we read, “Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered; give ear, all you far countries; strap on your armor and be shattered; strap on your armor and be shattered.” (8:9)[1] In other words, Jesus challenged them to “Go ahead, be evil. You will be shattered.” As one scholar noted, it means, “Go ahead and do this and see what happens.” However you phrase it, Jesus’ words put the burden on the Jewish authorities.

Jesus’ action was not an outburst of anger, but the energy of righteousness against religious leaders to whom religion had become a business, a way to make a good living. If you read Psalm 69, which Jesus uttered in the Temple, you will see that it is a lament, a complaint in which the psalmist is unjustly accused of theft and appeals to God for justice. He seeks salvation from the injustice and perjury of his enemies. He has been alienated from family and community. Why? Because, unlike his accusers, the psalmist had zeal for God’s house.

A song of praise and thanksgiving in God’s house is greater than the sacrifice of an ox or bull, as vv. 30-31 in Psalm 69 tell us. “I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.”[2] Heaven and earth praise God (v. 34). So, Jesus goes to the Temple during Passover to praise God, and what does He find? Zeal? No. He finds apathy. Jesus found religious leaders and marketeers involved in sacrifices whose attitude towards praise was indifference and indolence, listlessness and laziness. He saw no enthusiasm or energy, no vigor or vitality. And so, he shouted, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Not has consumed me, as the psalm reads, but will consume me.

Allow me to step outside of Scripture for a moment to talk about zeal. Zeal is not a word that we use very often. The Latin word for zeal is zelus, and the Greek, zēlos. Zeal is great enthusiasm or interest in pursuit of an objective or a course of action.

Don’t confuse zeal or enthusiasm with emotionalism. Some people feel a particular emotion when they hear certain kinds of music. Attend a political rally or any sporting event today, and you will find an array of music that gets people in the mood for the main event. Whoever is choosing the music is trying to whip the people into an emotional momentary frenzy.

Jesus had zeal. Jesus had a great enthusiasm for His Father’s will. Enthusiasm, the Greeks would tell us, is a divine inspiration. The Greeks also thought that one who was enthused was possessed by a god. That’s because the word enthused is a combination of two words. En means in, and theos means god. Recall that on the first Sunday of Lent, when we heard of Jesus’ Baptism and the Temptation in the wilderness, it was the Holy Spirit that drove Him into that confrontation with the devil. The text does not say that Jesus went into the wilderness. It reads, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mk 1:12). Jesus was possessed by the Holy Spirit. That is why zeal, properly understood, is a key to understanding John’s Jesus. Back to our text.

Zeal would consume Jesus because this was His Father’s House. His personal identification with God as His Father would eventually lead to His death because each time He said it, the Jews became more intent on killing Him. In chapter five, after Jesus healed a man lying on a mat on a Sabbath in order to display His Father’s power working in Him, He answered His persecutors with, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” (5:17) In John, the Father’s power is Jesus’ power, and He could use it whenever He saw fit. So, speaking of God’s works as His, and speaking of God as His own Father, and making God His equal, is why unbelieving Jewish authorities sought to kill Jesus.

Because God the Father’s power resided in Jesus, worship of God through the Son of God, Jesus, could take place anywhere. People no longer needed to come to the Temple. People did not need to exchange coins or purchase overpriced animals. All of that meant bad financial news for the people who worked at the Temple.

The religious leaders should have seen this coming. Jesus’ actions were “like that of the prophets of old against the profanation of God’s house and a sign that the messianic purification of the Temple was at hand.”[3] Jewish institutions were not only being cleansed; they were being replaced. Now, there is a lot more to say about the heightened animosity between Jesus and the Jews in John, but I will save that for another time.

Allow me to move from what was going on with Jesus in the Temple to what is going on with us? I mean, if Jesus arrived on the scene here, what would happen? What’s going on here? What would he see? Would he see zeal? To answer that, I step into my time machine and travel back four years.

When I arrived to meet people from Mt. Olive in April 2020, there were four or five people (some wearing masks) in the large social hall at the other building. Our first weeks of worship were during the Sundays of Easter when most of you viewed by Facebook. By Pentecost, we opted for in-person worship, and our gatherings numbered between 15-25. It stayed like that for about a year.

In all honesty, I had serious doubts about the survival of this congregation. I was working other jobs and gigs just in case we would fold, because that is what I heard every Sunday. Today, we average 50 worshippers, give or take a few depending on the Sunday. We’re not going to return to glory days. In my experience, we will remain a small congregation. That is not a bad thing. There are many small congregations across our land and in our Synod. And the District has a plan to help small congregations thrive. I have no intention for bigger and better activities or ministries. I have no ambitions to build or expand. My days of professional fundraising are complete. My intention is to remind you and myself of one thing: Be faithful to Christ’s teachings and how we interpret them through the Book of Concord.

So, if Jesus would enter our doors, He would see zealous worshippers of God the Father. As I said earlier, zeal or enthusiasm is not emotionalism. Jesus would not see the emotionalism that he would at a worship service where rock bands replace traditional Lutheran hymns. Jesus would not see four pastors each waiting for a word to speak. He would not see a worship leader cranking up people’s emotions to the point that everyone feels obliged to stand and clap or roll around in the aisles. He would not see emotionalism devoid of true worship and holding no real sustaining substance.[4] What Jesus would see is what He was looking for in the Temple.

To know what John’s Jesus was seeking and what he would see here, we must continue to read the Gospel after He left the Temple. Here, Jesus would see people born of water and the Spirit seeking to enter the kingdom of God (Jn 3:5). He would see baptized believers of Christ freely receiving His gifts of grace (3:25ff.). Jesus was seeking people who worship the Father in spirit and in truth because the Father was seeking such people (Jn 4:23-24). He would see people who believed that the Word of God healed them or their loved ones (4:46-54). I believe Jesus would find that here.

Friends, worshipping God the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is not something we do only on Sundays, or twice a week, or even every morning. Worship is life. True worship involves absorbing the Word of God into our lives. As an active Lutheran recently told me, “It’s not the pastor’s role to keep me enthused. It’s my own duty by being in the Word every day.”

True worship occurs before, during and after our Divine Worship. True believers have the same zeal and desire for God that David had, like a deer that longs for flowing waters, so must our souls long for God (Ps 42:1). True worship is learning how to live a God-pleasing life, and how to deal with various situations daily. Reading and studying both the Bible and The Small Catechism helps us do that.

We are not to be simply students of God’s Word, but more importantly, doers of the Word (Jas 1:19ff). I believe that in this congregation, Jesus would see people living according to the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He would see how we manifest love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). And if He would not see that, hopefully, He would come in during our time of Confession and Absolution when we are calling to mind our sins and asking God for forgiveness and absolution.

Friends, that is what I imagine Jesus would see. All I ask you to do is help me make that imagination real by seeking God’s will first and forsaking your own. When we do that, pray that the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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[1] See also Amos 4:4.

[2] See also Zech 14:21.

[3] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: I-XII, Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company (1966), p. 121.

[4] Tony Taylor, “Emotionalism vs True Worship,” The Surrendered Life. www.thesurrenderedlife.com. See also Matt Costella, “Emotionalism: An Enemy of the 21^st Century Church,” Grace Gospel Press (January 14, 2020). www.gracegospelpress.org.