Worship As Resistance III - Mocking Death - A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent March 3 2024

GOSPEL: John 2:13-22

The holy gospel according to John.

Glory to you, O Lord.

Jesus attacks the commercialization of religion by driving merchants out of the temple. When challenged, he responds mysteriously, with the first prediction of his own death and resurrection. In the midst of a seemingly stable religious centre, Jesus suggests that the centre itself has changed.

13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ.

With a powerful hand,

God saves Israel from their captivity in Egypt.

Ten plagues rain down

and the last one seals the deal.

When Moses was an infant,

the Pharaoh declared that the firstborn sons of Israel 

must be killed.

Israel had become a threat to the power-hungry,

xenophobic, 

insecure,

tyrannical commander, Pharaoh,

and Egypt’s power.

Even though they were slaves,

Israel’s numbers were growing

and the Pharaoh needed a solution to the problem

of these hated outsiders.

The last plague is a revisit of Pharaoh’s violence,

Let my people go,

or the firstborn of Egypt shall die.

God has mercy for those who are oppressed,

and a message for those who are the oppressors.

Israel is freed,

God continues to protect them from the perusing Egyptian threat,

and God provides for Israel in their freedom.

Israel needs to learn what it means to live as a freed people,

and they journey the wilderness,

40 years in all,

preparing for the promised land.

40 years is a long time to wander,

a long time to live in uncertainty.

But God does not leave Israel alone in the wilderness.

Their cause is not over,

even with the people’s grumbling.

Water from the rock.

Manna. Quail.

God provides gifts for Israel.

So too does God provide the Ten Commandments,

an even greater gift.

One way to understand the purpose of the Ten Commandments

is they help Israel function in freedom;

such that no human is treated as less than human,

nor more than human,

and such that God is not treated as less than God.

God saw God’s people being treated as less than human in Egypt,

and God does something about it,

enlisting the likes of Moses and Aaron to accomplish it.

Fast forward some 1300 years

and Jesus sees God’s people, once again, being oppressed.

This time it is by the corrupt religious cult.

Faithful Jews were making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem

to celebrate the Passover,

the remembrance of the Exodus.

Imagine yourself on the journey.

Imagine you are an average, faithful Jew

and you pack lightly,

just some extra clothes

and whatever cash you can manage,

and you walk the multi day journey to Jerusalem.

As you arrive at the Temple,

you plan to offer sacrifice to God,

but you can’t use the money you brought,

so you make a currency exchange for temple money.

That’ll cost ya.

You use the temple money

to purchase a couple of doves,

the sacrifice for the poor,

and they’re without blemish,

and with convenience in or near the Temple,

they’re not cheap,

but you need to buy them.

That’ll cost ya.

I hope you have enough coin

to get you home again.

The offerings, the sacrifices,

aren’t exactly helping the poor,

they’re helping the money changers

and dove sellers.

Jesus sees this oppressive system,

Jesus sees humans being treated as less than human,

being taken advantage of.

Take these things out of here,

stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.

This house is a house of prayer,

Proclaims the Creator Who Sets Free.

Jesus knows this system well.

Mary and Joseph participated in it,

at Jesus’ dedication at the Temple

after Jesus was born.

They bought the doves for the sacrifice of the poor.

It is not a stretch to imagine Mary

telling the story to a young Jesus,

perhaps even on the way to the Temple when Jesus was 12.

It’s also not a stretch to imagine Mary

singing to young Jesus

the Magnificat we still sing today.

“You have cast the mighty down from their thrones

and uplifted the humble of heart,

You have filled the hungry with wondrous things

and left the wealthy no part”

Jesus has a heart for people

who are treated as less-than human,

and a message for the people

who treat others as less-than human.

Jesus cleanses the Temple

because it needed to be cleansed.

Jesus is turning the world around.

I’m going to take an interpretive leap here.

Jesus is a faithful Jew

who participates in the religious life of the community,

who preaches at Synagogue

who teaches at the Temple,

who participates in the festivals;

Yet I don’t recall a story of Jesus offering sacrifice.

Now, Jesus is God in the flesh,

and it might seem silly to make sacrifice to yourself

but I’m taking the interpretive leap

found in Jesus’ words from Matthew 9,

quoting from Hosea 6:

“Go and learn what this means:

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Jesus does not ensure the continuation of the sacrificial cult,

Jesus cares more about mercy:

and about access to the Divine.

If God is being treated as less than God,

If humans are being treated as less than human,

if others are being treated as more than human,

Jesus is going to do something about it.

If someone is putting up barriers

between the people accessing God,

Jesus works to remove those barriers.

God invites God’s faithful into this work.

That’s why the Temple was cleansed.

Jesus has compassion for those considered less-than.

Jesus resisted the so-called necessary system of sacrifice

that oppresses the less-than.

Jesus resisted the house of prayer

being turned into a marketplace.

Salvation is not for sale,

you can’t buy forgiveness,

you can’t buy your way into God’s favour.

So we worship today

that this house might be a house of prayer,

and we are then called to resist any movement

that makes the church a marketplace.

I want to nuance this - I recognize the difficulty,

especially in this age of declining church membership,

and increased difficulty making budgets.

We are stewarding Christ’s church,

we believe in Church without end,

And while some congregation are closing their doors,

other congregations, like us,

are having to find creative ways

to remain financially stable.

Jesus’ words remain - I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Should Jesus arrive through those doors,

would Jesus be holding a whip of cords

and cleansing this house of prayer?

Lord, have mercy on us.

In this house of prayer,

we proclaim the greatness of God,

we proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Saviour,

and thus we resist the temptation to

trust that anyone or anything else can save us.

Christ has already saved the Church.

So what if it looks like it’s dying?

Israel had the threat of death,

in captivity,

in the wilderness,

but God brings new life.

The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70,

a wilderness time away from Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But this did not end Judaism,

it was not the end of the people Israel,

God brings new life.

The church seems to be dying today,

but we’ve been dying for 2000 years.

Maybe there’s something in us,

in the church,

that needs to die

and like a cleansed Temple or emptied Egypt,

that need not be bad news,

for even amidst death, God brings new life.

We worship to resist death, to mock death.

We aren’t a country church,

but imagine, for a moment, that we are.

Country churches might have a similar sanctuary to ours,

with a Communion rail in a semi-circle.

On the other side of the wall

you might find the cemetery,

the resting place of God’s faithful from generations past.

The country church was designed

with the semi-circle Communion rail on the inside

and another, albeit imaginary semi-circle on the outside.

When we commune at Christ’s table,

it is not just us, here in this space,

but we commune with Jesus and with all the saints

of every time and place

who are gathered at the rail with us.

This is powerful.

For those who have lost loved ones,

we meet them with Christ at this table.

As we remember Christ,

so are we re-membered with Christ and all the saints.

This Communion is not some reenactment of the last supper,

this is Christ’s work amidst death,

against death,

mocking death.

What a gift of God,

that amidst the reality of death,

we feast with all the saints.

We grieve the death of our loved ones,

but we grieve with hope,

and in the Spirit,

we feast with them, today.

The church has been dying for centuries. 

We worship to resist the false truth that death is the end.

If this building were to fall,

we could still commune at the communion rail

on the outside,

or in the cemetery,

because we know death is not the end.

We worship to resist the power of death

and we proclaim the power of the resurrection.

We worship to resist any rhetoric that makes God less than God.

We worship to resist any ways of man

that allow humans to be treated as less than human,

and to resist any ways of man

that allow humans to be treated as more than human.

We worship to resist the evil that pervades God’s good creation

we resist the thrones of the oppressors,

and we worship trusting that God is preparing us

to join God’s work of reversal,

freedom to the captive,

release to the prisoner,

mercy to the meek

God accessible to all.

May we find our place in God’s merciful work in our community.

May we find our place with all the saints

around the life-giving table.

May Christ bring us resurrection and new life.

Thanks be to God. Amen.