Have you ever experienced entering your home with muddy shoes? Or have you ever had someone entering your home with muddy shoes and walking on your carpet? Whether you have experienced it or not, you can at least imagine that unpleasant messiness disrupting your house. You can also imagine yourself feeling upset and angry with the entire situation and with yourself or the guest with muddy shoes.
With this imagined experience and feelings of anger and frustration, we can better resonate with Jesus in today’s gospel reading. Jesus experiences something similar to the example I just mentioned. It is actually more than that. Jesus refers the temple as “my Father’s house.” It is where he finds himself as God’s Beloved Son. But he sees the messiness in his Father’s house. People sell cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifice. Money changers sit at their tables, exchanging Roman coins to Jewish coins for the temple tax. The religious authorities turned the temple, God the Father’s house into a marketplace. As we would be so quick to clean the mess that the muddy shoes made in our house, Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives all those selling sacrificial animals out of the temple. He pours out the coins of the money changers and overturns their tables. He scolds them and says, “Take these things out of here. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” This particular act of Jesus is famously called the ‘cleansing of the temple.’ So Jesus wipes all those selling out of his father’s house and flips over the tables of money changers. At first glance, it looks like Jesus is reforming the temple. In a way, he is. And there’s more to this reforming work of Jesus in the temple. Jesus’s main criticism is that the temple is turned into a marketplace. The temple is not just a building that God dwells in, just as this church building is built so that God can live here. The temple is where God is worshipped. God is revealed in the liturgy that takes places at the temple. The temple then is the sacred place where God and people communicate in the language of worship. This sacred place is now a marketplace. There’s no admission fee but whoever wants to worship needs to purchase a sacrificial animal and exchange their profane Roman coins with the stamp of the gentile emperor to Jewish coins with foreign transaction fees. The religious and civil authorities make profit at this marketplace-temple. People who come to worship God are exploited. But the real problem isn’t limited to social justice issues. It’s essentially about how God is perceived. The god that this marketplace-temple portrays is conditional and transactional. This god takes some fees from those who would like to worship. This god is not available to those who can afford to buy sacrificial animals and the temple tax. This god is not free but can be purchased as long as you can give money. This god is not everywhere. This god is stuck in the temple. Throughout our Christian history, this has happened time to time such as the abuse of indulgences in the 16th century and the prosperity gospel in our time that teaches, “If you give your money to God, God will bless you with more money.” To this wrong and harmful perception of God in the temple, Jesus puts a stop. God is not conditional. God is not transactional. We don’t make a deal with God. God doesn’t have to do that. God is God, and we’re not. God and we are not on the same level. But then, God comes to where we are in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In the face of Jesus, God manifests as unconditional, ever giving and forgiving, and loving and compassionate. Jesus, having called the temple as his Father’s house, pushes further. He identifies himself with the entire temple. The temple that still is a marketplace becomes his body. He takes upon himself the entire temple that is filled with sins. He and the temple become one. Jesus tells the religious authorities, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.” Here, let’s not be confused with his words. Jesus is telling the religious authorities to destroy, not that he’ll destroy himself. And ‘this’ temple is Jesus himself. So, the zeal of the religious authorities for God the Father’s house will consume Jesus. Jesus’ identifying himself with the temple filled with sins is none other than the biblical metaphor of Jesus as the Lamb of God. Traditionally, we think of Jesus as the spotless lamb who takes upon himself the sins of the world. So we sing, “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” For Jews, this metaphor of the Lamb of God makes sense since the ritual of sin offering was part of their spiritual life. For us, this is a bit challenging since we live in a different culture. I can think of one metaphor that might be relevant to us. I recently watched this video clip that shows the saving work of firefighters. I was deeply moved as I was watching the firefighters’ courageous and sacrificial action for others. I’ve been also reminded of the 9/11 first responders. Our modern metaphor that might describe Jesus taking upon himself the entire temple filled with sins would be that of a firefighter. Imagine an apartment building on fire. People are inside. Into this fire, a firefighter jumps into to rescue them. Jesus jumps into this temple set on the fire of sins. Jesus’ death is his jumping into this fire. In the Creeds, both the Apostles’ and the Nicene, Jesus descended into the dead or hell. This event of his jumping into the fire shouldn’t be taken as some doctrine even though this is one of the Christian doctrines. Again, imagine yourself caught in fire. Jesus the divine firefighter jumps into that fire to rescue you. This is not transactional nor conditional. This is sacrificial and unconditional. This is love. Before we say Jesus rescues us or saves us, what proceeds that salvific action is love. Jesus loves you. Lent is the season in which we pray for the Holy Spirit to give us grace to find ourselves in the temple embodied in Jesus Christ. No transactions required but our acceptance of the divine love. No more sacrifices but sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the love God reveals in Jesus. Lent is also the time when we find ourselves and the world in fire of sins and see the divine firefighter jumping into that fire to rescue us, to save us, and to be with us wherever we are. As long as Jesus is present with us, there is nothing that we’re afraid of. After all, Jesus our temple is risen from the dead. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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