John 2:13-22
When I asked what struck our Lenten study group the most about this passage when they read it last week, one of the responses was the sheer size and magnificence of the Temple. We Christians sometimes conflate our own ideas of churches and cathedrals with the Temple of Ancient Jerusalem. But the scale of the Temple is nearly inconceivable, and its role in the lives of Ancient Jews drastically different in many ways from the role of our parish churches in our own lives. First, it is important to realize that the Temple of Jesus’s lifetime was massive. Try to picture twelve soccer fields in a row, end to end. That’s the size we are talking about here. Our church buildings could all fit in a corner of an outer court of the Temple without getting in anyone’s way. While some Jews were close enough to the Temple mount to worship there frequently, most people only experienced the Temple as pilgrims, traveling from all over Judea and the Diaspora at certain times of year to celebrate major festivals or to offer thanksgiving for the birth of children and the safe delivery of mothers. It would be as if all the Christians in America saved up our money all year, and those of us with enough making the journey by car to the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City. The Cathedral of St John is the largest church in the US and the sixth largest church building in the world, and it can hold about 8600 people in its nave. It is still smaller than the Temple Mount was when Jesus worshipped there. The Temple layout was a series of concentric courts, with the outermost being open to all including Gentiles and people of all genders and backgrounds, and the innermost being the Holy of Holies, where only the priest would enter on specific days in the calendar of Jewish holy days.
We meet Jesus today in the outermost court of the Gentiles, where appropriate animals were available for purchase to offer as sacrifices, and Roman coins bearing the idolatrous face of Caesar could be exchanged for Temple currency. Bearing in mind the scale of the Temple Mount complex, the majority of the people present, milling about in between the courts or praying in the inner courts, would not have seen Jesus’s outburst happen, or even heard the noise. This isn’t like someone barging into our small sanctuary and knocking over the collection plate in the middle of worship. It’s more like someone knocking over a snack display in the corner of a crowded airport terminal right as multiple international flights deplane. The people close by will notice, and maybe stop to watch. But most people are too far away, or too focused on catching their connecting flight, to notice at all. Jesus is engaging in an act of protest in the sight of his own followers. They are his primary audience, and now so are we.
The Gospel of John, whose version of this story we are hearing today, was written a generation after the Temple was destroyed. By the time this story was being told to John’s readers and listeners, very few people were still alive who would have remembered worshipping in that Temple. Instead, after the trauma of the destruction of the Temple, the worship life of most Jews turned toward the local synagogue and the home. This new generation of Christians, many of whom were also Jewish, were worshipping in house churches and participating in discussions of scripture and other Jewish traditions in their neighborhood synagogue. So when Jesus says “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” John’s audience knows that the Temple will be destroyed, both the Temple on the Mount and the Temple on the cross. Only one of them will rise again.
The Temple was the house of God, a place where God’s presence could be distinctly and reliably felt. The poor, the disabled, those whose responsibilities in the home prevented them from leaving for extended periods of time, and many in the Jewish Diaspora were prevented by circumstances beyond their control from making pilgrimage to the Temple. Although God’s presence has never been understood as limited to the Temple, it was true that a particular holiness and closeness to God’s presence was inaccessible to many in Ancient Palestine. For those who believe in Jesus, the dwelling of God ceases to be a single place, and barriers to holiness are torn down.
When Jesus clears the Court of Gentiles of sacrificial animals and makes a mess of the moneychanging tables, he compares the Temple to his own body. His body, which he will offer to his friends in the form of bread and wine. His body, which he will submit to the authorities and a violent death. His body, which will carry a cross and be carried into a tomb. His body, which will rise from the grave and ultimately ascend into heaven. Jesus is predicting a world in which no more sacrifices will be necessary because he has made the ultimate sacrifice once for all. Jesus is foretelling a world in which money and time and geography and physical ability and social standing and ethnicity and language and gender will cease to be factors in deciding who can get closest to God. Not because the Temple was an evil or corrupt place, but because it was simply a place, and in the miracle of the incarnation it is no longer the only place God chooses to dwell.
Jesus agreed with the Pharisees on more than we often admit. In this particular moment, he is sharing with them in the goal of making the holiness of the Temple available to every household, to extend the holy of holies into the heart of daily life. Jesus is offering a glimpse of a holiness that does not require transactions or travel, because it is located in the body of Christ, the body of which we are all members. It is a holiness that is made constantly available to us, not just inside the walls of our churches or behind our altar rails but everywhere we reach for God in community.
Imagine what your life might look like, if you and everyone around you lived like you were always standing in a sanctuary. I have heard folks catch themselves many times before saying something ugly or unkind or uncharitable or inappropriate by saying “I won’t say that in church” or “I won’t say that in front of a priest.” What if you lived like you were always in a church, always on holy ground, always in the presence of the Holy of holies? What if you believed Jesus when he promised to be with us wherever two or three are gathered in his name? What if we let Jesus clear out all the clutter that is preventing us from seeing that we are in his presence all the time, always held in an unshakeable love. We are members of the body that was torn down and raised up. We are the Temple, each of us is a tabernacle, a dwelling place of God. Every body you encounter is holy, including your own. We must treat ourselves and one another accordingly.
Mother A Writes 