Sermon Lent 3 (Series B)

A New Temple

John 2:13-22

Third Sunday in Lent, 2009 B

Zion Lutheran Church

Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Pastor Jonathon Bakker

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord, Jesus Christ, amen. The Holy Scripture for our consideration this day is the Gospel from St. John, which you just heard read.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers doing business. When he had made a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. And he said to those who sold doves, ‘Take these things away! Do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise!’ Then his disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house has eaten me up.’ So the Jews answered and said to him, ‘What sign do you show to us, since you do these things?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ Then the Jews said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. Therefore, when he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, so many things take place at the same time in this Gospel that it is difficult to grasp them all at once. To begin, Jesus steps into the temple and sees businesspeople there, profiteering from the temple activities. There were sellers of animals for the various sacrifices and there were moneychangers, exploiting the temple and the pilgrims who visited there. Jesus made a whip out of cords and drove them all from the temple – the merchants and their wares. Their tables were overturned. ‘Take these things away!’ Jesus said, ‘Do not make my Father’s house a house of merchandise!’

John confronts us with a difficult picture of Jesus in this Gospel; it’s a far cry from the images we most often associate with our Lord. We usually picture Jesus as polite, meek, and peaceful – not a disturber of the peace. We do ourselves no favors, though, to forget that in addition to the many miracles he performed, aside from the children he blessed, and beyond the generous healings he accomplished, our Lord’s life was also surrounded by violence. His was born in a crude manger, and his family was forced to flee to Egypt for his own safety when he was just an infant. During his life he was plagued by detractors and had to constantly watch for those who wanted to take and kill him before the appointed time. When that time finally did arrive, we cannot also forget the violent nature of his death.

We must consider our Lord in his entirety, not assuming for a moment that he was acting against his nature. Indeed, he took such great offense at the marketplace in the temple because of his righteous nature. It brought a passage from Isaiah to the minds of the Apostles. ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The purity of the temple was of the utmost importance. After all, the temple still had a purpose during Jesus’ life – in fact, it should be said that the temple was more important during Jesus’ life than it had ever been before. It was important that the temple and everything associated with it be carried out as properly as possible, but we will return to that later.

There is more to this Gospel that bears our attention. If Jesus’ outburst in the temple was difficult to understand, the words he gave by way of explanation to the Jews must have sounded downright absurd. The Jews were looking for a sign – even though his shouting should have been explanation enough – they wanted an explanation for his outburst in the temple. ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’

In those words, Jesus gave them a sign, but they did not see it for what it was. They did not recognize Jesus as the Son of God when they heard his words or saw his actions. Even the apostles did not understand the meaning of the whole situation. At least that is what John tells us. The evangelist does not hesitate to offer an explanation for Jesus’ words, remembering how it took Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead for him to understand it all himself.

Remember, friends, as we move through Lent, that this is a season of repentance and focus upon God’s word and the gifts he gives us through that word. The Scripture readings for the Sundays in Lent are prophetic – they are to teach us not only that there is judgment in store for those who ignore the words of God, but they also reveal to us how we are to see Jesus as the Savior who is the fulfillment of the Scriptures; how he is the fulfillment of that judgment in our place. Two weeks ago Jesus preached that the kingdom of God was at hand. We were to repent and believe the Gospel. Last week he predicted his death and resurrection, only to be rebuked by Peter. Jesus returned the rebuke to Peter, calling him Satan. Peter was expecting the Son of God to rule in glory, rather than die upon a cross. Today we have another prediction of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but this time more subtle. It was not immediately evident to anyone what Jesus meant when he told them he would raise the temple in three days.

This is why the temple was so important – it provided the people with the foundation upon which they were to understand Jesus’ death and resurrection. There was nothing arbitrary about the period of time from the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden until Jesus’ death and resurrection. Throughout that entire history God was preparing humanity for salvation, but he could not accomplish that salvation until humanity was ready. A pattern of salvation had to be established so that rebellious humanity would not rebel when it mattered most.

God began to illustrate the blueprint for humanity right there in the Garden of Eden when he made a promise to the wicked serpent about Eve’s offspring and that of the serpent – how the serpent would strike the heel of her offspring, but the heel would strike the serpent’s head. It continued through the patriarchs as we heard God make his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Through their seed, all nations would be blessed. It continued when God’s people found refuge in Egypt from a famine, and then were brought up from slavery in Egypt, foreshadowing Christ’s own sojourn and return from there during the early part of his life. There are countless similar pieces to the overall pattern – tiny details, like the Psalmist speaking of his enemies casting lots for his clothing, to enormous thematic parallels, like the rise and fall of the nation and kingdom of Israel. In themselves, all were significant historical events, people, and situations, but their meaning is only fully understood when we consider them in light of Jesus’ fulfillment.

The pattern that is important today is that of sacrifice. Humanity had been making sacrifices to God from the very beginning. Even before the fall into sin, Martin Luther believed that God instituted sacrifice when he put Adam in the Garden of Eden and gave him Eve. For Luther, God’s instruction to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the means by which Adam and Eve made their sacrifice. After the fall, humanity lost the capacity to live without sin, and sacrifice was never again so clear cut and straightforward. God would guide humanity, however, throughout history, so that we might know and recognize Godly sacrifice when we see it. One of those more critical moments in the Old Testament is recorded in the Old Testament reading – the Ten Commandments are certainly curb, mirror, and rule, but they are certainly also an exhortation for sacrifice. One cannot fear, love, and trust in God above all things without denying himself and all other gods. God’s name is not honored unless every other name is forsaken.

God bound his earthly presence to those tablets of the Law, and had them placed in the Ark of the Covenant. With the inception of the priesthood, God intensified Israel’s sacrifice. Not only were they to make sacrifices in their daily lives by living according to the Ten Commandments; God commanded further sacrifices for when they failed to do so, and still other sacrifices of a more general nature at other times. By the time the temple was finally built in Jerusalem, sacrifice was centralized there, but the people did not all live there. It was a big deal for Israelites to leave house and home and make their way to Jerusalem for one of the major festivals. Away from Jerusalem they were away from the sacrifices and the benefits of those sacrifices. Humanity was to see sacrifice as propitiatory – it was to reconcile fallen humanity to God. The only problem, as the author to the Hebrews would note, was that the sacrifices never ended. Even the Day of Atonement – the one day of the year when the high priest would enter into the Holy of Holies to complete the cleansing of all of God’s people – even that sacrifice would have to be repeated again every year.

All this sacrifice, all this blood, was not without purpose, however. It was all part of the plot God had been revealing to us from the very beginning. There were countless sacrifices with little lasting effect, but eventually there would be a final sacrifice that would complete the task, that would strike the head of the serpent for good.

We in the church know that Jesus was this final sacrifice – the events surrounding his own crucifixion make it obvious. It took place just outside of Jerusalem, it happened during the Passover, and the great curtain in the temple – signifying humanity’s separation from the presence of God – that curtain was torn in two. We see it clearly, but it was not so obvious to those living then. All of this explains why it was so important for the temple to be cleansed by Jesus and rid of corruption. Not only were the marketers taking advantage of others by buying, selling, and changing money within the walls of the temple – their very presence undermined the purpose for that sacred space. The temple existed for the people of Israel, and certain parts of it also for Gentiles, so that they could seek forgiveness from God for their sins. If the temple and the prayers and sacrifices that were to be taking place within were subject to desecration, not only would the sacrifices be corrupted by ritual impurity – the whole system would be a corruption of the sign and shadow of the final sacrifice Jesus would soon accomplish on the cross. That is why the temple was so much more important during his life – the temple itself would find fulfillment in Jesus’ death.

Jesus cleansed the temple as a sign to the Jews, though many did not recognize it. He then went on to give even further explanation of what the temple was by making reference to his own coming sacrifice, but nobody would understand him until after the sacrifice had been made. Jesus knew what others didn’t, yet he told them anyway so that they would understand once the events had finally taken place.

So there we have a tidy explanation of Jesus’ words and actions and what they meant for the people who saw and heard him, but why do they remain important for us today? There are many other instances in the Gospels of Jesus predicting his death and resurrection, and in most cases he does so with greater clarity than he does in this instance. Today, dear friends, there is more to Jesus’ words than that he will rise from the dead. What is so significant about this Gospel for us is Jesus’ relationship to the temple. He doesn’t simply cleanse the temple – through his life, living as the pure Lamb of God in preparation for his own sacrifice, and through his death, where he suffers the guilt of every sin on our behalf – Jesus replaces the temple.

God no longer restricts his favorable presence within the inner sanctum of the temple – God has humbled himself to dwell in a new temple – human flesh – the Word became flesh and made his temple among us. God is flesh; God dwells with humanity; he gives access to forgiveness and holiness not only to the ethnic sons of Abraham but now to all those who by birth share in the same humanity of our Lord. This includes all of us; if you have flesh, then you share in Christ’s humanity.

Never forget this, dear friends, for this is the point of Jesus’ words today; this is the point of his incarnation and his death and resurrection. Jesus’ humanity opens heaven to us who are human just like him. When we suffer, when we feel pain, when we feel guilt, we do not need to seek forgiveness and holiness in some faraway temple. Our Lord accomplished salvation on the cross at Calvary in Israel, but we need not look for him there; he distributes salvation differently. God is not far from you – he is as near to you as your baptism. He is as close to you as the word of absolution. He is with you in his own flesh and blood. Our Lord does all of this for you; to calm your pain; to sooth your suffering; to forgive your sins; and to grant you everlasting life.

To Christ alone be all the glory forever and ever, amen.

The Peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, amen.