Our Sunday Message

Church Housecleaning:
Deconstructing Christian Worship: John 2:13-22
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
March 19, 2006
Third Sunday of Lent

   It was Passover, John says, a time of high religious drama and enthusiasm. And the Temple was the center of it all. It is not hard to imagine who might have been there in the Temple that day: the scribes, the Pharisees, the priests, the money-changers, and the boy who was making his first visit to the Temple.
  He had heard all of his life about what Jerusalem was like at Passover time: the crowds, the pageantry, the excitement. He had saved his own money for the sacrifice. Mom and Dad had offered to help, but this was something that he thought he should do, since he was a man now. He didn’t have enough for a lamb, but he would buy a pigeon and that would be fine.
  He had read the story of the great exodus over and over and had it memorized. He was the first one of his peers to actually make this pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He had promised everyone that he would tell everything that he experienced: the sights, the smells, all the memories.
  The Temple was more majestic than he had even imagined. He was filled with religious pride when he first came into the outer court. The pungent smell of incense and sacrifice filled the air. This is the smell of worship, he thought, the smell of God.
  He had just placed the coins for his pigeon sacrifice on the exchange table when the heard the commotion and saw the whip in the man’s hand.
  Don’t think for a minute that these sacrifices were not meaningful to the people who came to Jerusalem. Don’t think that this was all just a religious sham that had lost its significance. In order to put this event into a context that we can begin to understand, try to imagine someone coming into our worship, turning to hymn #141, and tossing the hymnal on the floor. 19th and early 20th century hymnody is not meaningful to everyone.
  Imagine someone coming into our worship and ridiculing while the Bible is being read. There are parts of Paul’s letters that I don’t understand.
  Imagine someone coming into our worship and scoffing at the organ music. What is the figure: something like only 3% of the population likes organ music.
  Imagine someone coming into our worship and tipping over the pulpit. No, don’t even imagine that. These things are sacred and meaningful to us. These things are ways that we connect with God. What Jesus did that day in the Temple was highly offensive to some.   What was he thinking?
  The apostle John makes it very clear that this was not just a momentary loss of emotional control or a sudden outburst of anger on Jesus’ part. In fact, this text is often used as an example of Jesus’ getting angry. No, No. That is not what John is portraying. Jesus’ actions were carefully choreographed for symbolic effect. I don’t mean to say that Jesus was not angry or indignant. But to reduce this event to a simple outburst of anger or a sudden uncontrolled impulse is to miss the point.
  For the apostle John, this event was a “sign”—something that pointed beyond itself to a larger reality. It was a signal event about Jesus’ identity and authority. What does it mean and how do we apply it to our lives?
  It is Lent in the Christian calendar. Lent is a season in which we are invited to look carefully and intentionally at our spiritual lives. What in me is helpful to my spiritual journey? What in me needs to go? It is not an easy look, especially if there are beliefs and practices that we have become attached to as part of our religious identity.
  There is no better example of how we become attached to these beliefs and practices than the current struggle for music in the Christian church. Have we become so attached to our worship preferences that they have become idols? As meaningful as our worship may be to us, who said that the only way to worship is using 19th century hymns, accompanied by an 85 rank pipe organ, and followed by a well-prepared, thought provoking, and highly motivational sermon?
  The story of the cleansing of the Temple is a dangerous story: dangerous because it was one of the events that led to Jesus’ arrest, (at his trial, this statement about tearing down the temple was one of the charges used against him). It is dangerous because it is a story of deconstruction, (in order to grow, some things may have to be destroyed). What is it that John wants us to see?
  This is one of those rare times in the gospels in which Jesus gives us his own explanation. If we are going to rightly understand, we need to listen to Jesus’ commentary.
  When he was asked what he was doing, he answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, that meant nothing to his interrogators. You could not rebuild the Temple in three days. This was nothing more than the jibberish rantings of a mentally ill man. John says that it was only after the resurrection that these words made sense.
  Jesus was in some way conflating his life with the Temple. The Temple was the symbol of worship for ancient Israel. It was a means of identifying or connecting with God. The little boy in my story would be a good example of those for whom this was a highly symbolic place for the presence of God on earth.
  Jesus came into sacred space and began to overturn and throw out. And he has carefully chosen Passover time, a time that celebrates God’s great act of salvation. There was a new Temple in their midst. There was a new approach to God emerging among them. There was a new sacred center taking the place of the old. The old was passing away, the new had come. The new Temple will emerge three days after deconstruction.
  We call this deconstruction, death, burial and resurrection. John says that after the resurrection, the disciples believed. That was John’s intent. “Now Jesus did many other signs . . . which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you have life in his name.” It is belief in Jesus that is the new sacred center.
  In her powerful commentary on this text, Gail R. O’Day says, “The great danger is that the contemporary church, like the leader of the religious institution in the Gospel of John, will fall into the trap of equating the authority of its own institutions with the presence of God.”1 In other words, the sacred center, the transforming power, the ultimate religious experience, is not in the hymnody that we use, or the translation of Scripture that we prefer, or the interpretation that we give, or the dress that we think is most appropriate, but belief in Jesus Christ. He, and only he, is central to worship.   Everything else, regardless how meaningful to us, needs to be deconstructed.
  Lent is a good time for housecleaning. Is there anything in us that has become the sacred center other than belief in Jesus Christ? It has to go before Easter.
  The boy saw the whip in the man’s hand, but the man was quickly surrounded by the authorities, the temple police, and the Roman soldiers, and ushered out of the building.
  The time passed too quickly and it was time to leave Jerusalen. The boy did not want to be hurried, but he understood the need to make as much progress before the Sabbath. As they neared the city gate, they were stopped by what looked like a parade. The boy recognized him immediately. It was the man with whip, but now he was carrying a cross. It became another indelible memory from his first trip to Jerusalem.
  The boy never knew what happened to the man with the whip until he was older. It was then that he learned the whole story and it was then that he believed.

1 Gail R. O’Day, The New Interpreter’s Bible, “John,” p. 545.