1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

I am the proud uncle of four magnificent children, two of whom are now adults.  I caught up with the youngest two (who are children) last month and I know that this word is true, I am an uncle but I am not a father. However, in light of today’s reading from the Jesus Traditions I want to start with a “dad joke”, is your excitement building? Okay, here it is: what is the highest jump ever recorded in history? Are you ready for this: okay, it’s when Jesus cleared the temple. Okay, you’re not laughing but I get it; no, no it’s fine, it’s totally okay: it probably sounded better in Aramaic anyway, no worries.

In all seriousness the account where Jesus cleans out the temple is one of the few stories which occurs in all four gospel accounts; and it is unique among those stories because of its setting in the life of Jesus. The books of Mark, Matthew and Luke each locate this story specifically on Monday in Holy Week, the day after Palm Sunday, whereas John puts it right at the start of Jesus’ public ministry, following the water-into-wine event at Cana. So, did it really happen twice, that Jesus actually chucked a hissy in the courtyard two times, three years apart? That’s a good question. It is not a question I’m going to answer today, but it is a good question.

Two twentieth-century Biblical scholars, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, suggest that in clearing out the traders Jesus did not actually “cleanse the temple”, he symbolically abolished both the temple and the temple-way of doing things. Borg and Crossan suggest that it really happened, and in that final week before Jesus was murdered rather than the time of John 2. I’m not going to get into great depth with what these theologians say, but the basic story is that Jesus is not bothered by the different ways people worship God: you may offer a sacrificial beast, or you can dance in praise; sitting or standing, in singing or in silence, in Aramaic or Latin, Shakespearian iambic pentameter or Modern Australian English prose, the activities of religious people or whole communities presented to God for God’s pleasure are never a problem for Jesus, no matter how weird they might appear to us. However, when any supposedly worshipful activity becomes a substitute for God’s mandated activities of justice and gracious-welcome, then those activities are highly problematic for Emmanuel, no matter how solemn or ecstatic. Our God, the God of us people, is the God of All Nations; so if our church-stuff excludes other types of people from God’s company then we shouldn’t be surprised when the Word-became-Flesh immediately and extravagantly shuts down this counterfeit activity, this fake worship. To sing, to pray, and even to sacrifice, while moving or thinking in ways that resist shalom and displace justice is not pleasing to God. Whatever goes on in church must empower disciples for acts of justice and it must never excuse them from seeking justice.

The blaze of Jesus’ anger in the temple has nothing to do with merchants doing honest business, or with merchants doing dishonest business for that matter.  Similarly Jesus is not bothered that we made use of this building yesterday for the Pop-Up Shop, doing fundraising stuff and earning money right where we sit for morning tea. That is not the issue for Jesus, and it never has been. No the real issue, and the reason why Jesus suddenly went boonta inside Jerusalem’s third holiest forecourt, was the temple authorities’ shifting emphases away from praise and adoration of God and toward sucking up to and paying off the imperial, oppressive overlords. Borg says in another book that it’s not the sacrificial-animal sellers and coin merchants who Jesus names as thieves and gets his flogging working, it’s the priestly and social elites who are collaborating with the Roman occupation and ripping off the locals.

God’s people are supposed to stand apart from the rulers of the world: not to ignore them nor rebel against them, but to avoid being implicated in schemes of oppression and greed. The Judean authorities weren’t doing that, in fact they were doing the opposite thing by engaging in corruption, actively gouging God’s worshippers in God’s House and using that money for bribes.

As an “Evangelical” among Christians and an “Easter Person”, I proclaim that Jesus was crucified because of human sin; however, this is not as obvious a statement as it might seem. I understand and proclaim that the complete story of the crucifixion is not only that Jesus died as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, but also that he was murdered by individual sinful men acting sinfully on the actual day. I will say that again, because it is vital that you hear it, the complete story of the crucifixion is not only that Jesus died as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, but also that he was murdered by individual sinful men acting sinfully on the actual day. Jesus died because of the envy and corruption of a group of Jewish religious leaders, and the cowardice and injustice of the Roman imperial governor who refused to prevent it. These men who were supposed to care for God’s people as God’s appointed leaders instead established a system in which religion and government, high priest and governor, temple and empire, operated in life-destroying ways; Jesus was lynched by the power-drenched men of his day for calling them to account for that before God Most High. Part of the story of Easter is that just like Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero, and millions of brutally silenced other men and women of God, Jesus was assassinated by the powers-that-be in an attempt to shut down his God-centred summons to their repentance.

This perspective of Jesus’ death expands what we were first taught about the cross and sin, but it will never undermine it. The writers of the Jesus Traditions and the Christian Traditions in scripture offer a connected way of responding to Jesus; that salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection is not about life inside a broken system of injustice and corrupt self-interest, but with a newly installed reset button called “confession and repentance”. No, the earliest developing view of Christians reflecting upon Calvary suggested that the world was irredeemably broken; so a completely new way of doing life, which turns domination on its end and affirms God’s Kingdom justice above human imperial injustice, is required. When we follow the Easter story through each of  Mark, Matthew or Luke we soon discover that it was the specific act of overturning the Temple on Monday which tipped the balance, and led directly to Jesus’ death on Friday. When Jesus called out the injustice and corruption of the temple, and shamed the Jewish leaders as collaborators with the Romans, that was the last straw and “he needs to be shut up and shut down: let’s kill him embarrassingly” said the Sanhedrin to each other, and then to Pilate.

The Bible’s story of salvation has never been primarily concerned with life after death, but with life on a transformed Earth within the Kingdom of God.  Salvation for Jews and for Christians has always been about the life of the world to come, which meant this world in its Genesis 2 condition, but better because God was always walking around to the sound of the worship choir consisting of all creation, including the serpent, and all the rocks and stones. But this world, the site of the Kingdom of God which Jesus inaugurated, must be healed if it is to become the new Earth; God’s place of completion instead of fragmentation, and wholeness and healing instead of brokenness. Salvation runs right through the Hebrew Traditions as a healing story, moving the People of God (and individual persons within the People) from slavery under Pharaoh to the land of milk and honey, with lots of walking and being upheld by grace in between.  Then Israel falls apart, becomes too corrupt for its own good, and the people are exiled; until God brings them back and starts again in a rebuilt Jerusalem.  Then Israel falls apart and God leaves them in Jerusalem but the Greeks, then the Romans arrive. When Jesus comes, he comes to be the saviour in this repeated Jewish pattern: like God through Moses, Jesus is the liberator who sets the captives free. As he says of himself, and just like Elijah and the model of the prophets say, Jesus is The Way who points the exiles toward home and gives navigation tips toward homecoming. And like the temple itself, as retold by the Christian writers and editors of Hebrews, Jesus is the sacrifice who once for all fulfilled and made obsolete the temple and its rituals for atonement, guaranteeing acceptance and forgiveness for all from God.

Beyond the Jesus Traditions of the gospels we read in the Christian Traditions of the Early Church how the one murdered by Rome was vindicated by God. Peter said it in his great sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:23-24 and Acts 2:36; Paul wrote repeatedly that his primary purpose is Christ crucified in all his life’s work as a writer and a public speaker. The story of Christ is wisdom where the stories of the world are foolishness, I encourage you to read on through 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:16, beyond today’s set passages, as Paul writes for the first time in his life about the cross from a theological perspective rather than an important but mostly history event. Where Paul sets up a comparison between the “broad” wisdom of the world practiced by some of the Christian factions of Corinth, and the “narrow” wisdom of God, he does so inside a framework where Christ himself is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23-24, 30). The human way of doing things is broken and leads to brokenness; the Christ way is restorative and leads to the fullness of God.

When the Nation of God: that People which honoured Abraham, Moses, Elijah and the prophets, David and the good kings, Samuel and the faithful hearers and doers of the word of God; when that nation can execute God’s Messiah for Blasphemy, and God’s King of Kings for Treason in good conscience, tell me how that is a good system. Calvary on that Friday morning said that the human system is utterly broken, even the Abrahamic one. Jesus’ anger on the previous Monday at how the system had pervaded and corrupted the very heart of God’s own Nation in their worship shows how much hurt that caused to Jesus himself, and why he went ahead with all which he did on Friday. That the religious and national leaders of God’s Abrahamic tribe chose to murder and humiliate Jesus for calling them out is all the evidence we need, and more, that as disciples of Jesus we are up against it if we choose to stand with Jesus. That Jesus knew all of this, and still offered his wrists to ropes on Thursday, and nails on Friday, is God’s way of non-violent confrontation which brings Kingdom fruition. This dangerous method got Jesus killed; but it is also a message in which we hear the heart-felt cry of the Word of God himself, that healing is found even in the blackness.

So in the name of Christ crucified I urge you to resist all evil; but not to rebel. God in Spirit has not called us to storm our parliament buildings in Melbourne or Canberra, neither are we called upon to ravage the administrative spaces of the Churches. As Victorians we do not need burn our flags and emblems, but neither shall we ever worship them. Listen to God, follow Jesus, pray without ceasing for the Church and the world; and do not be surprised when the world continues in the godless way that is going that we who live according to the Way of Christ find ourselves headed for trouble.  Amen.