Of Temples, Houses, and Markets

Sermon

Have you ever gone back to somewhere you used to live and taken a look at the place you called home? It’s always disconcerting to me. Because to me, that’s my home. That’s where some of my memories live. But it’s not that anymore. It’s been turned to another purpose.

Here’s a (very loose) interpretation of the setting to get us started:

It was time for the annual family reunion, and Jesus traveled back to his father’s house. When he got there, he saw lots of family, but many of them were trying to get others to invest in crypo-currency or buy scented candles from them. Instead of revolving around catching up on each other’s lives, remembering the good times, and spending quality time together, people seemed to be concerned mostly about themselves and their goals and plans.

No wonder he was upset.

I understand this feeling, though on a much smaller scale. When I was in Japan, I visited Ryoanji, a famous temple in Kyoto, the one with the rock and raked sand garden in many pictures. The temple is known for this Zen garden, meant for contemplation and reflection. Now granted, I am not Buddhist, but I appreciate the idea of the space and wanted to experience it, so Alena and I went first thing in the morning when the temple opened to visit. We sat there on the platform taking in the beauty and clearing our minds with a handful of people around for maybe 5 minutes before a class of probably 40 middle school students appeared, talking loudly, taking selfies, and completely ruining any chance of contemplation. And from then on, it was a constant flow of people in and out. It felt like the purpose of the temple was being subverted, even though more people were coming to visit it.

John’s gospel is not straightforward and to the point like Mark. John was Greek, and educated in rhetoric and philosophy. He wrote with a style befitting an educated person at the time, filled with wordplay and subtlety. Now I don’t claim to be a scholar of Greek, but I do think it’s worth parsing some of what underlies today’s Gospel to understand what exactly Jesus and John might be getting at, and how that might inform our own lives.

In particular, we’re going to Zoom in on the language John and Jesus use to speak about Temples - what they are and what they should be. And that means we’ll also be thinking about ourselves, Our Saviour Lutheran Church (I hope).

Temple

Jesus goes up to the temple in Jerusalem for the passover. The word used in verse 14 is Hiero, used for both Roman and Jewish temples, but specifically with the sense of a place set apart as holy. But what he sees doesn’t strike him as holy at all. In fact, he calls it a marketplace (emporiou, like emporium) and not only that, what’s being sold is treated as required for proper exercise of your faith. Martin Luther recalled this scene when he saw Tetzel convincing poor folk to give up their life savings to buy indulgences from the Catholic Church of the time in hopes of having a more secure path to salvation.

When Jesus in verse 19 says “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up” he uses a different word, naon, which was (until Christians) used primarily to refer to religious buildings - less inherently connected to holiness. We’ll return to this one.

House

First, I want to draw attention to verse 16. Jesus has already made an improvised whip and driven out all the animals being sold for sacrifice, the merchants, and moneychangers then dumped their tables and money.

He says “Get all of this stuff out of here! Everything! Do not keep on making my Father’s house into a marketplace!” And there’s a lot to unpack here.

In calling the Temple “my father’s house” Jesus is claiming a special connection to God. This personal “my father” was not common language at the time in reference to the Lord, though the language of God as father or mother in general was part of Jewish tradition.

But the word “house” or oikos (and not temple) is especially interesting. If any of you are into period dramas or fantasy (or if you’re Scottish), you likely will understand if I say I’m of the “House of Porter.” In languages around the world, including not just English but Hebrew and Greek, the word house is used to refer both to a place of residence and lineages or families.

Jesus draws on the fullness of both meanings here. The Temple is the place where the Lord is believed to dwell, but he is also looking around at his fellow Jews at one of the most busy and holy times of year (the Passover festival), the family God has adopted, the children of Abraham, named Israel after their own ancestor Jacob.

And then he accuses them of making it into a marketplace, literally a “house of business” (oikon emporiou - like emporium). That language, too, comes down to English from Greek. Oikon is the root word for “economy” because the extended family was the most important economic unit throughout most of history.

So Jesus here is accusing them of taking not only the holy place but the family of God and turning into something more like a flea market that’s also a front for one of those creepy “we’re all family here” direct sales pyramid schemes.

There’s also certainly a bit of foreshadowing - Jesus performs a radical, seemingly out of character, one-time act - the cleansing of the temple. But his purpose is to permanently interrupt the ongoing corruption of something holy. Just as his ultimate goal is to do the same, not for the temple, but for all of humanity and beyond, redeeming all of creation through his death and resurrection. In Ephesians, we hear about God’s plan of salvation literally as a divine “economy”. It’s all tied up together.

Jesus’ Conclusion

The Jewish leaders (literally “The Jews” because they’re a stand-in for how others likely reacted) are incredulous and basically say “Ok Jesus, how are you going to explain [pause to make big motion indicating everything around]… this? Give us a sign as to why we shouldn’t just lock you up in jail or cart you off to the funny farm.”

And I’m sure he didn’t do himself any favors in their eyes by responding “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” and then not even explaining himself (at least as far as we know). It was only the disciples, looking back that connected the dots of what he meant here, as well as connecting the cleansing of the temple to the Psalm of David that says “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Speaking of the body as a temple was something of an innovation - unlike the other wordplay here. The first reference outside the Bible to this I could find was Philo, a Jewish philosopher who lived around the same time as Jesus and called the body the “holy temple of the mind”. In the time of the writing of John, Philo’s approach was beginning to be noticed among gnostic Christians, but we have no way to know whether it would have been recognized at all in Jesus time.

So why do this? Jesus had two audiences that day - the people buying and selling in the temple whom he wanted to startle into more faith-centered observance and his disciples, who could later put the puzzle pieces together.

Our Conclusion

Oh, and a third - the audience to which the Gospel of John was written: future Christians and those exploring the faith.

Those of us worshipping in person sit here in a sanctuary, in a church building, as part of the family and lineage of God, his adopted children.

And we need to know. Jesus came once for all to cleanse the corruption from our holy places, both physical locations but also in our midst in every way. And to bring the one thing which is most important, the thing which came through the destruction and reconstruction of his physical self - as the ultimate conquering of sin and death, the final expression of love, and the incorruptible and undefeatable final act of God’s faithfulness.

Much of the Old Testament can be summarized as “God chooses his people, they ignore God’s law and turn away from God, God allows people to reap the suffering they have earned, God has pity and faithfully rescues God’s people. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

The same patterns still happen today. We as a congregation and as individuals are called to continue discerning how we can faithfully make God’s house and family holy and not just a marketplace where we are concerned with ourselves or with competing against other groups (whether ELCA congregations, other churches or religions, or what has become the most common faith in the US today - nothing in particular). Yes, we are called to reach out to others, but not in the brutal competitive markets of religious capitalism but with a message of good news and gift.

That message is this. Jesus came and cleansed his Father’s house once and for all. It is what we remember every time we celebrate the sacraments of baptism and communion. It’s not always as startling as Jesus cracking a whip and flipping over tables, but maybe, just maybe, we can use a little bit more startling - a little more sense of the fear of the Lord - in us today.

Either way, though, if we are God’s house on this earth, we are responsible as family members to take active steps to ensure each of the people we encounter know that not only are they welcome, but they are already part of our family and loved by God.