The Temple: Risking Righteous Anger

Mark 11:15-19, CEB

15 They came into Jerusalem. After entering the temple, he threw out those who were selling and buying there. He pushed over the tables used for currency exchange and the chairs of those who sold doves. 16 He didn’t allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 He taught them, “Hasn’t it been written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you’ve turned it into a hideout for crooks.” 18 The chief priests and legal experts heard this and tried to find a way to destroy him. They regarded him as dangerous because the whole crowd was enthralled at his teaching. 19 When it was evening, Jesus and his disciples went outside the city.

Intro

This week, we are continuing our Lenten Journey to “enter the passion of Jesus” together. As Rev. Dr. Marcia McFee reminds us, “Throughout the six weeks of Lent, we will “freeze-frame” moments in Holy Week so that we might put ourselves in the picture, thereby ‘Entering the Passion of Jesus.” On Ash Wednesday, we began by preparing the canvasses of our lives. We named the busyness in our lives that drives us to see life as happening around us rather than to us. We committed to slowing down and being intentional as we enter Christ’s passion. 

Last week, we framed up Palm Sunday and the parade. Examining the division among the parade participants, we asked ourselves if we would join in. If so, we asked ourselves what we would risk to join Christ’s ongoing parade in the world. This week, we continue the journey as we pause and frame up the temple.

This morning, let’s again take a moment to slow down. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and take another deep breath. Now, picture the last time you took a trip or went on vacation. What sights do you remember? What sounds? Maybe the excitement of your children or grandchildren. Maybe you hear the crowds around you. Maybe the crashing of waves or howling of winds. If it’s vacation, do you feel the excitement in the air? Where did you go? What did you do? You may open your eyes now. I imagined childhood Summer vacations to places like the beach or Disney, where there were crowds around you. Everybody was excited to be on vacation, and the excitement in the air made you even more excited to be on vacation.

So often, when we hear this text and read about the Temple, we imagine a setting like our church on Sunday mornings. We think the temple is a place of reverence where there is a quietness and a sense of decorum. It is a place where children come up in an orderly fashion to the front of the church for a story and then are dismissed to something more fitting for their age group. We think of adults leaning in to listen closely to the sermon. So, it's hard to imagine this scene found in the Scriptures this morning. 

We wonder what this kind of dispute looks like. Maybe we can imagine solemn worshippers getting a little rowdy in the narthex/gathering area. We think about the order and structure of the service getting a little messed up.  And Jesus comes in to flip over the tables. What a statement! But in Jesus’ time, the temple was quite different from what we imagine. 

Hear how AJ Levine describes the temple courts:  “The Temple was something much different: It was a tourist attraction, especially during the pilgrimage festivals. It was very crowded, and it was noisy. The noise was loud and boisterous, and because it was Passover, people were happy because they were celebrating the Feast of Freedom. For many, it was one of the few opportunities to celebrate by eating meat rather than just fish. We might think of the setting as a type of vacation for the pilgrims: a chance to leave their homes, to catch up with friends and relatives, to see the ‘big city,’ and to feel a special connection with their fellow Jews and with God.”

As we think about this setting, now imagine Jesus showing up with anger and zeal. Jesus comes onto the scene of the vacations we imagined earlier as the dude who, for a moment, ruined our vacations with rude behavior. He stands out even more than our original, imaginative reading of the text. With a crowd full of excitement and vacation vibes, Jesus’ anger is an even starker contrast. He is noticed even more by those around him. 

What made Jesus so angry? Was it the money changing going on? Was it all the items being sold in the court of the Gentiles? To understand this, we have to dive a little deeper into the text. So often, people think that Jesus hates the Temple. Even in her book, AJ Levine notes that many of her students and even congregations she speaks to believe things like, “the Temple must have been a dreadful institution; that it exploited the poor; that it was in cahoots with Rome; that Caiaphas, the High Priest in charge of the Temple, was a terrible person; that it banned Gentiles from worship and so displayed hatred of foreigners; and so forth.” Yet Jesus continues to show up to the temple. Jesus and his followers continue to practice Temple worship. Even in his miracles, Jesus tells, for example, the man cured of leprosy to go to the temple and present himself to the priest. 

Jesus, was concerned, however, about right practice in the temple. Jesus was worried about the practice of the money changers in the temple. Jesus knows that it is necessary to convert the currencies from all over the world to the currency used by the temple. However, Jesus was upset that even those who could least afford it were being charged exorbitant fees to convert their currency. Jesus wasn’t upset that sacrificial animals were being sold in the temple. He was, however, upset at the high prices being charged and the location within the temple where they were being sold. In fact, a pair of doves in the temple cost up to 15 times the price of what could be paid outside. Yet Temple inspectors often found a blemish with doves purchased outside of the temple. 

Jesus was also concerned that the temple was not fully open to all people. Thus, he asked a rhetorical question: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?” One commentary notes, “In the Old Testament, the only separation in the temple was between priests and people. But in Jesus’ day the temple was also segregated by ethnicity and gender for purity reasons, with Jewish women on a lower level outside the Court of Israel and non-Jews in the outermost court. Jesus shows his concern for the worship of the Gentiles and protests ethnic segregation in a divine institution.”

We have all heard that wonderful saying, “Don't be unequally yoked,” and we take it as a demand that we ought not to mesh with unbelievers. We tend to use it as a means of saying don’t hang out with folks outside of these four walls. We use our faith as a means of setting up dividing lines, and this frustrates Jesus. God’s house is a house of prayer for all. Every person is welcome. The issue with dividing lines is that they stifle the community-building work of God. People come to places like the church or the temple to find community, to welcome the stranger, to repent of their sin, to be perfected in love. Yet, we also know that often, church is just a thing we do…we show up out of comfort, and we do not like it when people rock the boat. Church is a “safe haven” for those who look and act and believe like me. 

Yet a house of prayer for all people is meant to be a place of wrestling. It is meant to be where seasoned members come alongside newer members as they pray and doubt and wrestle with God. It is meant to be a place where we can come together in disagreement and share meals and laugh and sing together. It is meant to be a place where the dividing lines of class and gender and anything else that might divide us fall to the wayside as we are ushered into the family of God, where the things of this world don’t matter. So, Jesus is angry because he basically sees people walking up to strangers and asking them, “Why are you sitting in my seat?” 

But church, what if we got as upset as we do for someone sitting in our seat as we did for excluding people from the life of the church? What if we got righteously angry when the church is complicit in sitting by while the church gets entangled with the powers of this world rather than standing as a place where all are welcomed? What will we risk for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ? 

One Theologian writes, “The salt, the prophetic faith, has lost its flavor. The religious authorities of the day have lost credibility. This was the struggle facing the people of faith then. This also is the struggle facing us today. The struggle of faith does not take sides, conservative or liberal. God favors the disfranchised—the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the poor, people who are homeless and languishing in prison. Caring, kindness, and mercy that prove the power of faith and justice are the true measure and the worth of the authority.” Friends, this is the place where the church finds itself today. The church has lost its authority as we have stood by over the years and covered up abuse. The church has lost its authority as we have focused on our buildings and budgets while neglecting the least, the last, and the lost in our neighborhoods. We have been stuck inside while our savior wanders outside with the least, the last, and the lost. We have been singing our hymns while our savior is righteously angry, turning over tables for the ways in which the church has failed. This comes back to our question: what will we risk for the sake of Jesus Christ? 

Will we risk the ways that we have always done things? Will we risk our spaces of comfort? Will we risk our own righteous anger as we turn to the least, the last, and the lost in our community? Are we willing to turn over the tables of comfort and neglect we have built for ourselves? Will we work to build ourselves, this very congregation, into a house of prayer for all nations? Will we welcome the stranger, those who believe differently and look and act differently than we do? Will we live together in love, even in disagreement?

In the protestant church, we cling to the principle of reformation. We recognize that the work of reforming is not just a one-and-done thing. We believe that the reformation of the church is an ongoing process that is active and changing. It is an encounter with the prophetic as we allow the institution of the church to be continually open to change for the better. Much like our own journey to Christian perfection, the church continues to journey toward perfection. May we be open to the spirit, the principle of reformation in the church and in our lives.

So this morning, I ask you again, what will you risk for Jesus Christ? Will you risk your reputation to follow Jesus to continue Christ’s parade across time? Will you risk righteous anger, standing up for the least, the last, and the lost? Will you allow the church to continue being reformed, turning tables over when necessary for Christ’s work to continue and all to be welcomed?

May we trust the Spirit to lead us as we continue in Christ’s parade across time, striving for the temple to be a place where all are welcome to worship and pray, risking it all to follow Jesus Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.