Jesus on the court
Call to Worship
L: Let us be like the heavens and shout forth the glory of God!
P: Everything in creation proclaims that God has been at work.
L: Let our lives, too, proclaim that God has been at work in us,
P: For God revives us, gives us wisdom, enlightens us and gives us joy.
L: Let our words and thoughts be worthy of you, O Lord, our Redeemer!
—Based on Psalm 19.
Mission Moment
Invocation/Lord’s Prayer # 105 Prayer to the Living Christ
Hymn # 106, 104 Jesus...
Greetings
Praise Songs
Prayer Loving God, you have gone to great risks for us. Becoming human, you allowed an element of uncertainty in your future. You gave your Son the freedom to refuse you. But Jesus took the risk of following you. He took the risk of saying “no” to Satan in the wilderness. He took the risk of being rejected by those who knew him best. He took the risk that even his followers wouldn’t recognize him for who he was. He took the risk of dying on the cross. We sometimes like risk in our lives, especially when it seems like it might get us a little more money or power or admiration. But we shy away from the risk of giving it all away.
Help us to take the risk of following you. You know it isn’t easy for us to give you all of who we are. We’d like to play it safe, to keep a portion of our lives back for our own purposes. Help us to say “no” to all that separates us from you. Help us proclaim what you have done for us, even when we run the risk of alienating friends or loved ones. And if you have a cross for us, help us to take it up. Help us to know that giving our lives to you is the safest risk we will ever take. service people, healing, ill, mourning, new pastor, search committee. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Special Music: Donna Paynter
Scripture Reading 1 Cor. 1: 17-25
Offering /doxology
Hymn: Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne # 198
Jesus on the court
John 2:13-22 (read 14 - 16 in one breathe)
Jesus steps onto a court that is rockin’ with everything but religion. He steps onto the temple court during the Passover - a religious festival that must have felt like March Madness to the fans of Jerusalem. The historian Josephus estimates that more than 2.5 million pilgrims congregated in Jerusalem for the festival - a huge gate by any standards. Add to the crowds the thousands of cattle, sheep and doves brought to town for sacrificial slaughter and you have something that begins to look like a religious rodeo.
We're in the month of March, so it must be time for Madness: The NCAA basketball tournament. College teams from across the country are battling to reach the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, the Final Four, and then the National Championship Game. /////
But this particular March, our nation is facing another fierce contest, one that is played with bombs instead of basketballs. Participants are members of the 101st Airborne Division, not Division 1 athletes. Rather than trying to reach New Orleans to win a championship, our troops are attempting to make it to Baghdad to topple a tyrant. // It's a very different kind of March Madness. //I know that Christians in our country are deeply divided about the morality of invasion, making theological arguments both for and against a preemptive strike against Iraq. Some say that our troops are doing the divinely sanctioned work of liberation, using their weapons to free the oppressed, protect the stressed the importance of peacemaking.
Regardless of where we stand, we're now all feeling the insanity of instability. Our sense of well-being and personal balance is being thrown off by terrorist threats, Code Orange alerts, and official instructions about putting duct-tape on doorways and water bottles in the bathrooms. Anxiety is eating us up as we worry about how to protect ourselves and our loved ones in the event of an attack by a dirty bomb or a chemical or biological weapon.
This is a time of March Madness, for each and every one of us.
But in times of instability, it is important to remember that Jesus was never a passive or powerless victim of events. When he faced challenges, he rose up to meet them, with the skill and confidence and energy of a college athlete. In fact, he played a game much more extreme than the basketball being played all this month in arenas across the country. ///
Every year pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem for the festivals - times for remembering, to liturgically recall and relive important events as well as for feasting and celebrating. During all the pilgrimage festivals - Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles -huge crowds would congregate in Jerusalem. In this second chapter of John, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for Passover. The events that ensue are not typical of the festival. // Jesus goes up to Jerusalem because the “Passover of the Jews was near.” The Passover meal began at sundown. The ritual consisted of eating the meal, recounting the story of the exodus and its meaning for the meal’s participants and singing songs of praise (drawn from the psalter). John uses the festivals (see 5:1-18; 7:1-24) as occasions for Jesus to assert his own authority over Judaism.
there are very strict rules for the celebration. On the Day of Preparation, paschal lambs are slaughtered in the temple from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Then the Passover meal begins at sundown, with participants recounting the story of the exodus and singing songs of praise. The next day, an offering of first-fruits is made.
Passover commemorates God’s liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, the most awesome event in its history. For faithful Jews, both then and now, it’s nothing less than a religious adrenaline rush.
But Jesus is pumped about something else when he enters the temple court. With verse 14, John begins the narration of Jesus’ actions in the temple. [In Greek, verses 14-16 are one long sentence, creating a mood of urgency and haste, thereby underscoring the intensity of Jesus’ actions. Just as Jesus does not hesitate from the moment he moves through the temple, neither do the verses describing his activity]. // Finding entrepreneurs selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others changing money at their tables, he gets as fired up as a SlamBall player hitting the trampoline. John’s picture is large and dramatic: Jesus, with a whip of cords, herds animals and people out of the temple court, pouring out coins and overturning the tables as he goes. Listen again: Making a whip of cords, he drives the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. He also pours out the coins of the money changers and overturns their tables, before saying, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:13-16).
Jesus is never passive, never powerless -- even in the face of daunting challenges.
What’s his beef with the animal sellers and money changers? At first it’s hard to tell. Some think that Jesus is angry at them for cheating - cheating the out-of-towners when they come and buy animals for sacrifice, and when they change their Greek and Roman coinage into local currency.
Yet Jesus says nothing about cheating. Instead, he shouts, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (v. 16). Jesus wants the whole enterprise to be shut down, not just the crooked vendors. He knows full well that pilgrims have no choice but to purchase cattle, sheep and doves when they arrive in Jerusalem. They can’t be expected to bring their livestock over all the rugged miles from their distant homes. Still, Jesus insists, “Shut down the marketplace! Scrap the whole system!”
Since Passover was a pilgrimage feast, many of those coming would have traveled a great distance and would not have brought animals with them. They needed to buy animals in Jerusalem in order to participate in temple worship. Similarly, the temple tax could not be paid in Greek or Roman coinage because of the human image (the emperor’s head) on these coins (Matthew 22:15-22). Foreign coins had to be changed into the legal Tyrian currency in Jerusalem. If the worship was to proceed, animals needed to be sold and the money changed.
Jesus complains his Father’s house has become a “house of trade.” Since this trade was necessary for the worship practice, Jesus’ charge is a radical accusation. Jesus issues a powerful challenge to the very authority of the Temple and its worship. Alluding to Zechariah 14:21, Jesus objects to the extravagant show of piety that insisted on pure animals and coins while failing to insist upon corresponding purity of heart.
Here’s the deal: Jesus introduced an Xtreme Xhristianty that refuses to put up with any more. Enough’s enough. His actions remind us that discipleship is a very active - not passive - calling. And sometimes it can get unpleasant.
There’s no doubt that if Jesus had enemies before he stepped foot on the temple court, he certainly had them after he left. He threw the well-oiled mechanisms of temple worship into chaos, disrupted the traditional system on a high holy day and prevented all sacrifices and tithes from being offered. It is no wonder that the Jews who are gathered at the temple approach Jesus and ask him who made him the boss.
Jesus wants to play a whole new ballgame, a brand-new spiritual sport. He's offering something different. Something new. Something truly radical.
You could call it "SaviorBall." In one sweeping move, Jesus performs a 360-degree, through-the-legs, windmill jam-right over the heads of the temple authorities. He shouts, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (v. 19). He is speaking of the temple of his own body, which will be destroyed on the cross and then raised in three days.
For followers of Jesus, the name of the game is SaviorBall. We are challenged to focus our attention not on traditional practices, but on a radical SlamBall Jesus. And if we put our time and energy and enthusiasm into playing this sport, we'll find that we don't feel quite so powerless in this time of March Madness.
The question for us is: Have we "got game"?
If we do, it means that our Sanctuary is going to be a house of prayer, not a place for political pronouncements. A church should be a place where people encounter the living God and experience transformation through that encounter, a place where the power and the presence of the Lord is felt in preaching and prayer and song and congregational spirit. If our focus is on politics, we're going to get slammed. But if we concentrate on connecting people to the Lord God Almighty, we're going to soar.
Playing the game of SaviorBall also means that we are going to translate our faith into action, and show the same kind of zeal that Jesus does when he drives out the livestock, pours out the coins, and turns over the tables in the temple. This is slam-dunking behavior, for sure, and it seems uncharacteristic for a kind and loving religious leader, but it stands as a powerful reminder that Jesus Christ is a man on a mission, a mission that he is determined to perform with every ounce of energy available to him. He is never powerless, never passive.
Can we be any less, if we claim to be his disciples? The game of SaviorBall is no mere intellectual exercise, but is an extreme sport that demands strenuous leaping and scoring: Leaping into situations of spiritual and physical need, and hitting the goals of bringing food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, good news to the downtrodden, and direction to the lost. It can be an exhausting sport, but also a true adrenaline-rush. There is nothing more thrilling than throwing ourselves into the mission of the church, and playing on the same team as our powerful Lord.
Our goal will be jamming with Jesus, and finding peace in this energetic activity, until the madness ends.
Jesus acts with authority in his Father’s house, the temple, because the basic dwelling place of the Lord, the God of Israel, is from now on Jesus’ body. This body is the “temple” of John’s concern (v. 21). Jesus explains his actions in the Temple by pointing to his death and resurrection (2:19-21). Jesus has the right to challenge the authority of the Temple because his whole life bears testimony to the power of God in the world. John 2:13-22 is not about how Jesus’ anger makes him like other people; instead, Jesus’ bold, prophetic act in the Temple reinforces what earlier activities in John have already shown: There will be nothing hidden about Jesus’ identity in this gospel. Jesus is the locus of God’s presence on earth, and God as known in Jesus, not the Temple, should be the focal point of worship.
They want a sign — a warrant, a justification, an authorization. And what does Jesus say? “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (v. 19).///In your face!///
These are fighting words, spoken by someone who wants to play a whole new game. Jesus shifts attention from the temple in Jerusalem, which has been under construction for 46 years, to the temple of his own body, which will be destroyed on the cross and then raised in three days. /// For years, the temple has been the place of God’s presence on earth ... but now, with the coming of Christ, the body of Jesus is where God is seen most clearly.
The question is: Have we “got game”?
Jesus acted because things were not right in the temple court. What do we need to ACT ON? Is it a local government? taxation? our city’s failure to accommodate the homeless? our failure to be the friend of the poor? our carrying out of our mission statement. The Lenten journey should be a time not only of individual repentance but of collective repentance as the congregation asks itself whether it is fulfilling its mission in the community.
Could our prayer be: God, how do you want to reach our community through us and build a great church? /////////////////////
Perhaps God is leading us to a journey of turning things upside down discipleship. We’re ready to move beyond the intellectual love of God, to a more vigorous pursuit of justice, peace, righteousness and redemption - food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, good news to the downtrodden and direction to the lost.
Such a journey can be exhausting, but it’s a true adrenaline rush.
Madness? Maybe.
Discipleship? No doubt about it.
Sources:O’Day, Gail R. “The gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 544.
Robbins, Liz. “Are you ready for some SlamBall? Basketball just got extreme.” The New York Times, July 31, 2002, C14.
HYMN: Lead Me to Calvary # 211
Animating Illustrations
We will be judged not only for the evil deeds of the children of darkness, but for the glaring silence of the children of light.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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A parable.
One day a man went into the bus station in Athens, Georgia, to buy a ticket to Greenville, South Carolina.
The ticket clerk told the man that the bus was running late, so, to pass the time, the man walked around the terminal. He came upon a machine on which was a sign that claimed it could tell your name, age, hometown and so forth.
Inquisitively, the man put a quarter in the slot, and instantly a ticket popped out that read: “Your name is Bill Jones. You are 35 years old. You live in Athens, Georgia, and you are waiting for a bus to Greenville, South Carolina. The bus is late.”
The man was dumbfounded. How did this machine know such facts? So he reached into his pocket, pulled out another quarter and inserted it in the machine. Another ticket came out that read: “Your name is still Bill Jones. You are still 35 years old. You still live in Athens, Georgia, and you are still waiting for a bus to Greenville, South Carolina. But it is behind schedule.”
The man was astounded. How could this be? He decided on a ruse to fool the machine.
He walked across the street into a dime store and bought a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with an exaggerated nose and moustache. He also bought a pair of fake ears, a funny hat and a cane. Wearing his silly disguise and walking with a limp, he returned to the bus terminal and approached the little machine. He feebly inserted a quarter and waited for the machine’s response.
Out it came and it read: “You name is still Bill Jones. You are still 35 years old. You are still from Athens, Georgia, and you are waiting for a bus to Greenville. South Carolina. While you were fooling around, you missed the bus!”
Isn’t this too often like the church? While we’re busy trying to disguise ourselves as this or that, we’ve missed the bus.
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Changing the medium in order to better share the message is a central need of modern Christianity; if the people aren’t in church, then the message needs to go out to where they are. Clinging to old ways of doing things is an effective way of losing a modern audience entirely. But we don’t lose them because they’re not interested in believing, we lose them because we aren’t getting the message across.