Third Sunday in Lent
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John 2:12–22 (NIV84)
12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
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Here we have Jesus once again predicting his death and resurrection.
Last week we discussed how that frames what it means to follow him.
The life he’s leading us to comes on the other side of death and resurrection
But in this text we see how his death and resurrection validates his authority.
Jesus goes into prophet mode here and people don’t like prophets because they disrupt things
And one of the key ways people respond to prophets is to try and discredit them OR try to pull rank by appealing to some authority structure
“Who are you to even have insights, let alone disrupt things? What are your credentials? What’s your title?”
“You wanna act like a prophet? Give us some miraculous sign to validate your supposed divine wisdom.”
In typical Jesus fashion, he gives a response that’s veiled in metaphor
He’s not really interested in playing the game
Only later do the disciples get it, and we along with them.
But he tells them that when the Temple is destroyed he’ll raise it again in three days, speaking of HIMSELF
If you’re trying to discredit Jesus
His death shows him sacrificing his life for all humankind
If you’re trying to outrank him
His resurrection shows his authority over death itself
Who does this guy think he is?
He is God with us.
The promised messiah.
He gets to challenge our status quo.
I am not going to spend our time this morning trying to convince YOU of Jesus’s authority.
If you believe he rose from the dead then your only real logically consistent option is to re-adjust your entire understanding of life itself to align with him.
So as Easter approaches, you can sit with that.
Do I believe in the empty tomb?
If yes, what does it mean to follow him?
What I want to spend time discussing is the actual prophetic critique Jesus makes:
That is, “How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
I want to spend time there BECAUSE I’m not sure there is a more urgent word for the American church today.
The setting of this story is obviously THE Temple, in Jerusalem, right before Passover
Which means the whole city would have been filled with pilgrims coming to worship
Vendors would have been selling animals to pilgrims to be offered as sacrifice
And money changers would have been exchanging Roman coins that had the emperors image for image-less ones that were acceptable for offerings
Now, we don’t know exactly what the scene was like
We know that Jesus gets REALLY ANGRY
And side note, this story often gets abused by people trying to justify their own anger
“Jesus turned over tables so...” in going scorched earth about (whatever I dislike) I’m just being like Jesus
I’ll just say “Don’t do that.”
BUT given the big reaction of Jesus we might imagine the scene being SUPER shady, like the outer courts of the temple had become like the back alley scenes in a movie
Just these nefarious people, debauchery everywhere, making an open mockery of Temple worship
And if we imagine the scene as some extreme, fringe, example like that it’s easier to just shake our heads and tisk tisk and move on
“I would never. We would never. How dare they! Get em Jesus.”
But I suspect the scene was less extreme than that and a bit closer to our experience than we want to admit
Because neither selling animals for sacrifice nor exchanging money is inherently wrong
and one could argue that they would have actually been helpful for facilitating worship
If you’re a pilgrim coming from out of town it’s easier to buy an animal there than bring one on the journey
You can see then how this practice of selling things and exchanging money probably just began with some pragmatists, even well meaning ones, trying to streamline worship
But their pragmatic choices were based on marketplace practices and strategies
And once that syncretism happened the Temple became a new marketplace OPPORTUNITY for all comers
And soon the very NATURE of the activity at the Temple (at least in the outer court) was changed or corrupted
AND THEREIN LIES THE ISSUE
In the Mark account Jesus yells Mark 11:17 “Is it not written: “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
It is supposed to be a place where people come in humility, recognizing their need, set apart from the ways of the world, offering sacrifice and praise
Instead it became a place where people were competing, profiting, and exploiting others to supposedly facilitate sacrifice and praise
Now, Jesus had much to say about how the worshipping community had become distorted in his time
Offering a prophetic critique that, again, was not super popular because it disrupted the status quo
Challenging the religious leaders and their system actually got him killed
If we were to really truly ask Jesus what he would say to the American church today, namely the white Evangelical church, I can think of four or five blistering critiques he might make with one of them being
“How dare you turn my body into a market!”
I would suggest that our current situation is actually WORSE than the money changers in the Temple
Because in our situation, it’s not just that there are people turning a prophet on things that facilitate worship (there are)
But the worship communities themselves have become marketplace entities
local expressions of the body of Christ become branded institutions competing with one another for consumers
I don’t want to add to your cynicism about the church but we need to be honest
I was scrolling Twitter yesterday and this add came across my feed
That is a drop in the ocean of examples I could share
That spirit of competition ABSOLUTELY shapes the nature of the church in our context
In 21st Century America
Churches organize as legal entities. It’s assumed that you have paid staff. And it’s assumed you have facilities to meet in.
And right there, off the bat, the community becomes an institution with overhead costs.
And the thought is you can’t do ministry if you don’t exist so you need to meet those overhead costs.
Not only that you need to grow and you need to provide more programs and amenities because other churches are doing that and it’s what people have come to expect and if you don’t then the people will go there and you won’t exist.
And in the marketplace you’re either growing or dying so once you start all these things and get a big campus and a full staff you have to keep building and then you have to maintain it all so you gotta keep the people
And if you drew people with an awesome Sunday performance, and killer children’s ministry, what happens when the church down the street ups their game?
Don’t lose consumes to megachurches
And we can spin it and put a spiritual gloss on it all we want but ...
In planting a church you are expected to come up with a business plan for how you’re going to be financially sustainable quickly
You are expected to set up a sustainable small business from which you can then do ministry
But tell me, if I have to make money and find a niche in the market before I can “do ministry”, what is going to drive our decision making
And, should we succeed in the marketplace and need to maintain our income, what do you think SHAPES the ministry
And what happens when what’s best for the health of the church doesn’t appeal to the marketplace.
And what happens when what the church needs to hear upsets people (givers) who might leave
Here’s the deal.
The marketplace and the way of Jesus are not pulling the same direction
There will 100% be conflict where you have to choose between what plays to the crowds and what’s in line with the kingdom
You will have to choose between what turns a profit and what is best for the people of God
Jesus said - Matthew 6:24 - No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
THIS IS WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT
If the market is the primary shaper of the church, it’s a problem.
And it is a problem.
I could give a ten part sermon series on just this. On how:
The marketplace commodifies everything of value, reduces it to a cheap trend and then discards it
About how the marketplace has no patience, craves stimulation and worships momentum and how that shapes our worship
About how the marketplace corrupts our leadership models, favoring ambitious people with charisma who can draw a crowd
About how the marketplace undermines unity and breeds territorialism
About how ALL OF THIS has contributed to the church being a superficial club that lacks any real power
I want to go on but I will censor myself
It comes down to this:
We cannot be totally free to follow Jesus and be beholden to revenue streams at the same time.
We cannot seek first the kingdom if we have to win in the marketplace as a prerequisite.
One of the primary tasks of the church in our context is to de-industrialize
to disconnect from the marketplace
but guess what, that’s a hard sell
because it requires market winners to make sacrifices
and it requires consumers to let go of what’s comfortable
we like this pleasant market exchange, it’s just the way the world works, quit overthinking it Sean
what authority do you have to make such a critique?
None. I’m just quoting Jesus. And he’s king over all creation.
So it there any good news in this?
Yes.
All of us are hungry for a real encounter with God and an experience in the church that is life-giving and true.
It’s worth pursuing.
But I believe we’re going to have to strip away a lot of the nonsense to find it.
That’s not saying that everyone’s faith is currently bankrupt and nothing real is happening in megachurches.
But I believe we are really truly missing something because everything is so clouded by the marketplace
Jesus isn’t a product and the church isn’t meant to be an institution or a brand.
Jesus is a person and we are meant to be a movement that disconnects from all other allegiances to call him Lord and follow him where he goes.
Even when he leads us to a place or a season that doesn’t make sense to the marketplace
But I believe that’s where the real thing is found
I’m desperate for the real thing