Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝
Red Moon
Jesus taught in the temple quite often—even going back to the time when He was a boy and He taught the teachers and referred to the place as His Father’s house. Everything was peaceful. Then, you see Him in a story like this one where He all of a sudden “cleanses” the Temple. But does the Temple seem cleansed to you? Every table in that outdoor courtyard is turned over, the goods and coins strewn out all over the stone floor, the sheep and oxen running off, birds maybe flying around, and perhaps not a few shocked and unhappy people might have been on the wrong end of that whip that Jesus flung about. Whew! That sounds more like making a mess rather than cleansing anything!
Why did Jesus take such drastic action? Is He really saying that it’s wrong to sell anything at church? How can His anger, even if it’s justified anger, take over like it did? What I mean is, He may have had every right to protest whatever was going on and calmly bring it to a stop, but He doesn’t do it that way. Does He need anger management training, you think? Does our Lord need to get checked out by a psychiatrist so He can get on the proper medication? OK, so those are dumb questions. But they drive home a point: and that is, Jesus has a specific thing to say about the Temple and about what it says about His mission to pay for the sins of the whole world. If a person would not want to accept what Jesus says about this, then that person would not only have a messy temple courtyard, but more urgently, an eternity in hell apart from God. So Jesus takes this kind of action to wake you up now while you have the chance, so you realize you need this kind of messy cleansing within you, too, since by faith you have also been made a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Of course, Jesus was there all along, the whole time that the Temple was there. In fact, He was there and laid out the measurements of the tent structure, or tabernacle, that was used before the Temple was built. Who else would have given Moses those instructions on Mount Sinai? He graciously set aside a place in which God’s holy people would know He would be there for them. The Almighty Lord who is at the same time everywhere at once, wanted close contact with His chosen nation. And not as the righteous, angry judge who had every right to destroy the sinful earth, but as the loving, heavenly Father who promised forgiveness in the name of a substitute whose life was offered up in their place. This was the presence of the Lord God among and with His people, complete with animal sacrifices and the reading of Holy Scripture, that spoke over and over again through the centuries about the coming Savior. He would be the One, true sacrifice of which all other sacrifices are but a mere shadow.
So, here is Jesus, in Jerusalem’s crowded Temple, at the Passover. This is the festival where a lamb would give its life both as a remembrance of God’s people’s rescue from slavery in Egypt, and as a prediction of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for God’s rescue of everyone from slavery to sin. He points out that this Temple, with all of its Old Testament history, was originally meant to get God’s people ready for His death for them. This impressive structure’s job is
about to come to an end; the Temple will soon become obsolete. God wanted the Temple to be there, constantly reminding the people that Jesus is coming. But now Jesus is here, and where the Son of God was once with His people by means of a building complex, now He is walking among His creation in actual human flesh.
But it’s not as simple as “out with the old, in with the new.” Jesus does not turn over tables and spill coins and drive away animals merely to say to His people, “Here I am! Believe in me now!” No, He’s there to correct something, too. He needs to preach the Law to the people in this Temple, just as He must preach the Law to you, too. The Temple was being misused and abused, and it goes much deeper than buying and selling in God’s house. It’s even a bigger problem than people being greedy or charging extortion, which could have been there too, just that was not the main issue. The Lord had specifically wanted the Temple to be a shining beacon to the whole world that His grace and forgiveness was free to all people. The salvation that Christ would win for all nations could not be bought or sold, whether then or now. Jesus saw the hearts of those in the Temple courtyard, and He knew that they believed falsely to their peril. They believed that someone could work for and earn God’s grace. It’s not just that people were making profits from exchanging money and coins, but they were engaging in a very good-looking, but also very evil activity, and that was works-righteousness. That means that the people saw the good things they were doing as something that helped improve their spiritual condition. The whole operation had to stop, and it had to stop right then and there, or else peoples’ souls would be in danger of being lost forever. So Jesus cleansed the Temple by overturning the tables and making a mess.
Many of you remember that Martin Luther was angry about a similar thing that was going on, just across the border from where he was teaching in Wittenberg. Some of his students and fellow churchgoers were coming back from across the river with huge smiles on their faces and what little money they had left was gone from their pockets. They had just bought a piece of paper called an indulgence that said they have just paid for enough of God’s grace to save themselves, or even save one of their dead loved ones from the imaginary place called purgatory. Martin Luther’s public challenge to debate this practice was considered the beginning of the Reformation, which his opponents felt had turned the whole church upside down in a short amount of time.
Where are your money-tables that need to be overturned in your heart? In what way do you face the temptation for self-pride that comes along when you do something good for others? Perhaps you feel that you’ve put in your time of devotion to God, and now it’s time to see some of the benefit of your efforts. Where potential volunteers sat on their hands and hadn’t gotten involved, you have been first to respond. When others you know stay home from church or let that offering plate pass them by, your attendance and your contribution has got to count for something.
Oh, so what are you saying, Pastor? These good things are wrong now? No, not at all, just like Jesus was not saying it was wrong for people to acquire the animals they needed for the sacrifices in the Temple. What is wrong is the same thing that Jesus points out in this Temple cleansing: the Father’s grace is not for sale. Don’t think that anything you do gives you faith or forgiveness, nor does it improve those things in any way. Don’t follow the gimmicks that are out there, like: Jesus is your savior? Great! Now you have to make Him your Lord. Or: Now that you’re a believer, it’s time to be a disciple. So commit your life to Him, promise that you’ll be a better son, daughter, mother or father, and straighten up your behavior so that you make sure to do everything the way you imagine Jesus would have done it if He were you. Now do you see why this is dangerous? You get the free meal of forgiveness given to you one moment, and then the next moment, just as you’re leaving the restaurant, you get stuck with the huge bill that no one can ever pay. That would make church just another one of those deceptive con-games that sound to the wise world’s ear like everything was just too good to be true.
When you confess your sins and remember the grace of your baptism, then your merciful Lord overturns those tables on which you try to buy off the grace and favor of God, even if you do it without realizing it. Your sin is too great to pay for yourself. Your false temple to yourself and your sinful desires has been torn down, and in its place Jesus builds the real Temple of His own Body. All the sins that you couldn’t remove have been swept away in the flood of forgiveness, namely, the blood and water that poured out from the pierced side of Christ as He gave His life for yours on the cross. As forceful and severe as your Savior was in cleansing the Temple, making a big mess, He is even more powerful as He declares that all your debt to God has been paid with the words: “It is finished!” That announcement echoes all over the world and through every century of the world’s history, so that it sounds like this: “In the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you of all your sins.” Those are the words of God Himself; they are announced to you in the public service by the called and ordained servant of Christ, and you get to announce those words in private situations to those who have sinned against you. But whether you say it, or I say it, really it is Christ who says it through us. And such a gift can never be bought or sold, it is ours to receive freely, and to give away just as freely.
The Temple that Jesus cleansed is now gone, not one stone is left upon another, even to this very day, except for the remainder of an outer wall, the “Wailing Wall.” The animals are no longer sacrificed, and the priests no longer serve. But the true Temple in the flesh of Christ still stands. That Temple is erected wherever you hear God’s Word proclaimed purely and where the Body and Blood of Christ are handed out the way Jesus said to do so. You who receive that Word and Body and Blood, you are the real priests who pray and sacrifice yourself for the sake of others. He has thrown out your evil urge to buy or earn the grace of God for yourself, and He plants in its place the simple, receiving kind of faith that Jesus says is exemplified in a young child. Your Lord’s work of turning tables in this sinful world is not quite finished. And wherever the truth upsets the false notion of being “good enough” or “holy enough” to be saved, you’re going to find conflict and opposition until Jesus returns again in glory. For a while, it may look like a mess, and might seem quite uncomfortable and horribly impolite. But do not be discouraged, the Lord is truly with you, not because you stayed close to Him, but because He came near to you and rescued you from yourself, and joined you as healthy branches to Himself who is the life-giving Vine. And the God who once dwelt in a building known as a Temple, now makes His dwelling here among you and He lives forevermore within you.
In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Purple Altar Parament