Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
The book of Isaiah chapter 56 verse 7 we read:
“These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
God's word to his people was and is: “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
This is radical hospitality, folks.
Notice that it does not read:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *some* peoples.”
It doesn't even read:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *most* peoples.”
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for *all* peoples.”
The houses of prayer that God establishes will be houses of prayer not just for some, but for all.
This is what God's grace means. It means that none of us deserve more than any others to pray to God – but that all are lovingly welcomed in to the presence of our God of grace and glory.
Now today's sermon is a Tale of Three Temples.
(1)We have first, the historical temple from our gospel reading.
(2)We then have God's new temple -- which is no longer tied to a specific building or a specific geographic location, but exists anywhere where people are gathered and worshipping in spirit and truth, this new temple we understand as the body of Christ, the people gathered in Jesus' name to worship God. The new temple transcends space and time and consists of all believers everywhere and in every time who praise the God of grace and glory who showed his great love to us in Jesus Christ.
(3)And the third temple is our own bodies in which God dwells as Holy Spirit changing, renewing, guiding and making whole.
There you have it: a Tale of Three Temples.
And all of these temples have been created for this radical hospitality – to be a house of prayer for... ALL peoples.
But we are a people that don't like all peoples. That's a fact.
We can brainstorm in our mind having a get-together at our house and just as much as we can imagine who we would like to be there, we can equally imagine we would not like to be there.
We may believe in radical hospitality, in grace, in love which is unconditional. But so often we live as if there is a line to be drawn between us and them, between in and out, between worthy and unworthy.
But if we look honestly into the message of grace that we find in the New Testament, we realize that there is no place for this kind of exclusivity.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—“ (Ephesians 2:8)
and then a little further on, Paul continuing the same train of thought...
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.... He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.* In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually* into a dwelling-place for God. “ (Ephesians 2:13-22)
The new temple of the Lord is this one body of peace which has been reconciled together by the forgiveness of God – making us all equal in God's abundant grace and calling us all to be that forgiveness and grace to one another.
But let's get back to the first temple.
It's getting close to Passover and Jesus is, like many many many other Jews, making his pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship in the temple.
He gets to the temple and is infuriated. Why is Jesus angry?
Well Jesus knew and believed to be true what we read from Isaiah. That God's temple would be “a house of prayer for ALL peoples.”
and here it is clearly not.
Two things in particular probably angered Jesus upon entering the temple.
(1) The distracting noise and commotion of the sellers and buyers, moneychangers and pilgrims and (2) the unfair policies concerning the poorer worshippers.
When Jesus entered the temple, he didn't enter a building, it wasn't like entering the Valley Church. The largest area of the Temple property was called the Court of the Gentiles. (Gentile is a word that means Nation – so a Gentile was a person who was part of the “nations” – the non-Jewish nations.) The court of the Gentiles was a space surrounding the inner buildings where the priests would prepare and worship and sacrifice. This was the space where the Gentiles were allowed to come and pray. It was a space of welcoming, to allow them to seek and pray to God near but not in the temple.
In this court especially during the time of Passover, there was a lot of commotion, a lot of noise and business. It probably rivalled in noise and distraction, the marketplace where people sold their goods and competed for buyers' attention.
Now some of you could probably maintain the concentration to pray in the midst of an auction, but I know I would have some difficulty.
The practice of selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging money for the temple tax was important for the practice of worshiping in the temple. But it didn't have to be going on in the temple and didn't have to be going on in the only place where the people from non-Jewish backgrounds could pray and seek God.
But it wasn't just the Gentiles, the people from other nations, that Jesus was concerned about, it was fellow Jews as well that were being excluded.
The temple tax at one time was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It funded the maintenance of the building and what not. But it had in recent times became a yearly requirement. It had to be paid in the temple currency which required moneychangers to do the equivalencies. Now the moneychangers of course took their commission so paying the temple tax yearly became an extra burden for the poorer Jews who would come to offer sacrifice and worship.
The wealthier worshipers had no problem footing the extra for the exchange, and could still purchase a nice extra-holy-looking cow or sheep to offer for their sacrifice. The poorer Jews would have to get a pigeon or dove and even that would be a great hardship.
The exploitation of the poor and the distracting din of the marketplace in a place of prayer set Jesus off.
“In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
The temple was not being used as a house of prayer for *all* peoples.
It was a house of prayer for Jews, but not even all Jews.
We might say it was a house of prayer for the 1%.
Jesus was full of zeal and longing for God's house to be as God's house should be. For it to be rid of exclusionary economics and exclusionary politics which spell humiliation and struggle for most and ease and exaltation for few.
This is not what God's call was to God's people – we read in Deuteronomy the description of the character of God:
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Justice for those in need, a welcoming of strangers – this is what it means to follow God.
This is God's call to radical hospitality.
And Jesus was zealous for that kind of grace.
and when that kind of zeal comes up against the exclusionary devices of money and the market's noisy competitive distraction –
when the zeal for God confronts the worship of money, there is a kind of anger which seeks to tear down the obstacles which are put in front of the possiblity of prayer and worship for all peoples.
This is what we are seeing in Jesus' actions.
But this is not the end of the story. This is just the first temple – the tale continues with two others.
When demanded that he give a sign to show his authority to do what he had just done, Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The hearers were confused and scoffed – how could he even dream of rebuilding a temple like this in three days!
But Jesus' death was followed in three days by Jesus' resurrection and we are the community of followers who live in light of a rebuilt temple – the body of Christ which is made up of the believers of all times and all places bonded together in the peace of God's forgiveness and new life.
This temple is ALSO intended to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)
This is to be a place where all are welcome to come and worship, come and seek God, come and pray.
We are to be a community who live in light of the radical hospitality of God toward us. That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While God had every right to hold a grudge against us, he didn't and extended love and welcome and grace. This is the new temple of which we are a part and which we represent to a world that does not know peace, does not know grace, does not know forgiveness.
Let us be zealous with Jesus that it does not become a den of thieves, a cavern for those who feel they are superior, a cloister for the ones who are on the correct side of the issues.
This is not a partisan place, God's new temple is to be just as the old was to be: a house of prayer for all people.
Now one last point:
The apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church writes, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:19-20)
Not only was there a physical temple, there is a new temple which took over and is with us today where 2 or 3 are gathered in the name our Lord Savior. But we have a third temple here. The body of each person who follows in the way that God has called us.
Each body has received grace from God just as the whole body of believers has received grace. We have all been redeemed as a group and as individuals.
Therefore! Paul says, glorify God in your body. Glorify God in the temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Let us be zealous as Jesus was toward the physical temple, to let go of the marketplace in our minds, the exclusion in our attitudes.
Let us be zealous to overturn the tables of greed, of self-seeking and pour out the jars of our selfish gains. Let us get rid of all that is in us that seeks to promote ourselves and allow God to rebuild within us a spirit of grace, a spirit of hospitality, a spirit of concern for the least of these, that we might glorify in our bodies the God who wants our temple to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
Friends, let us turn over to God the temples of our bodies that they might become beacons of the light of God's love, that they might become fragrant offerings which give off the aroma of God's good grace.
May our prayer be the words of the hymn we sang this morning:
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days.
May God grant us wisdom to see the moneychangers in our own souls, the exclusionary attitudes and activities, the partisan spirits and resentments that build up like vines and choke the possibility of love.
May God grant us courage to turn the tables, to make this temple within us a place of prayer for
not some, but all peoples. That the God of grace and glory might be glorified in us, and that many who find themselves enslaved to opinions of others, entangled in embittered partisan resentments, or consumed by their own world of criticism, might see the glory of God's GRACE, the grace that seeks not its own, that loves without condition, and that experiencing that grace might many might find themselves changed and renewed by God's goodness and might glorify the God of radical hospitality.
Amen.
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