What Jesus Does - March 19, 2006
John 2: 13-22The picture of Jesus that hung in my grandmother's house, right above her electric organ, and also in the house in which I lived when I was a child was a rather famous rendition of him, a copy of the painting by Walter Sallman. I'll bet you've seen it too. Everyone I knew in my growing-up years who had a portrait of Jesus hanging in the house had the same exact one. In the portrait, which is comprised of umber, gold and bronze tones, Jesus sits in three-quarters profile, looking serenely into the distance, his light brown hair gleaming and brushed back from his face, highlighting his high cheekbones; his beard neatly trimmed and his light-colored eyes softly yet intently focused on some point of reference off to his slight left field of vision.
This was the Jesus I saw in my dreams, the dreams in which he spoke with me outside near my parent's tomato patch. The eyes on the Sallman portrait were the ones that spookily followed me when I walked down the hallway in my childhood home. They are the ones I imagined could see through the wall into my bedroom. The two things I remembered thinking about that portrait of Jesus way back then were that I wondered how that picture of Jesus had survived all those hundred's of years, and I marveled at how much Jesus looked like my older brother. I honestly thought that someone had painted Jesus when he was alive, and that a copy of it had survived to the 1960's, when it was copied for the rest of us. Why else would everyone I loved and trusted have the same picture of Jesus hanging on their wall?
When I was a bit older, of course, and found out that Jesus' ethnic heritage was probably not a mixture of White western European and native American like my brother's, but that he was in fact Middle-Eastern, I'd like to say that the picture became less spooky to me, or less significant, but in fact, when I see the Sallman portrait, it still says "Jesus" to me.
Sometimes the picture of Jesus we hold in our minds and in our hearts is really hard to shake, isn't it? There's popular children's Christmas song,
"Some Children See Him":
Some children see Him lily white,
The baby Jesus born this night
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heaven to earth come down;
Some children see Him almond-eyed,
This Savior whom we kneel beside,
Some children see Him dark as they,
Sweet Mary's Son, to Whom we pray;
The children in each different place
Will see the baby Jesus' face
Like theirs, but (with) bright and heavenly grace,
What does Jesus look like to you? That's not really fair question, I suppose. What about this one: How does your Jesus act? Does the Jesus who meets you in your dreams and follows you with his eyes from the hallway portrait throw things? How about turn over tables, scatter innocent animals about to be slaughtered, send money flying across the room? Does your idea of Jesus include talking in riddles, insulting both the accepted religious and commercial practices of the day, and just generally acting like a lunatic? If your answer is no, you are in good company. Most of us don't think of these things when we think of Jesus. To be Christ-like is to be gentle, loving, patient, kind, hospitable, and merciful.
WWJD? I know someone who designed a line of online merchandise that is emblazoned with the initials for "What the (blank) would Jesus do?" To me this comes about as close as one can to describing, or at least contemplating the Jesus we meet in today's gospel lesson.
To understand what is happening in this passage, it is helpful to break it down, and to look at how this temple scene fits into its context. The animals are for sale so that those Jews coming to temple empty-handed can purchase the appropriate animal to sacrifice for whatever offences they need to. It's not exactly like the Chicago Mercantile, but instead a part of the way that worship was done.
It's a little harder to pin down the moneychangers, exactly. Depending on whose commentary you want to believe, they are either currency exchange agents or loan sharks-probably a little of both. You see, the moneychangers were there to convert worshippers' roman currency into the Jewish half-shekel that was needed for temple tax. But there's no reason, knowing what we know about human nature, to believe that they did this for free.
When I imagine the moneychangers, I can't help but remember taking my kids to Chuck E. Cheese when they were little. To play the games at Chuck E. Cheese, you had to convert money to tokens. If you didn't use all your tokens, you were stuck with them. We always tried to stash the leftover tokens somewhere, but by the next time we went back, we had forgotten where the tokens were and we ended up getting more. I'm sure the corporation made a lot more money out of token conversion than they did on pizza. So lets assume that there is some for-profit commerce going on at the temple. And let's assume that there is probably no where else in town that the coinage for temple tax is available. After all, there's only one place to get a Chuck E. Cheese token, and only one place you can spend it.
So into this very busy Passover scene-where animals for sacrifice are being bought and sold, and currency is being exchanged-walks Jesus. Gentle, loving, patient, kind, hospitable, and merciful Jesus. Hmmmm... John doesn't really say, that does he? The first thing John's Jesus does when he walks into the temple is make a whip out of cords and start driving the animals out. As if this was not radical enough, he tells them to stay out. When challenged quite openly as to the authority with which Jesus speaks, by the Jews who are witnessing this outburst, he hints to them of his impending death and resurrection; we know this is what he meant because John even foreshadows Jesus' death by telling us that the disciples get the riddle after they witness the resurrection.
This story is one of those dangerous stories-the kind that can be easily misunderstood or misused by even the most faithful believer. If someone tried to justify their own righteous indignation and anger at something that happened in the world, and wanted a biblical story to back up that anger, what story do you think they would use? This one. If someone wanted to justify throwing a temper tantrum, or the use of force against an enemy or evil-doer, which biblical story do you think that person would remember and repeat? This one. If someone wanted to prove Jesus' humanity, to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Jesus was as fully human as fully God, what story do you think they would point to as biblical proof of that humanity? It's not going to be a birth narrative-only 50% of the gospels even tell a story of a babe in a manger.
This story is one of those rare glimpses into the life of Christ and his ministry that is told by all four gospels. I spent a bit of time this week comparing the four different stories. Those of you who were at Lectionary study on Monday may recall that I pointed out that this story appears in a completely different place in the other three tellings of it. In Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus is clearing out the temple after Palm Sunday and right before his betrayal. This led me down a bit of a rabbit trail this week, as I tried to contemplate the frustration of a Savior who is about to become the sacrifice for the whole world. I was entirely leaning in that direction until a few days ago.
The more I though about it, though, the more I became convinced that I had perhaps "used" this passage in one of those dangerous ways. Isn't it reassuring, when somebody has a frustrating hour or day or week to lean on the fact that Jesus felt that way, too? But John isn't saying that. John isn't implying that Jesus got to the end of his rope, that the things he was facing just got the better of him. John places this story at the beginning of his ministry, right after Jesus' first miracle, the wedding at Cana, and the water becoming wine. And in doing so, John is re-interpreting this story for us, offering us a fresh perspective on an oft-used metaphor. John puts us on notice: Jesus changes everything.
To the Jews living in first century Jerusalem, worship was identity. But worship, as reflected in this story, had become just a little bit institutionalized, as if it had become rather like one-stop shopping: just show up at temple and everything that one needed would be there. There is much that the contemporary church can re-examine in light of this story. Jesus is telling-in a graphic and dramatic way-that the authority of worship does not rest in the institutionalization of it. Jesus would become the new temple, the new locus of God on earth. Everything that had become systemized and absolutized about serving God, about faithful living, was about to change.
If Jesus walked in today, what do you think he would have to say about our worship? What do you think he would say about "Decent and in Order?" About the "Frozen Chosen"? I have a hard time believing that Jesus would want to discuss our church polity, or our order for worship. Those are just the steps we use in the dance, they are not the dance itself. But he might ask us,
- How did you prepare to come here today?
- What things did you set aside to ready yourself to worship me?
- What things will you take with you from this place?
- What will you tell your friends about how you spent your Sunday morning?
- How will your 90 minutes this morning change how you see yourself, how you treat others?
- How is your life different as a result of your encounter with God this morning?
- If your life is not any different, why not?
John reminds us, through this story of radical love, of radical grace, of radical transformation, that Jesus turns everything upside down, that an encounter-a real encounter with Jesus makes all things new. It matters not how we see him-lily white, bronzed, almond-eyed, dark as night-it matters that we seek him. It matters that we allow his transforming, unchanging love to change everything.
Thanks be to God!
