Jesus I will follow ... in times of toppling temples
John 2. 13-22
Pastors (and presumably others) sometimes find things in church buildings that they would just as soon not be there, maybe on a pew left behind by someone who had no respect for the sacred or perhaps on a bulletin board, left behind by someone who thought they could shroud opinion in the holy. Somehow the Sunday School photo-memory I have of this event includes the irate Christ using the cords on the backsides of the moneychangers themselves not only on the sheep and cattle. That may have more to do with remembrances of wooden-spoon theology in the home.
The Passover was near. This feast was a feast of the temporary, eaten on the run, heavenly house addresses written in blood that will stain but wash away, coats on, with staff in hand, backpacks in place, Nike's on the feet and done every year with food that will be consumed or burned.
And where did the cords come from ... the ties for animals, the velveteen roping like that used in banks and theaters to line up the crowds buying sheep ... the bathrobe sashes from a few left over shepherds from the Christmas pageant in Bethlehem? While both natures participate, is it more the divine or the human Jesus enraged or both? Or does the coinage of that question get you mad? In my private quest for new (and usually lesser and some better, should be suppressed) I AM's ... I am the good minority whip, a minority of one and only, destroyed.
Did the coin exchange involve Roman images impressed on their coinage that depicted their deities or Emperors-as god? Anything like finding a casino chip in the parish offering plate, which pile do you put it into the dime, nickel, quarter or where the silver dollars used to be? And who will sacrifice an hour to drive over and exchange deities.
It would interesting to compare and contrast the whipping of the Temple leeches and the whipping Christ receives at the hands of the guards in his passiontide. The Lord Christ has his battles and campaigns not against the legions or crowds but in the Temple, amid its cages, ropes, restraints and boxes of blood money. Jesus does not de-sword the centurion or whup up on the priests of Zeus and Diana but on those who sell holiness, hawk purity and trade in peace of soul in his own temple. And the legions and crowds, their front lines form at the cross where there appears little of value even to be given away.
Likewise one could balance the criticism of those who make the Father's house into a marketplace with the need, we often call relevancy, to take the Father's abiding into the marketplace. Should sacrifice be caged in the world of advertisement? Should offering be weighed by the standards of commerce? Should worship be ground for quick plattering and MacDonaldized tastes? Should we pray this Javelin pray hurled at heaven, “Houseclean how we temple you Lord?”
Watching the televised portrayal of the science fiction Dune series, I was reminded of a number of images that shadow in an often-antithetical fashion and allude to Christianity, namely that of Messiahship, the incarnation in the wormform, a prophet like the Baptist, the reversals of desert to garden back to desert. One of the oft-repeated litanies was the statement that ritual ruins. The Lenten Temple cleansings include some relatively benign customs like giving up chocolate, not forever of course and certainly not beyond the forty days and Sundays are not included, right? There are good and salutary cleansings like giving up smoking, especially if they go beyond forty l-ashes. But say, giving up all angry words. Somehow we know that probably there will be a number of failures within the forty to say nothing of the angry heart. The liturgy of the true Lent is written in wood, pain, piercing and that death that cleanses. "Destroy this temple .... " Is Good Friday in the bazaar, does the crucifixion take place at the bake sale?
Temple spring-cleaning is an interesting phenomenon. The Scriptures call our bodies the temples of the Holy Spirit. The whole world, universe, is the templing for God. We frequently speak like we can eradicate evil, that a concentrated or even consecrated attack against evil will quell it. What if the New Testament temple is larger than Solomon's or either one thereafter? We must demonize our enemies to make them sweepable. Politically we use the term "evil" with a facile ease. Evil finds its own way to level, to seep, and to leak out, often among what we deem good and necessary. Do we think for a minute that the bazaar tables were never again brought back to the consecrated courtyards? There was probably an Easter sale the next week or something like it.
This is not normally thought of a stewardship text but it is. Stewardship texts normally indicate what to do with money, this one speaks of what not to do with the goods of wealth, of how we offer and of the holiness of oblation. The temple walls will come down and the offering will take in all creation freed.
These are times of toppling temples, some overtly religious and others owned by our cultural and societal gods.
"Zeal for the Father's house," consumes Jesus. This house is the vine, the vineyard, the people, and the world that consumes Jesus. A new temple is being built, one that David could not even envision much less Solomon build. The foundations were laid in Mary's womb and the wood beams will be erected on the Jerusalem hillside somewhere near the city dump.
John 2. 13-22
Pastors (and presumably others) sometimes find things in church buildings that they would just as soon not be there, maybe on a pew left behind by someone who had no respect for the sacred or perhaps on a bulletin board, left behind by someone who thought they could shroud opinion in the holy. Somehow the Sunday School photo-memory I have of this event includes the irate Christ using the cords on the backsides of the moneychangers themselves not only on the sheep and cattle. That may have more to do with remembrances of wooden-spoon theology in the home.
The Passover was near. This feast was a feast of the temporary, eaten on the run, heavenly house addresses written in blood that will stain but wash away, coats on, with staff in hand, backpacks in place, Nike's on the feet and done every year with food that will be consumed or burned.
And where did the cords come from ... the ties for animals, the velveteen roping like that used in banks and theaters to line up the crowds buying sheep ... the bathrobe sashes from a few left over shepherds from the Christmas pageant in Bethlehem? While both natures participate, is it more the divine or the human Jesus enraged or both? Or does the coinage of that question get you mad? In my private quest for new (and usually lesser and some better, should be suppressed) I AM's ... I am the good minority whip, a minority of one and only, destroyed.
Did the coin exchange involve Roman images impressed on their coinage that depicted their deities or Emperors-as god? Anything like finding a casino chip in the parish offering plate, which pile do you put it into the dime, nickel, quarter or where the silver dollars used to be? And who will sacrifice an hour to drive over and exchange deities.
It would interesting to compare and contrast the whipping of the Temple leeches and the whipping Christ receives at the hands of the guards in his passiontide. The Lord Christ has his battles and campaigns not against the legions or crowds but in the Temple, amid its cages, ropes, restraints and boxes of blood money. Jesus does not de-sword the centurion or whup up on the priests of Zeus and Diana but on those who sell holiness, hawk purity and trade in peace of soul in his own temple. And the legions and crowds, their front lines form at the cross where there appears little of value even to be given away.
Likewise one could balance the criticism of those who make the Father's house into a marketplace with the need, we often call relevancy, to take the Father's abiding into the marketplace. Should sacrifice be caged in the world of advertisement? Should offering be weighed by the standards of commerce? Should worship be ground for quick plattering and MacDonaldized tastes? Should we pray this Javelin pray hurled at heaven, “Houseclean how we temple you Lord?”
Watching the televised portrayal of the science fiction Dune series, I was reminded of a number of images that shadow in an often-antithetical fashion and allude to Christianity, namely that of Messiahship, the incarnation in the wormform, a prophet like the Baptist, the reversals of desert to garden back to desert. One of the oft-repeated litanies was the statement that ritual ruins. The Lenten Temple cleansings include some relatively benign customs like giving up chocolate, not forever of course and certainly not beyond the forty days and Sundays are not included, right? There are good and salutary cleansings like giving up smoking, especially if they go beyond forty l-ashes. But say, giving up all angry words. Somehow we know that probably there will be a number of failures within the forty to say nothing of the angry heart. The liturgy of the true Lent is written in wood, pain, piercing and that death that cleanses. "Destroy this temple .... " Is Good Friday in the bazaar, does the crucifixion take place at the bake sale?
Temple spring-cleaning is an interesting phenomenon. The Scriptures call our bodies the temples of the Holy Spirit. The whole world, universe, is the templing for God. We frequently speak like we can eradicate evil, that a concentrated or even consecrated attack against evil will quell it. What if the New Testament temple is larger than Solomon's or either one thereafter? We must demonize our enemies to make them sweepable. Politically we use the term "evil" with a facile ease. Evil finds its own way to level, to seep, and to leak out, often among what we deem good and necessary. Do we think for a minute that the bazaar tables were never again brought back to the consecrated courtyards? There was probably an Easter sale the next week or something like it.
This is not normally thought of a stewardship text but it is. Stewardship texts normally indicate what to do with money, this one speaks of what not to do with the goods of wealth, of how we offer and of the holiness of oblation. The temple walls will come down and the offering will take in all creation freed.
These are times of toppling temples, some overtly religious and others owned by our cultural and societal gods.
"Zeal for the Father's house," consumes Jesus. This house is the vine, the vineyard, the people, and the world that consumes Jesus. A new temple is being built, one that David could not even envision much less Solomon build. The foundations were laid in Mary's womb and the wood beams will be erected on the Jerusalem hillside somewhere near the city dump.
Christ cleaned the Temple of its unclean, unholy mammon, animal dung, advertising voices and shouts of sales, the worship space was now wholly God's and then he was crucified in one of the dirtiest of Jerusalem places… the garbage dump shaped like a decayed skull.
Psalm 19
"Cleanse me from my secret faults." There are small shrines we erect to hide our commerce in sin.
1 Corinthians 1. 18-25 The stumbling block, the foolishness, the expensive sneakers, running shoes, dark mirror-polished wing tips or combat boots that that walk the way of death ... it is easy to trip on the loose shoelaces of holiness. In the presence of God, our temples are covered in weakness and our naked feet touch the earth from which we were formed.
An Evening Prayer Lord God you pull your glory over us as the darkness spreads from the horizon to the heavens. Help us to sleep in your praise and wake in your adoration. In Jesus, AMEN
Seasonal Prayer As Lent deepens and the dying becomes dense, untwist and unbarb all obstacles to prayer, through Jesus. AMEN
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