Another text I do not believe I have ever preached. I enjoyed working on the sermon this week. It felt like a good sermon to me, but not a single comment from anyone leaving worship! Often, the sermons I like don't seem to be as well-received by the congregation.
“Dancing with Jesus: the Temple Slam”; Matthew 21: 12-17; July 16, 2023; SAPC, Denton; Dr. Richard B. Culp
Matthew 21: 12-17 12Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” 14The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. 15But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry 16and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” 17He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
Introduction: We continue with our Dancing with Jesus preaching series, although this morning’s dance does not seem like much of a dance to me.
Dancing to me is more like a waltz, or a two-step.
Dance reflects the chaos - Temple grounds chaos as the crows arrive for Passover;
the usual chaotic feel of a marketplace
Add to it the chaotic sense we might feel as we read about Jesus acting out in ways we would have not seen in other stories - Jesus seems to be throwing a bit of a temper tantrum.
challenges our normal rhythm
Move 1: A very important story
a. Found in all four gospels
1. This story is placed near the beginning of the Gospel of John.
2. Mark and Luke join with Matthews placing the story near the end, as part of Jesus’ movement to his crucifixion.
3. in the Gospel of John, Jesus has a whip - sort of an Indiana Jones approach, I suppose.
In the other gospels, Jesus just overturns the tables.
b. Matthew refers to temple using the Greek for the whole complex, not just the sanctuary part of the Temple where only the priests can go.
1. multiple buildings and courtyards.
2. Separate court areas for Jewish men, Jewish women, and Gentiles, plus the holy areas only the priests could enter.
2. Court of the Gentiles was the place where animals were sold for sacrifices and money was exchanged into the currency that was acceptable for gifts at the Temple.
3. Imagine the Passover crowd - maybe 300,000 to 400,000 people gathering in and around the Temple area
c. Jesus enters the temple area not as a priest with special privileges, but like any other Jew arriving for the high holy days.
1. Although, the religious authorities are watching Jesus;
listening to what he says.
2. They have heard the stories, and perhaps even watched Jesus in action.
3. they fear him, or perhaps they fear the ways the crowds respond to them.
ways over which they have no control.
4. Jesus arrives as a potential threat to their authority and the Temple system.
Move 2: the story shows the radical shift Jesus brings to the religious institution and practices in place.
a. The Temple will no longer be a marketplace.
1. Not just about selling or changing money but about dismantling the structure in place.
2. Jesus enters the temple and finds what one would expect during a pilgrimage festival. The vital trades are in place for the necessary exchange of monies, animals, and grains for the required sacrifices. Nothing is out of order at this point.
3. Except this pattern is not acceptable to Jesus.
4. In the Gospel of John, Jesus, clearly takes on the marketplace role of the Temple as he cries out: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” (for detailed analysis see https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-213-22-3; Karoline Lewis)
4. In Matthew, we notice that Jesus drives out the sellers and the buyers - not just a comment on those selling, but on the whole system in place and the patterns governing Temple worship.
c. Jesus also pushes back on the way the Temple institution has been involved in the practices of injustice.
1. We know that a good deal of money was stored at the temple, where it could be loaned by the wealthy to the poor who were in danger of losing their land to debt. The Temple establishment therefore co-operated with the aristocracy in the exploitation of the poor.
2. The rich get richer as the Temple resources are used to enable injustice rather than proclaim and live out the justice to which God calls us.
4. No surprise, that One of the first acts of the First Jewish-Roman War was the burning of the debt records in the archives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple#:~:text=The%20narrative%20occurs%20near%20the,includes%20more%20than%20one%20Passover.)
c. When Jesus uses the phrase “den of robbers,” he is also calling attention to another Temple abuse - using the Temple to avoid consequences for unjust actions.
1. the phrase comes from the Prophet Jeremiah (7: 1-11), who refers to the Temple as a place where those who have mistreated and unjustly taken advantage of others can come hide.
2. Again, the Temple is being used in ways that do not reflect the justice and mercy to which God calls us.
c. Jesus' righteous anger in the Temple demands rethinking the whole Temple system
1. some biblical scholars note that Jesus’ actions would have been a drop in the bucket to the whole Temple system.
2. But, Jesus has pointed out where the institution of the Temple has failed and announced a new way.
3. In Matthew, this becomes the tipping point, the moment when the religious authorities decide Jesus must be dealt with, a decision that leads to his crucifixion.
d. In this story, we recognize our call to point out the injustices in the world and demand change.
1. Even if it means the hard work of dismantling the very systems of which we are part.
2. it is not enough to look at our world and say “Wow, things don’t look so good, but the problem is so big there is nothing I can do about it.”
3. If Jesus can overturn tables in the Temple and demand change, so should we!
This story is a story about demanding change in the world.
Move 3: A Story about finding God.
a. this story asks a fundament question - do we only find God in the Temple, or do we find God in other places?
1. Is the Temple even necessary?
2. This question, of course, has been asked in previous generations by those Israelites who saw their temple destroyed by the conquerors and found themselves exiled away from the Temple.
3. Some of the first readers of the gospel of Matthew probably lived after the destruction of the Temple in the first century.
4. Can they follow God if the Temple is no longer there and they cannot pilgrimage to the Temple?
b. I am reminded of C. S. Lewis’ third book of his Narnia series, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, which provides a wonderful illustration of what I’m talking about. If you remember, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the four Penvensie children travel from war-torn London to Narnia and there meet the great lion (and Christ-figure), Aslan, and with his help defeat the White Witch who holds Narnia captive in a perpetual winter.
In the second book, the children travel back to assist Prince Caspian in obtaining his rightful throne, and at the end of that book Aslan tells the two older children, Peter and Susan, that they will not return to Narnia.
Now, at the end of the third book, Aslan meets Lucy and Edmund at the edge of the Eastern Sea and tells them the same, that this will be their last trip to Narnia.
Lucy is distraught at the prospect of not seeing the beloved lion again, but he reassures her that she will see him in her own world. When she is surprised that Aslan is present in her world, he tells her that the whole reason for bringing her to Narnia for a time was so that, coming to know him well here, she would recognize him more easily there (https://www.davidlose.net/2015/03/lent-3-b-igniting-centrifugal-force/; David Lose)
1. We who follow Christ, who know what he taught and how he lived,
We who are led by the Holy Spirit;
We can see God at work in the world.
2. We can point out to others where God is at work.
3. We can hear God’s call to do God’s work in the world.
4. Jesus takes issue with the Temple when its practices no longer reveal God to the world and no longer live into its calling to be God’s presence in the world.
Conclusion: did you notice what Jesus does immediately following the overturning of the tables?
he cured the blind and the lame.
Jesus will be at work - pointing out injustice, showing God’s mercy,
Will we join him?
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