Take these things out of here!

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent (March 3, 2024) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.

6th-Century depiction of the Cleansing of the Temple.

from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN: https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56497

Listen:

Like what you hear? You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In the temple Jesus 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!” from John 2:13-22

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

When you think of Jesus, what are some of the qualities, emotions and attitudes that you're most likely to attribute to Jesus?

Let me tell on myself. When I think of Jesus, I think about peacefulness, kindness, calmness. These might be things that I long for, for myself, and I project them onto Jesus, and that becomes my image of who Jesus is.

Someone wise said to me this week, if you're reading the Gospels and Jesus does something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you probably want to pay closer attention to that thing that Jesus is doing.

And for me, the image of Jesus in the Temple, putting together a cord to whip animals—Jesus pushing tables over—Jesus scattering the coins and making a mess—I'm clutching my pearls! Jesus! Oh my! What are you doing?

It's not consistent for me with my aspirational Jesus: unflappable, peaceful. This Jesus is noisy!

And while the text doesn't tell us Jesus is angry, we infer it. I will sometimes refer people to this story when they tell me they're feeling bad for feeling angry. Sometimes people think, "I shouldn't feel angry." Or, "I shouldn't be angry at God." And I say, Jesus was angry! Look how mad he got. He was shoving tables and hitting animals!

Jesus, being incarnate, experiences a full range of human experience, including anger, including that sort of righteousness that says, this is not right. What we do with our anger we are responsible for, but anger can be a sign. It's like a little headline that says, "something's not right here."

So when we have the feeling of anger, we might say, what here is not right?What injustice, what issue, what's unfair? Anger can point us to see that things are not as they ought to be.

Nevertheless, for me, this Jesus is not the Jesus that makes me feel most comfortable. So let's pay attention, especially if that's for you too. Let's pay attention to what Jesus is doing here today.

Now, as I was thinking about this Jesus who's making a whip, this Jesus who's pushing tables, this Jesus who's shouting at people, I'm remembering when we were still searching for our next bishop of New York, and we had a panel with the four candidates for bishop. The candidates were asked how they would respond to sexual misconduct in the church—to sexual abuse.

One candidate reminded us that bishops carry a crozier. Do we all know what a crozier is? It looks like a big shepherd's hook. It's one of the signs of the office of bishop.

It reminds us that a bishop is a shepherd, a pastor to all the people of their diocese. And we might know that a shepherd uses that crook to guide: to hook a sheep back when it's wandering away, to herd the sheep in the right direction, to keep everybody together and keep them moving where they've got to go.

But this candidate reminded us that there's another function of that crook: to knock away what would hurt the sheep. So if a wolf or a dog comes to attack, the shepherd has to get out and stand in front and use that staff to send away, to hit away what would assault and hurt the sheep. And in the same way, this candidate for Bishop of New York said, it's the bishop's call to get out in front. And when God's people are in harm's way, it's the job of the bishop to put up the boundaries, to take the actions that protect and defend the people of God.

I kept thinking about that image of a bishop protecting and defending as I thought about Jesus in the Temple. Because what Jesus is doing in the temple is not anger for anger's sake. It's not violence for violence's sake. It's not turning over tables for the sake of making a scene. It has a purpose. The purpose of Jesus' action today is to protect the people of God, to defend the people of God and to clear away what would halt harm or assault the people of God.

Think about our prayer that we said at the beginning of the service. "Defend us, God, from all assaults of our enemies." "We have no power in ourselves to help ourselves."

We have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, so we ask God to defend us from everything that might "assault and hurt the body" and "every evil thought that would assault and hurt the soul."

So we have this image of God as the protector, the defender who fends off, who keeps away or clears away whatever would hurt us, whatever would harm us, whatever would assault us.

Jesus uses this image of a Temple being destroyed and rebuilt. And the author of John's Gospel explains to us, "he was speaking of the temple of his body." So Jesus is talking about rebuilding, renewing the temple of a body. In Bible study this week, we were remembering that St. Paul writes, in his first letter to the Corinthians, about our own bodies as a temple. He writes, "Do you not know that you are God's temple, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you?"

Jesus, who is God incarnate, speaks of himself as a temple so that we know that God dwells not just in a temple building or a church building, but that God is present in Jesus and God is present with us too and in us.

And when St. Paul says, do you not know that you are God's temple and God's holy Spirit dwells in you, he's asking, so how are you going to treat the temple? How are we going to care for this body, this mind, the spirit that God has given us, that God has filled with God's presence?

And sometimes we find that this temple meant to be a place where God dwells, gets crowded, gets full with things that are harmful and hurtful.

When Jesus comes into the physical Temple, maybe he is expecting to be in a place where he can experience the presence of God and his followers can experience the presence of God, and all the people can experience the presence of God. And instead, the whole place is full of sheep and oxen and cattle and doves and tables and money. There's no room! There's no room!

And all these things that are in the Temple... they are meant to serve the people's relationship with God, they're meant to help the people connect with the presence of God in the holy place. But they've crowded in and lost their original purpose. They're getting in the way, not showing the way.

And into this comes Jesus, saying, We've got to make some room. We've got to clear out! And so he drives away the animals, he opens the cages and lets the doves go. He pushes the tables over.

And I know it sounds messy, but when he's done, there's some room, there's some space to breathe, and he has pushed away what was crowding in. He's pushed away, driven away, what was coming into harm.

Have you ever tried to meditate? Maybe you have been coming to Centering Prayer on Tuesday night.

when we sit still and try to quiet our minds, be open to the presence of God, is that the whole world comes crowding in. Right? So I'm here to be silent, to attend to God's presence, but... I must not forget to go to the grocery store and buy milk! The banal comes creeping in. Or we start replaying a conversation we had last week and before we've know it we've come up with a really good comeback... Oh, right, I'm supposed to be in the presence of God. Or maybe voices are crowding and saying, you're not good enough. Why did you do that last week? We start cringing. We hear voices that are criticizing, tearing at us.

This is what it's like to be God's Temple. This is what it's like, is to find ourselves ready to be filled with the presence of God, and instead to find the innumerable banalities of everyday life are all those things that would harm and assault our spirits and our hearts and our souls just crowding in.

And if we've had that experience, we then know the truth of the prayer, which says, God, "we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves."

I cannot control what comes crowding into my mind from one moment to the next. But I can call upon and remember that presence of Jesus who is there to stand in front and to drive away what crowds in to harm me.

That is the power of God. We have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, but we are filled with the power of God to defend us from what would hurt and destroy us.

So the invitation this week is to ask ourselves, what is crowding in to my heart, my soul, my life that would harm me or hurt me or distract me?

See if this temple is getting crowded.

And if you do, then remember the power of God, to protect you, to defend you from everything, every thought, every situation that would seek to hurt and harm you, to preserve your life, to preserve your spirit, and to preserve you as the temple of God. Amen.