1. Overturning the tables

The way of the cross in John

15 March 2009

John 2:12-21

Welcome to the Wesley Theatre, Sydney, as we begin in earnest our journey to the cross. Over the next five Sundays, we shall approach the Gospel of John as a window into the raised sense of drama which culminates in the death of Jesus Christ, followed by the amazing witness to resurrection.

John 2:12-21 reminds us that Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover, even though he lived such a distance from the city that meant he was not required to do so. In our study of Mark, we noticed that it was the custom of Jesus to attend the synagogue week-by-week. Jesus’ attendance at the Passover in Jerusalem was more than a custom that he observed; it was a definite choice to place himself under the dictates of Jewish law.

The scene that greeted Jesus at the Temple during this high festival is not one that he expected. Merchants were offering sacrificial animals for sale to Jews who had been required to leave the city and were now travelling long distances to make this annual pilgrimage. It was convenient for those people who didn’t want to bring animals on the journey to the temple site. Money changers accepted coinage from a large number of distant places and exchanged it for the special temple coins required to pay the appropriate taxes.

The reaction of Jesus has been described as ‘shockingly aggressive’. All four gospels tell the story of Jesus ‘cleansing’ the temple, but each of the Synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – place this powerful incident at the end of Jesus’ ministry, albeit still having a Passover backcloth. John introduces the account at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.

The reaction of Jesus is heightened by the use of ‘a whip of cords’, which is used to drive the crowd from the outer courtyard, though there is some discussion about the use of words in verse 15 as to whether Jesus is driving out the animals only – and merely turning over the tables.

In the Synoptics, the incident happens after he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. This came as an immediate contributory incident that would lead to his arrest. In John, it takes place at the outset of his public ministry, after the wedding in Cana and Jesus spending time with his family and disciples in preparation for what lay ahead.

The significance for us on our journey to the cross is reinforced by the fact that Jesus sets up question marks in people’s minds as to his authority to commit such an act. He also gives the signal that the destruction of the temple and its rebuilding in three days is an allusion to his death and resurrection.

Some people have used this incident as justification for personal anger, when in point of fact it has to be understood in relation to divine judgement against spiritual corruption, especially that of making the worship of God into a business enterprise.

So what are we to make of such an incident? Certainly it is an insight into the humanity of Jesus. Jesus was angry! – and definitely received anger back on many occasions.

Raymond Council captured the anger in Jesus’ life in a litany he wrote:
Lord, you were angry at Simon Peter
    and called him Satan,
Lord, you were angry at the super-religious
    and compared them to whitewashed tombs full of death,
Lord, you were angry at the moneylenders
    and overturned their tables,
Lord, you were angry at those who gave a scorpion
    calling it a fish and a stone calling it bread,
Lord, you were angry at all that keeps people
    separated, walled in, cut off and locked up,
Lord, you at whom the world was angry
    and who took upon yourself that rage,
    endured and transformed it through the cross.

As we have said, some people have used this incident in the ministry of Jesus as a justification for personal anger, almost by extension saying, ‘It’s OK for me to be angry as well.’ But it is worth concentrating the mind on the difference between what so often triggers our anger and what led Jesus to become angry. So often the vexation of people’s lives is about what happens to them, rather than the much wider concerns of Jesus.

I read the dreadful story of a truck driver near Grand Rapids in the USA. He became enraged because an 85 year old man manoeuvred his car in a way that aggravated the trucker. He watched as the car pulled into a gas station and so he pulled over to the side of the road and attacked the man out of sheer anger – an example of what we glibly call Road Rage.

The anger of Jesus was light years away from any of that kind of vexation. There is some clear advice in the Book of Psalms: ‘In your anger do not sin.’ (Psalm 4:4) It is also from the Book of Psalms that we take a lead this evening as we read that the disciples remembered:

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”
(John 2:17 from Psalm 69:9)

Be clear that your anger is focused on God-given priorities and not your own personal arguments in life

There are some people who regularly exhibit anger and it becomes the prevailing feature of their lives. Whenever there is any thought of them, it is always in relation to ‘outbursts, or violent actions’. This kind of anger is not only unacceptable, but totally incapable of being associated with the anger of Jesus in this passage in John’s gospel.

Part of the difficulty is that much anger becomes draining … and it funnels everything to a singular point in the mind. It can saturate our thinking and dominate our living. It can go further and lead to instability of personality and become a dangerous aspect of a person’s life. Benjamin Franklin was bang on when he observed, “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” We all have our moments of frustration and anger, but when a person is focused on God then those incidents, however real, are short-lived.

It has been said that anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. Let us then focus upon the God-centred reasons for Jesus’ anger:-

The temple claimed to be a place of worship, but became a context of dubious business practice

John places the incident into the context of the Passover festival, to which people were attracted from a wide geographical area. The temple was the central focus in this high moment. You can only begin to imagine the kind of shock waves that ran through the temple and the entire city of Jerusalem, when the controversial rabbi caused such a commotion. It is placed at the beginning of the feast, when all the excitement was caught up in the preparations – and it is at this point that the commercial opportunities were being used and abused.

Throughout his gospel, John shows that Jesus gives new shape and meaning to the worship life of the people of God.

Both the sellers of cattle, sheep and doves and the moneychangers rendered a very useful service to those who were visitors to Jerusalem for the Passover. It is not the selling in the temple that is wrong; but the way in which it abused those who were marginalised. Some have argued that they could have sold near to the temple entrance, rather than within – but I believe it misses the point to labour this matter unduly.

The temple was on a huge site of 35 acres and yet what Jesus did was focused in a quite specific place. The primary issue is not, therefore, that the merchants and moneychangers existed, but that they charged exorbitant prices for their service, and they did it in a way that disrupted Gentile worshippers in the only place in the temple open to them … ‘The Court of the Gentiles’.

Andreas J Köstenberger describes this as “insensitive at best and evidence of religious arrogance at worst”.

The incident opens up a conversation in ‘righteous indignation’

J Wallace Hamilton Ride contributes to this discussion when he writes, “Anger is not the opposite of love; often it is love’s clearest expression. How can we love people and stand by while they are wounded and exploited by selfish people … One of the most lamentable weaknesses of our generation lies in the lukewarmness of its love – the feebleness of its protests growing out of its lukewarmness. Monstrous evils thrive right under our noses, become entrenched in politics and custom, grow brazenly insolent to every plea for decency and justice because we who are Christians do not speak.”

Now this subject is not easy because there are some people who are big on sorting everyone out. You have to make your choices – and you literally cannot get involved in every issue. But beneath the surface there are some interesting things happening.

A Sunday school class made an unusual request. They asked that in church worship the prayer of confession be taken out of the order of service. They gave the following reasons:

Confessions imply that we are bad people.
Our children will get a negative image of themselves.
Guilt is damaging; we need to think positively.
Worship should always be uplifting and make us feel good.

This is not a million miles from the philosophy advocated in a book published many years ago: I’m OK, you’re OK. If that sentiment is true, then what are we doing here? Why are you sharing in our worship and seeking to come to terms with the reality of sin and selfishness that exists in our lives and in the world?

The authorities have no concept of the justice about which Jesus is concerned

Martin Marty once said that you can divide religious people into two groups. Not the Liberal and Conservative, not the Catholics and the Protestants, but the mean and the non-mean! It’s a tough thought, but true. The generosity of God is a thought of which we all need to reminded.

I believe we can take the example of Jesus here to show that the ritual and sacrifice of the temple would pass away; its days are now numbered and it would soon be obsolete. His coming signalled a new beginning.

The presence of God in Jesus marked this new beginning of God; the whole world will be the temple of God; and his new justice and righteousness would be declared to all people, including those beyond the confines of the Jewish religion.

Don't fritter away your anger on the trivial when there are larger matters to deal with

Kingsley Barrett comments on the pivotal role that the cleansing of the temple has in John: “The present passage occupies a position of great importance. After the section devoted to the calling of the disciples, in which the glory of Christ is foreshadowed (2:11), John begins to develop his main theme, that in Jesus the eternal purposes of God find their fulfillment.”

We do well to deal with anger in our own lives when it is all-consuming and turns the focus away from our centre on God. However, it is important to concentrate the mind upon the matter of Jesus’ anger which is much more to do with the concept of spiritual zeal. The spiritual aspect is so important, because:-

Spiritual zeal has its object in the purity of God

I make a careful distinction between anger in general and spiritual zeal: one is focused on ourselves – and the other points to its object in God. This is not to suggest that religious zeal cannot be misplaced, but rather that it can be an appropriate context for ‘anger without sin’.

Gerard Sloyan makes the point that John has situated Jesus, until now, only marginally in the religious life of his people:

He has confronted him first with the desert cousin, John the Baptist (1:19)
with the ritually observant Pharisees (1:24)
within family life at a wedding feast (2:1-11)
in a period of respite at his adopted home, Capernaum (2:12)

Jesus’ clash with the commerce of religion in the temple area at a major feast brings him right to the heart of the Jewish religion – and his concern for the purity of the religious life of the temple.

Spiritual zeal reacts strongly to spiritual abuse

Jesus saw the place of worship reduced to nothing more than a place of merchandise and corruption. The spiritual and the material became indistinguishable and the actions which abused the spiritual opportunity of those outside Judaism (ie the Gentiles) cause the deepest pain.

It was not possible to negotiate a settlement with regard to such abuse – and so action was required. The attitude to the Gentiles and the financial benefit that people were gaining for themselves on the back of others was not just a moral issue, but a spiritual abuse … it was a sign of how they were viewed before God.

Spiritual zeal sometimes needs to take strong action

Jesus expressed his zeal in a most dramatic and forceful way. This is certainly not a sign of weakness, but it is action that flows out of the spiritual purposes of God. His disciples must have been astounded at what they saw and the reactions they witnessed as Jesus cleared the temple court.

This is in stark contrast to so much of Jesus’ teaching. Where self was concerned, there needed to be a demonstration of generosity and love. We see it clearly in the Passion narrative. The difference here was that it was to do with the spiritual significance of the temple as a place of prayer (explained in the Synoptic Gospels) and the care that the Gentiles had the opportunity to worship unhindered.

The community of faith must be continually renewing and reforming

The reaction of ‘the Jews’ at the overturning of the tables was understandable. They wanted to know what right Jesus had to behave in this way and required that he should prove his credentials with some kind of sign. It is in response to this demand that he refers to the building of the temple. At this point in time, it had been about 46 years since the building began and it would be another 20 years before it was complete.

Jesus shattered his hearers by saying in effect that after all the work and its obvious splendour on the eye, it was irrelevant and he was showing a better way. The radical nature of all this would not be lost on his audience at the time … and for the early readers and participants in the gospel.

We make Lent an appropriate time for spiritual cleansing

Lent is such an important season in the Christian calendar and the call of God is to recognise the importance of repentance – that complete turn from what is wrong to find the new life in Christ. The words of the Old Testament prophet Joel still ring true: “Yet even now return to me with fasting, with weeping and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” (Joel 2:12)

The disciplines of Lent are prayer, fasting and giving to others – and Jesus explained how they are to be exercised (Matthew 6). This is a time for spiritual cleansing.

We must see our vision of Christian discipleship in the midst of a community and world in need of renewal and reform

The call of God is to see our faith as a time for renewing our lives in God’s presence, but it is also important to see the broader and wider context. The Gospel of John is held together by a series of ‘signs and narratives’ and, although this is not explicitly a sign, it is a ‘deed-word action’.

This incident in the ministry of Jesus points to the renewing and reforming role of the Christian community at mission

John’s motive for placing it at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus is important, unless we take the unlikely view that there were two cleansing incidents in the temple. Ralph Martin argues that “John’s own narrative suggests the close proximity of the Passion – cf. in particular Jesus saying about the destruction of the Temple.”

It has a distinct position in Lent and in the journey of the Christian community at the beginning of Holy Week.

As Jesus overturned the tables of those running their business in the temple courtyard, he identified the temple as ‘his Father’s house’. So much of our understanding of religion is invariably focused upon congregations as private domains … and there are ministers who act in the same way. We are reminded that the Christian context is always a God context.

During this season, we are presented the opportunity of spiritual and moral cleansing. After Jesus cleansed the temple, irate merchants demanded to know the credentials that enabled him to behave in such a way.

It is in this context that we read that Jesus responded to their request to know his authority: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” No doubt everyone thought of ‘the temple’ as being the magnificent stone edifice that surrounded them, but Jesus refers to himself.

We have just had the 2009 Oscar ceremony, but in 2000 a quite remarkable incident occurred. Crates containing 53 of the 55 statuettes were stolen from a loading dock in Southern California. They were discovered not long before the ceremony in some dustbins behind a 24 hour coin-operated launderette by a dumpster driver.

Will Fulgear, 61, who eked out a living salvaging and recycling garbage, was fishing through the rubbish at 9.30 at night. He made a surprising find – literally stumbling on the cache of gold-plated prizes.

Fulgear crammed the Oscar-filled boxes into the trunk of his car. He said he hadn’t heard that the Oscars were missing. He was questioned and then became eligible for a $50,000 reward, posted by Roadway Express. When he was asked what he would do with the reward, he said he wanted to move out of his one room apartment and help his son buy a house. He added, “Besides that, some of the Tinseltown types never even get a sniff of the Oscars and I’ve handled most of them.”

God meets us in the most unlikely of contexts – and in the most unlikely of people. At a place where we see the anger of Jesus displayed against what is wrong and unworthy of God, his anger becomes a pointer to us all of the way forward.

The overturning of the tables becomes the sign that God’s grace and love is available to all – and that the kingdom of God will be taken into the very heart of Jewish life.

Christian Life