Third Sunday in Lent

“All Authority in heaven and on earth to save our Souls”

St. Paul and Christ Lutheran Churches

Cortland & Interlaken, NY

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

13  The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14  In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins  of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple,[a ] and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Jesus Knows What Is in Man

23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew  all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

        The message is based on the Gospel reading from John 2, where Jesus chased the money  changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem.  But first a story...

        A church had assembled a committee to consider plans for the construction of a new sanctuary.  The church was a relatively new.  So new, in fact, that they had been meeting in rented space up to this point.  God had blessed them though with growth in numbers, so much so that they could no longer comfortably use the rented space. 

        When the building committee got together each person gave their perspective on what type of building should be constructed for the congregation's future home.  As one would expect, there were a number of different opinions  on the subject, ranging from an expansive, Gothic style building, to a low-slung ceiling, multi-use facility.  Each person, of course, had their rationale for the type of building they wanted to see constructed. 

        One of the members said, “I want to be able to walk into the space and feel significant to God, even important.  I want to be able to hold my head up high.”  In some ways, he added, I want a worship space that makes me feel at home."

        Now, this member's comment about how we feel in worship is significant. Yet, I also believe it shows a problem that we've begun to encounter in the our church, it's a byproduct of our modern culture.  Whether it's architecture, the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, or, simply general decorum, we have lost, a healthy, Biblical concept of sacred things.  We've also lost a healthy respect for the Almighty, for the grandeur and the majesty of God – and the authority in heaven and on earth to save souls.

        Each of us have our own view of what Christian worship should be like, what kind of hymns we should sing.  The unfortunate aspect of Christian Worship these days is that it has become a consumer driven product, even our traditional forms of worship.   The average church goer “shops” around for a contemporary service, the traditional service, or the blended service. 

        We have lost a Biblical concept of the sacred and divine.  After-all, the Christian Mass, or, the Divine Service as Protestants cal it, shouldn't be a reflection of US, of OUR likes and dislikes.  Rather, it should be a reflection of the Divine, the One who descends to us in Word and Sacrament to serve us, His forlorn, embattled and weary soldiers of the cross.  In other words, the Divine Service should and must be Christ-centered, himself being at the center of everything that happens in the sanctuary. 

        The sanctuary, after-all, is a PLACE of SANCTUARY.  Thus, here, in this place, we are given sanctuary from the ordinary, the common, things of this world.  Here we find an oasis of unchanging truth, even unchanging form.  Here we are recipients of pure grace, for here we are served by Jesus. He said, "I did not come to be served but to serve and to give My life as a ransom for many." 

        The money changers that Jesus drove from the Temple interjected the common, the ordinary into sacred space.  On the Sabbath, there were animals to be sold for sacrifice and there was a great deal of money to be made.  The Temple tradition even provided for the sale of such sacrifices in particular areas on the Temple grounds.  After-all, the Law demanded that people offer a sacrifice.  The sellers of animals served a valuable purpose at the Temple. 

        The Temple proper though, was sacred space.  It was intended to reflect the Divine.  As God had said to His people long before, the Temple was the place where He would meet with them, at the mercy seat, atop the Ark of the Covenant, behind the curtain that marked off the rest of the Temple from the place called "the holy of holies."  From that space would flow the blood of unnumbered sacrifices, each one pointing the Israelites to the final sacrifice, the Lamb that God, whom God Himself would provide, the One who would be wounded for our transgressions and pierced for iniquities, whose stripes would heal us of the disease of sin.

        The money changers had overstepped their bounds and interjected the profane into the Divine and thus they defamed the Temple.  Jesus defended that sacred space, His Father's house of prayer, by turning over the tables of the money changers and driving them out of the Temple with a whip of cords. 

        That said, we, have no license to obscure the Gospel and the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, nor do we have license to take the sacred out of our sacred space in order to compete for would be church shoppers.

        Again, in the Old Testament and early into the New, God met with His people in the Temple at the mercy seat.  Certainly, His meeting with His people there involved ritual, but it also involved a breaching of the ordinary with the Divine.  Today He has endowed the church with extra-ordinary marks of His presence, those marks being His Word, rightly divided between Law and Gospel, and His Sacraments administered according to that Word. 

        Those marks define our church and to degree that they are done on Sunday morning during the Divine Service, the sacred things of God are handled with reverence and awe, and our souls, weak and fickle as they are, are fed in such a way that we are endowed by our Creator and Redeemer with the faith we need to persevere in a world that is relentless in its denial of the sacred. 

        God preserve and keep us in His church.  His kingdom, which has no end is promised for you and I.  The proof of his authority?  Miracles, healing, and of course, the willing sacrifice of body and blood on the cross.  He arose from the dead to deliver his message of warning and comfort today.  Pray for faithfulness to keep his word and Worship daily.