As I was preparing this sermon, this question came up. What are we doing here?

I love this question. I love when you can emphasize different words and it changes the intent just a little bit. I hope you heard that as I went through that list. That was intentional. But I also want you to pause and think about that question. We’re going to come back to it at the end so you have some time.

Although this question does not appear in the scriptures, I think it is a question that would have been within the Israelites and Moses in the wilderness who received the Ten Commandments.

The Israelites in the wilderness, they were the same people that were complaining because there was no food and they were complaining because there was no water. Asking, what are we doing here?

I also think it was a question that could have been on the minds of the disciples when Jesus walks into the temple and creates a scene. What are we doing here? What is going on? This is not the Jesus we’ve just been with everywhere else. So what is different?

I think the answer is in context. Context matters. So I’m going to give you some context for around this.

The way my brain works, I went to Paul’s scripture in 1 Corinthians. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” – 1 Corinthians 6:19. Now you might be wondering, how in the world did she get to Paul? Well, it’s this idea of being a body as a temple that we hear Jesus talk about; and you’re going, yeah, but this is Paul.

Well, there’s two things to remember when you read the Bible. One is that none of this was written down by a journalist making a news story. It was all written later. The second thing is that they’re not put together in chronological order either. They’re not put together to tell a story about God’s interaction with humanity. But they’re not put together in a way that it actually happened.

Paul’s writing of 1 Corinthians is actually older than the Gospels. Paul wrote this in 54 A.D, and the first Gospel written was Mark in about 70 A.D. This is also significant because in 70 A.D, the Roman Empire desecrated or raised the temple of Jerusalem, so that there was no more temple. Which created this issue again for the people. If there is no temple, where is God? Because they had been teaching throughout the whole Bible that God is in the temple. Even with the Israelites that had received the Ten Commandments, God is with the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant is in the temple. It’s in the holy of Holies. That’s where God is, supposedly.

This idea of our body as a spirit, our body as a temple is playing out in our society right now. Evangelicals hold this up as one of their very important scriptures, that our body is a temple. I learned that when I was an evangelical for a bit during college.

We have something to learn about that. We don’t think about and we don’t talk about how our body is a temple for God. We could. We could get better at that. But they (Evangelicals) believe that and so they want to create laws that control what we do with our bodies. That’s why I stepped over.

So think about that and where we are in today’s society. That’s what’s going on.

Now, back over where Jesus is going to say his body is a temple for God in the scripture.

That’s significant. We need to know about where is God? Jesus’s answer is, he is the temple. He doesn’t come right out and say that. That’s what John’s message is. John’s writing in the 80s and 90s, so he’s writing much later.

Have I totally confused you by now? What I want you to notice is that there’s two things that are different about this version of Jesus cleansing the temple. This version, this story, is in all four Gospels. In the three synoptic Gospels; Matthew, Mark, & Luke. Mark would have been written first. Matthew and Luke used Mark to write their version. Jesus comes in, upsets everything, and says, “Don’t make my father’s house a marketplace. It’s a house of prayer.”

It’s not what he said in John. John changes it in two ways. One way, in John he brings a whip of cords that would be made out of leather. He does not, there’s no mention of that in the others. And he goes on to talk about taking down the temple and raising it in three days.

So in John’s gospel, John is giving us what they call a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen to Jesus. I think the whip is a foreshadowing of the beating that Jesus gets. Although I think it’s very important to remember that when we read John’s version of this, even though it says he made a whip, and took it, it does not talk about him hurting anyone. It says that the animals left, the animals moved, so there was a scare factor, or a fear. But it doesn’t say anything about any animals or humans being hurt. Which is very different from Jesus’ experience later with the Romans. The other piece is this idea of, I’m going to raise the temple in three days. What’s Jesus’ issue with the temple?

I’ve had members of this congregation look at me and say we can’t sell things in the narthex or we are making this house of prayer into a marketplace.

That’s not an accurate reading of this because context matters. They were selling things and it was expected that they would be selling things. Especially because Passover’s coming. A month before Passover to 26 days after Passover, Jews were expected to go to the temple and pay their temple tax. Now, most people carried Roman money, which had on the face of it, Caesar’s head and the inscription, Augustus Caesar, son of God, because that’s who Caesar thought he was,

That would have been creating another god besides the true God. So one had to change their money, and they came from all over so they could have also had other money. But they had to change it for temple currency because the temple only received temple currency which did not have an engraving image on it and no other son of God. There was only one, the one true God.

The money changers were always there during this time of year and there were always animals being sold there. Because, again, the laws were that you needed an animal that was pure. You didn’t want to bring one from home that could have been raised by your pagan neighbor. You went to the temple and you brought your animal for sacrifice and you knew it was already clean. All of this was normal.

What wasn’t normal was the fact that the temple had already been desecrated by Herod.

At this point, Herod had put engraved images on the temple. He had done things to desecrate it.

Jesus’s point is God’s not really in here anyway. The God you’re looking for was with John in the Jordan and is with me. That’s John’s version. Remember John has a very different Christ, too. John has put this at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

Normally, Matthew, Mark and Luke put this, when Jesus enters Jerusalem after the fanfare of the palms and we know where he’s going. He knows he’s headed for a confrontation with the chief priest.

But here in the second chapter, all he’s done was gone through the baptism, the wilderness, and he just changed. The thing he just did was gone to a wedding with his mother. Where his mother convinced him to make water into wine. Putting it all out there. Right up front. Come on, honey. Just, just give him some more wine. Just one little miracle here.

I talk about John’s Jesus as being large and in charge. This is the Jesus that gives us all the I am sayings. Which we don’t see in the other gospels.

This Jesus comes to make a point. His point is, you’re doing it all wrong.

Here in the temple. You’ve missed it. You didn’t understand what John was doing in the desert, and now I’ve come, and I am.

So, what are you doing here? What are we doing here? Why do we come together?

Our house isn’t big enough for everybody. Isn’t that wonderful? Because this is the biggest space we’ve got forever to welcome everybody in. Because we want to have a table that’s big enough for everyone.

I love the fact that we do Intinction or even when we did Pew Communion, because everybody gets served. The table is bigger than this. If we all came up and just stood around this, not everybody would be at the table. Our point is, there’s always room at the table. Because everybody’s invited to the table.

Well, here’s how I saw it going. I wonder if we come, because it’s the crowd in this scripture that asks Jesus for a sign. Now that’s a theme in John’s gospel too, that they keep asking for signs. There are signs throughout John’s gospel of who Jesus is. But the people want a sign. I think we want a sign too.

I think we are looking, we come because we want to sign that this is true. That this Jesus is worthy of our devotion. He’s worthy of following. That he has the answers we seek.

I think we come looking for answers. I think that we want to sign that in the midst of all of our fears, God’s got this. That there is something there. God is working for good in the world, even though when we read the news, it’s not there.

I think we come looking to hear that in spite of our frailties and our failures, we are still loved and forgiven. We need to be reminded of that, because the world does not make us feel loved and forgiven.

We come together to remind each other to remember together and to invite others in because I am here to say…

“We are loved and forgiven.”

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