John 2:13-22 "Turning Tables"

When you think of Jesus, what picture comes to your mind? Perhaps it is the famous Warner Sallman face of Jesus that shows his grace so well. At my college, there was a picture that we all referred to as Surfer Jesus, as his hair seemed to be bleached fairly blond and he had a big smile on his face as he looked down on you with his arms open showing how cool he was. My grandmother had a picture of Jesus with the crown of thorns on his head in absolute pain on her wall next to her crucifix; she was a good Catholic. I also remember that when I was in the South Pacific when I was ten, I was shocked that some of the art portrayed Jesus with much darker skin than I was used to.

In the Saint John’s Bible, a new illuminated Bible that is being written by hand with original art, Jesus sometimes shows up without a face at all, a reminder that we should not put a face on Jesus but rather remember that he is God himself, too glorious for us to imagine.

Whatever picture of Jesus comes to your mind, my guess is that you probably see him either in some serene pose, perhaps as a shepherd caring for his flock or as a guide pointing the way for a man at the wheel of a ship, or in a moment of suffering such as how he was when he faced the cross.

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that your image of Jesus has him with a whip in one of his hands as he chases animals and people out of the temple, as he overturns tables where people are selling animals and converting money.

And yet, this is the way Jesus is portrayed in today’s scripture. He is a man on a mission, and he will not stand for his Father’s temple to be desecrated. He almost seems out of control. He perhaps seems a little fierce. Here we glimpse a side of Jesus we don’t see in other parts of the gospels. Here we see him acting in an almost violent way. Here we see him doing what needs to be done. Here we see him cleansing the temple. Perhaps we don’t want to know this Jesus after all. He’s a bit scary here, not necessarily someone that seems very safe. And yet we are seeing the true Jesus here, just as in other parts of the Bible. And we can learn much from him.

I. Jesus angry?

In high school and college, my friends and I would often turn to the story of Jesus casting the money changers out of the temple to discuss the issue of whether there could be such thing as righteous anger. Here is a story in the Bible where we seem to see Jesus lose control. Here is a story where Jesus becomes violent, and it is often associated with the idea of Jesus becoming angry because the temple, the house of the Lord, is being misused by God’s people. We used this scripture to explain that there is definitely such a thing as righteous anger and therefore we justified our own anger at things that we saw that were wrong with the world. We would say to each other that it is okay to get angry, after all didn’t Jesus?

But in focusing on this, Jesus’ anger, I think my friends and I missed the point about what Jesus was doing in the temple. When we look at this closer, we discover that Jesus wasn’t acting just out of a moment of anger. Instead, he was cleansing the temple. Instead, he was making it clean and pure. Instead, he was casting sin out of God’s house… something he is able to do for each of us as well.

This is not to say that anger cannot at times be godly. We see, particularly through the Old Testament, that God himself acts out of anger. But God’s anger is not one where he loses control and we can never use God’s righteous anger as an excuse for how we act out our own anger.

It is rare that something that happened in Jesus’ life and ministry gets reported in all four of the gospels. There are a few things that show up in all four, like the crucifixion and the resurrection or Jesus’ baptism. But many of the things that are important parts of Jesus’ ministry only show up in a couple of the gospels. One example of this is the Last Supper, which doesn’t show up in the gospel of John, instead we are treated to the foot washing. And yet, Jesus cleansing the temple is one of the acts of Jesus that shows up in all four gospels, well sort of…

Matthew, Mark and Luke talk about Jesus entering Jerusalem a week before he is crucified and making his way to the Temple where he chases the money collectors out of the Temple. This is something that happens in Jesus’ last week on this earth. It is something that directly leads to his own crucifixion as the teachers of the law and the high priests realize that Jesus is not to be controlled. Now the Gospel of John gives us a different sequence of events. In the Gospel of John, the temple is cleansed at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It happens when Jesus visits Jerusalem three years before his death. And it is one of the early things that we see Jesus do to show his authority. Now there are two possibilities here, one is that John is miss-remembering the sequence of events from Jesus’ life and writes about this happening much earlier in Jesus’ ministry than it really happened. I don’t tend to like that option. Out of all the gospel writers, John is the one who knew Jesus the best. He was the one who was one of the twelve who traveled with Jesus in his ministry. He was the one who was with Jesus from the beginning. Yes, it is believed that John’s own disciples, his own followers are the ones responsible for writing down the Gospel of John, but it is also believed that they were writing down the story as John had told it to them many times. No, there is another option that is much more probable. The other option is that Jesus cleansed out the temple twice in his ministry: once at the beginning and again at the end. This makes much more sense to me, it seems much more probable. But this also takes away a bit of the idea of Jesus cleansing out the temple solely from anger.

If Jesus cleansed the temple twice in his ministry, perhaps he wasn’t out of control as he did it. Instead, perhaps he was making a point to his disciples and to those who were in charge of the temple. And perhaps the point was very important, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to make it twice.

II. The Temple of the Lord

In today’s scripture Jesus specifically identifies his own body in connection with the temple. The disciples ask him by what authority he cleanses out the temple. They ask him how they can know that he is speaking for God. And he responds with a cryptic answer. He tells them that if the temple is destroyed, he will raise it again in three days. And then our narrator, John, steps in and explains what in the world it is that Jesus means with this cryptic saying. Our narrator tells us that Jesus isn’t really talking about the temple at all, rather he is talking about his own body. And he is talking about the fact that people will destroy his body and he will raise it again in three days. Jesus is predicting his own death and resurrection, something that will happen three years from this point in his ministry. He knew from the beginning what it was that he faced. Jesus is talking about the power of Easter.

But he is also hinting that what he does in the temple is not just about the temple. There is a deeper meaning to what Jesus does as he casts the moneychangers and the sheep and cattle out of the temple. They have taken God’s house and turned it into a market. They have taken a holy place and found a way to use it to their own ends.

Now there are other scriptures that I think we need to look at to better help us understand what Jesus is doing here. They are found in Paul’s writings. Two of these scriptures are found in 1 Corinthians. The first I want to look at is 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

Our bodies are temples of God. And we are to honor God with our bodies. Does Jesus need to cleanse out our temples? Does he need to come in and cast out our sinfulness so that our bodies are holy again? Does he need to take cords and make them into a whip so that he can push our sin out of our lives?

There is another scripture that also talks about the temple in interesting language, this is a couple chapters earlier in 1 Corinthians, chapter 3:16,17 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.”

This also is powerful and worth noting. Not only are our bodies temples to God, but we together as the people of Christ are also a temple. When you gather together a group of Christians, a holy thing is happening. When you gather together a group of Christ’s followers, a sacred space is created.

III. Cleansing

And yet we do not honor our gathering together as Christ’s followers as something that is sacred. We treat it so commonly, so trivially. We even allow things into our midst that have no place being in the house of the Lord. This is where we turn to God and ask him to cleanse us of our sin. This is where we ask him to come in and overturn our tables, not out of anger but rather to make our lives and our community into what he has created us to be. Perhaps the fierce Jesus is needed. Perhaps Jesus needs to come in with a whip to cleanse us out.

Jesus cleansed the temple. He took God’s house and made it right. He did it physically twice in his ministry, then he did it again on the cross. You see, on the cross he cleansed this world of its sin. Unfortunately, this world doesn’t always want to be clean.

We all have sins that separate us from the relationship that God wants with us. We all have things in our lives that keep us from the path that God has for us. The thing is that we are used to them. We don’t even realize they are there anymore. We don’t even see them as sin. They are just a part of our world. Like the Temple, we have tables of sin that have wandered into our lives and we don’t even realize that they shouldn’t be there. And once the sin takes hold it grows. I’m sure the tables in the temple started out small, but then they grew and grew and soon you had sheep and cattle and birds in a part of the temple where people were supposed to be worshipping. I’m sure worship wasn’t easy while you’re being distracted by cattle. This is the way it is with sin in our lives as well. We allow it to build up. It claims its place and grows and will not let go of us. And this keeps our relationships with God weak and superficial. The other stuff the stuff of this world takes roost in our own temples and keeps us from the one relationship that is really important. And the fact is that we are unable to get rid of these sins and distractions on our own. We barely notice them, and we are just not strong enough to remove them. I know people who try to do it themselves, and often they fail miserably.

But the good news is that we don’t need to do it on our own. For Jesus, fierce Jesus, with his whip made from cords, is there to cast out those things that need to be caste out. Let Jesus in your temple. Allow him to work in your life and free you from the things of this world that keep you from God. Let him cleanse you. Let him redirect you towards God.

I want to do something a little different today. I want to close with a prayer. And I want to invite you to pray along with me silently as we ask Jesus to cleanse us. Let us ask him to clear out our hearts so that our relationship with him can grow. Please pray with me:

Father, I have sin in my life which I am not strong enough to deal with. I try and I try to make myself a better Christian, a better person, and I continue to fail. Help me to give this up. Help me to turn my sins over to you. Come into my life with your whip and cleanse me out. Take those parts of my life that take me away from you and get rid of them. Fill me with your Spirit. Lord, you have the power to forgive and you have the power to change me. I ask that you do that very thing this morning; for me and for each person here, Amen.