TEMPLE UPSIDEDOWN
John 2:13-22; I Corinthians 1:18-25
The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."
Today, I want to look at the "unexpressed text" in our passage from John—a familiar passage to many, especially since it covers an event that is recorded in all four gospels. This story is always taught in Sunday School, probably because it is very dramatic. It also challenges our stereotypical characterization of Jesus as always being kind, good, and soft-spoken; and it involves a lot of yelling and running, as well as imperfect people running afoul of the perfect Christ.
Bear with me as we go deeper into the text, to what I see as an underlying human condition that leads people astray, a condition that we can learn to counteract through a proper perspective of God’s divine authority and Christ’s sacrifice for our sin.
There are three features of John’s report of the cleansing of the Temple that do not all appear in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These features are the presence of oxen and sheep inside the Temple precinct; the making of a whip; and the prophetic words of Jesus in v 19.
There are no Jewish historical texts that mention animals in the Temple. Knowing what we know about animals and the call of nature, the reason they were not allowed within the Temple is more than obvious.
No weapons were allowed inside the Temple, so the best guestimate is that Jesus grabbed the bulrushes (used for bedding for the animals who were not supposed to be there) and made a whip out of those. Today’s crime scene investigators might call the bulrushes a "weapon of opportunity."
It also appears as if Jesus drove out the merchants as if they were animals. However, none can imagine that Jesus would resort to violence in order to make a point. He preferred preaching parables to wielding weapons.
The third unique feature of John’s record is verse 19: "Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews pounce on his words at that moment and also bring it up at his trial, distorting the meaning into little more than sorcery.
How had the sacred Temple at Passover time deteriorated from a holy house of prayer, reverence and worship into a bellowing barnyard of cheating, money changing, out-right thievery? Enter the human condition of slowly, unnoticeably, imperceptibly forgetting our good intentions. What starts out as a righteous reason for a noble action can deteriorate over time into a pointless practice or, as in the case of the Temple merchants, an occasion for what might be called "sanctioned sin."
How did the chosen people of God corrode into the self-chosen people of God? The same way any of us does, by forgetting our purpose, our call, our reason for being; by losing sight of our right-side-up selves that God created us to be; by living as though we grant God his power and his wisdom.
When we forget whose we are, major correction is necessary. We need to be turned upside down, perhaps (figuratively or literally) dropped on our heads so that we start using our hearts for God.
If any believer allows the safety of human intellect to inform the ways our "business" of faith is conducted, then believers have forgotten who is in charge.
It is time to remember well the words of Paul in I Corinthians: "The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" (v 25).
Look at the merchants in the Temple: the services they provided could very well have started out as a helpful means of providing a convenient way for the pilgrims to enter the Temple. The services of the Merchants provided the faithful the necessary elements to fulfill their holy obligations. The best animals for their sacrifices and the right coinage for their Temple taxes were made easily available, what could be so bad about that?
Somewhere along the line, perhaps through the passage of time, the merchants’ motivations oozed into desires for personal gain under the guise of business transactions, and it was in this meandering metamorphosis that sin silently replaced sanctuary.
"Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!" Jesus was angry, incensed. Nothing less than turning the temple upside down would achieve total cleansing. This was not an occasion for a parable.
John does not relate this event as a reason to kill the Church, nor is it an attack upon all our rites, customs and designated holy places, but upon our tendency to elevate these things to positions of higher holiness than we ascribe to God.
We tend to give these places and customs the worship and devotion that belongs to God, and God alone.
When we love things that cannot love us back, we misplace our love. When we present Christ-like attitudes to achieve personal gain, we abuse our Lord. When we define God within our own terms, we confine our hope to the weakened structures of a fallen world. Salvation means little more than satisfying human ideology.
Through God’s gift of Jesus Christ to the world, we have been given the presence of the highest love, the model of the deepest commitment, and the grace of the finest forgiveness.
Turning the temple upside down is the best way to turn Christians right side up for the journey with Christ to the cross on Calvary hill and the salvation joy of resurrection morning—proving Jesus’ words to be true: the temple destroyed and rebuilt in three days. Amen.
3/15/2009//1st Parish Fed Church, S Berwick, ME/Rev DL Muise
March 15, 2009
March 01, 2009
Spirits in Prison
SPIRITS IN PRISON
Mark 1: 9-12; 1 Peter 3:18-22
At once, the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by Satan.
Let’s get right to it: Christ requires, not simply desires, disciples who are willing to confront, not simply face, the wilderness.
The wilderness can make or break a Christian for any number of reasons—Mark mentions a few trappings in verse 12: he was in the wilderness 40 DAYS; he was being tempted by SATAN; and he was with the WILD BEASTS and ANGELS attended him.
FORTY DAYS in bible language means an extraordinary long time. What can we take from a very long time outside of our safety or comfort zones? Perseverance? Trust? Patience? The art of Solitude? Yes, these, but something more.
TEMPTED BY SATAN: Why was Jesus DRIVEN, even THROWN, into the Wilderness just after that beautiful moment at the Jordan? To teach us how to respond, with scripture, when tempted? To encourage us to not fear the wilderness journey of discipleship? To face our own temptations and wild beasts? Yes, these, but also something more.
WILD BEASTS in Jesus’ day constituted boars, jackals, wolves, foxes, leopards and hyenas. Angels are the messengers of God. What a juxtaposition of forces—wild beasts and angels—all around Jesus. One group could tear him apart and the other could put him back together again. How should we understand the presence of each?
To remind us of the hostile nature of the wilderness? To accentuate Jesus’ vulnerability as a human? To impress upon us his ability to deal with both the beast and the angel? Yes, these, and also something more.
What is the something more we are to learn today? Let’s look at 1 Peter 3:18. "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."
Every move he made, every word he spoke, every prayer he prayed, Jesus did all of it in accordance with his mission to bring each person back into relationship with God.
There are no forgotten children of God: no one too sick, too bad, too dirty, too haughty, too ignorant, too intelligent, too beast-like, to be reached, to be healed, to be made whole, to be suffered for, to die for, to rise for. Yes, Jesus did all of these for us, and even more.
"He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. [And] In that state, he went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison…"
The wilderness season of Lent is an appropriate time to examine how our spirits are imprisoned.
We live as free individuals. We make our own choices and decisions about everything, yet when it comes to our faith, many of us own imprisoned spirits.
We settle for something less than angels but more than wild beasts. We are willing to endure ten days, but not a full forty. We stop short of the full commitment; we stop short of the cross, and that is why our spirits remain in prison.
Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I am saying to each of us that the unexamined faith is hardly worth having.
When Socrates spoke of the unexamined life, he was on trial for heresy. He was encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves.
The sentence was death but Socrates had the option of suggesting an alternative punishment. He could have chosen life in prison or exile, and would likely have avoided death.But Socrates believed that these alternatives would rob him of the only thing that made life useful: Examining the world around him and discussing how to make the world a better place. Without his "examined life" there was no point in living.
So he suggested that Athens reward him for his service to society. The result, of course, is that they had no alternative and were forced to vote for a punishment of death. "The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living" by Karl W. Palachuk
Our challenge as we begin this Lenten journey is to free our spirits—not for our own gain, of course, but for God’s glory.
The something more that we can receive through our walk with Jesus Christ is a strength like no other—the strength of the Spirit to not only throw us into the wildernesses of our lives but also to bring us out victorious. Let’s get right to it:
Jesus defeated Satan.
He faced the wild beasts.
He endured the entire journey
He emerged to fulfill his mission.
He was obedient unto God, even to the point of death.
He sits at the right hand of God—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
When Christians in obedience to Christ gather in churches as one body, they have the strength of wild beasts and angels; they have the fortitude to not merely to persevere but to PREVAIL.
Know this, the Church, any church, our church, cannot prevail without the loving commitment to go to the cross with Christ. On the other side of the cross is resurrection, reconciliation, redemption…and an invitation to the greatest banquet our hearts will ever feed upon.
At Christ’s table, the gates of heaven open wide: the imprisoned spirits are set free…free, for what? To pledge with a clear conscience our faith in God who will find us in any wilderness, from the deep woods of Oregon in THE SHACK to the shores of coastal Maine.
The Lord knows where we are. Shall we keep our spirits in prison, or shall we go out to meet him and receive something so much more? Amen.
March 1, 2009
First Parish Federated Church, S Berwick, ME
The Reverend Donna Lee Muise, Pastor
Mark 1: 9-12; 1 Peter 3:18-22
At once, the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by Satan.
Let’s get right to it: Christ requires, not simply desires, disciples who are willing to confront, not simply face, the wilderness.
The wilderness can make or break a Christian for any number of reasons—Mark mentions a few trappings in verse 12: he was in the wilderness 40 DAYS; he was being tempted by SATAN; and he was with the WILD BEASTS and ANGELS attended him.
FORTY DAYS in bible language means an extraordinary long time. What can we take from a very long time outside of our safety or comfort zones? Perseverance? Trust? Patience? The art of Solitude? Yes, these, but something more.
TEMPTED BY SATAN: Why was Jesus DRIVEN, even THROWN, into the Wilderness just after that beautiful moment at the Jordan? To teach us how to respond, with scripture, when tempted? To encourage us to not fear the wilderness journey of discipleship? To face our own temptations and wild beasts? Yes, these, but also something more.
WILD BEASTS in Jesus’ day constituted boars, jackals, wolves, foxes, leopards and hyenas. Angels are the messengers of God. What a juxtaposition of forces—wild beasts and angels—all around Jesus. One group could tear him apart and the other could put him back together again. How should we understand the presence of each?
To remind us of the hostile nature of the wilderness? To accentuate Jesus’ vulnerability as a human? To impress upon us his ability to deal with both the beast and the angel? Yes, these, and also something more.
What is the something more we are to learn today? Let’s look at 1 Peter 3:18. "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."
Every move he made, every word he spoke, every prayer he prayed, Jesus did all of it in accordance with his mission to bring each person back into relationship with God.
There are no forgotten children of God: no one too sick, too bad, too dirty, too haughty, too ignorant, too intelligent, too beast-like, to be reached, to be healed, to be made whole, to be suffered for, to die for, to rise for. Yes, Jesus did all of these for us, and even more.
"He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. [And] In that state, he went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison…"
The wilderness season of Lent is an appropriate time to examine how our spirits are imprisoned.
We live as free individuals. We make our own choices and decisions about everything, yet when it comes to our faith, many of us own imprisoned spirits.
We settle for something less than angels but more than wild beasts. We are willing to endure ten days, but not a full forty. We stop short of the full commitment; we stop short of the cross, and that is why our spirits remain in prison.
Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I am saying to each of us that the unexamined faith is hardly worth having.
When Socrates spoke of the unexamined life, he was on trial for heresy. He was encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves.
The sentence was death but Socrates had the option of suggesting an alternative punishment. He could have chosen life in prison or exile, and would likely have avoided death.But Socrates believed that these alternatives would rob him of the only thing that made life useful: Examining the world around him and discussing how to make the world a better place. Without his "examined life" there was no point in living.
So he suggested that Athens reward him for his service to society. The result, of course, is that they had no alternative and were forced to vote for a punishment of death. "The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living" by Karl W. Palachuk
Our challenge as we begin this Lenten journey is to free our spirits—not for our own gain, of course, but for God’s glory.
The something more that we can receive through our walk with Jesus Christ is a strength like no other—the strength of the Spirit to not only throw us into the wildernesses of our lives but also to bring us out victorious. Let’s get right to it:
Jesus defeated Satan.
He faced the wild beasts.
He endured the entire journey
He emerged to fulfill his mission.
He was obedient unto God, even to the point of death.
He sits at the right hand of God—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
When Christians in obedience to Christ gather in churches as one body, they have the strength of wild beasts and angels; they have the fortitude to not merely to persevere but to PREVAIL.
Know this, the Church, any church, our church, cannot prevail without the loving commitment to go to the cross with Christ. On the other side of the cross is resurrection, reconciliation, redemption…and an invitation to the greatest banquet our hearts will ever feed upon.
At Christ’s table, the gates of heaven open wide: the imprisoned spirits are set free…free, for what? To pledge with a clear conscience our faith in God who will find us in any wilderness, from the deep woods of Oregon in THE SHACK to the shores of coastal Maine.
The Lord knows where we are. Shall we keep our spirits in prison, or shall we go out to meet him and receive something so much more? Amen.
March 1, 2009
First Parish Federated Church, S Berwick, ME
The Reverend Donna Lee Muise, Pastor
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