New Year Reservations
Rev. Mark Porizky
3/26/2006
John
2:13-22
The
Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to
But
although he became famous for this laid-back manner, Fred Rogers did not make
headlines just by being himself. When
Such
spectacles would have been so far out of character that they would have
grabbed headlines for certain. If we think that we have a given person pretty
well sized up, then we expect him or her to act accordingly. Out-of-character
actions startle us.
Maybe
that's why Jesus' driving out the moneychangers is one of the most famous
stories in the gospels. All four gospels record this incident.
But this story perplexes us because seen from a certain angle, this
seems to be the rare occasion when we catch Jesus, of all people, in a non-Christlike
act! With a whip in his hand and fire in his eyes, this Jesus seems a far cry
from the man who was otherwise so gentle as to attract children to his side.
But
precisely because we are talking about Jesus, the ways by which this story
perplex us multiply. After all, had even Fred Rogers committed some public act
that scandalized us, we might have been disappointed, but even still the
bottom line of our assessment of this would have been, "Well, I guess
even Mister Rogers is only human. "
But
as orthodox Christians, we don't want to say that about Jesus. We can't chalk
this up to a sinful lapse on Jesus’ part. So rather than let this story
cause us to revise our opinion of Jesus, our tendency is to figure out how
what we already know about Jesus can help us understand this story. Somehow
this story is consistent with who Jesus is. But how?
I am sometimes asked to tell stories to the kids in the Preschool during
the week. One of my favorite
series of books to read to children are those written by Stan and Jan
Berenstain. They have written a
series of children's books called the Berenstain Bears. The stories are
all lessons of life for young children as Mama and Papa Berenstain Bear along
with Brother Bear and Sister Bear encounter things like a bad dream, trouble
at school and going to the dentist.
One of Joshua’s favorites when he was growing up was "The
Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room." It is a lesson about house
cleaning. The introduction warns:
"When
small bears forget to pick up, store and stash,Some of their favorite things
end up in the trash."
The
crisis in the story comes when Mama Bear gets fed up with the mess in Brother
and Sister's room. It goes this way:
"Well,
the mess just seemed to build up and build up until one day... maybe it
was because Mama's back was a little stiff, or maybe it was stepping on
Brother's airplane cement, or maybe she was just fed up with that messy room,
but whatever it was... Mama Bear lost her temper!
She stormed into the cub's room with a big
box. 'The first thing we need to do is get rid of all this junk!' she said.
Brother and Sister were watching in horror as Mama began to throw
things into the box."
Aren’t
our lives sometimes just like the Bernstein Bears? Things pile up until
it is just too much to take. We have to clean up the mess. Whether
it is a messy room or a messy set of circumstances at work or at home, the
time comes when we just want the mess cleaned up. A mess devalues
something of worth. It might be a room we want to enjoy or a household
where we want some peace and quiet. But, when it's messy, it can't serve
its intended purpose.
There are times when a mess can be so serious, nothing but radical
housecleaning will correct the situation.
That's
what today's gospel lesson is all about. Jesus finds a horrible mess in
the temple and becomes very angry. He actually took a whip and drove the
merchants out of the temple courtyard where they were conducting business.
He overturned the tables where the accountants were making change and he told
the merchants to take their merchandise away.
You have to picture the scene to even begin to appreciate the spiritual
bombshell Jesus set off with his actions. The moneychangers scrambling after
their coins, the people who came to the temple standing in shock and the
officials frozen with rage and indignation. Who in the world does this
peasant from
This isn't the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" to which we are
accustomed . This Jesus is
enraged.
The Scripture scene that confronts Jesus as he
goes to the temple is representative of the whole corruption of
We
will have to look closely at our text from Exodus to get the connection
between the 10 commandments and Jesus' cleansing of the temple.
The
first four commandments are all about the holiness and sovereignty of God.
Nothing is to take center stage in our living but the Lord God.
There is no other god. Do
not take the Lord’s name in vain. And,
we are to keep the Sabbath -- or worship day -- set apart for God.
The Ten Commandments, at their core, are about reverencing God.
With all the buying and selling and money changing, the temple system had
become corrupt. Instead of contributing to the worship and reverence of
God, it missed the point. Oh, the idea of money changing began with good
intentions -- instead of using pagan money to buy offerings, the
pilgrims would exchange their worldly money for temple money, keeping
Caesar’s coin out of the church, keeping the church free from outside
corruption.
The problem was, the system was set up for inside corruption. The
price of a pair of turtle doves jacked up a little here... the exchange
of money tilted a little in favor of the money changer there... soon the
thing that was supposed to facilitate the worship and reverence of God was
turned into something that cheated people and made it more difficult to
approach a Holy God.
Friends, there are different kinds of messes that require different
methods of housecleaning. There are physical messes, emotional messes
and spiritual messes. All of them have a few principles in common.
Messes build up slowly over time. We don't notice a bit of dust
here, a pile of papers there until gradually we are oblivious to the mess that
is quite evident to others.
The longer we live with a mess, the easier it becomes to live with it.
The
longer we live with a mess, the more difficult it is to do the housecleaning.
If
we do not clean up our messes, they will finally destroy us in much the same
way that the temple system ended up destroying the worship and reverence of
God.
What
does spiritual housecleaning look like for you and me? Do you remember
the saying -- "When all else fails.... [read the
directions?"]
Our scripture reading from Exodus has one of the most complete and
helpful sets of instructions in all of recorded history. We know it as
the Ten Commandments.
The
one basic principle behind the whole Law of Moses and in particular the Ten
Commandments is the centrality of God in our lives. Jesus sets it out
this way in Mark
We need to set apart a time for building our relationship with God and a
time to "keep a Sabbath." This may be one of the key
principles in rebuilding our hectic, urban, driven lives. We need time from
the routine and take that time for our relationship with God and each
other.
Then
there is the issue of honoring our parents. In fact, honoring our
parents, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and indeed persons is
honoring the God whose image lies within each person. A loss of
reverence for God will finally lead to a loss of reverence for persons and for
life.
The "shall nots" of the Ten Commandments reflect the honoring
of persons. We will not murder, steal from, or lie against persons we
honor.
Today’s
Scripture demands that we pay attention to the messes that we need to clean up
in our lives, the dust we’ve allowed to gather around our communication with
God, and with the people God has put into our worlds.
I
don’t think many of the people that Jesus drove out of the temple with a
whip realized that their worship had become a mess, a house in need of
spiritual cleaning. For most of
them, their time in the house of God had simply become “business as
usual,” just one more transaction in a hectic routine.
Have you ever tried quickly to pull a dangling thread from the hem of a
pant-leg or skirt or jacket, only to find you've got hold of one of those
dreaded running stitches? Instead of breaking off, the thread continues to
unstitch itself until the entire hem falls out. Instead of freeing yourself
from one annoying little thread, you now have a major clothing catastrophe.
It
is always the little things that end up getting us in the biggest trouble. G.
K. Chesterton referred to these as "tremendous trifles." Life,
Chesterton observed, does not usually present us with big temptations or
grandiose sins. Instead, we constantly encounter little temptations that can
easily slip under the threshold of our levels of acceptance and tolerance.
These little, apparently insignificant temptations nibble away at
us--gradually compromising our integrity with each tiny bite.
Human
moral failure does not usually come from enormous, glaring misdeeds-- things
like murdering, stealing or cheating on a spouse. Our ethical standards are not
so much ripped out by the roots through such obvious sins. Instead, we are far
more likely to experience the gradual decay of our human moral fiber through the
insidious work of "tremendous trifles"--such as holding onto our
anger, backbiting, small-mindedness or selfishness. Eventually our standards of
acceptable behavior slip lower and lower, until we can talk ourselves into
almost anything, as long as it is to our own benefit.
This
is what happened in the temple during Jesus’ day.
They had talked themselves into believing that all that commerce in the
house of God was OK. Jesus thought
otherwise.
The
only answer was spiritual housecleaning, the return to what Jesus values
most–zeal for the worship of God.
Sometimes
the same is true for us as well.
May
God grant us the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives to do the spiritual
housecleaning that will bring us closer to the Lord's intent for our lives.
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church,
Web Site: SAPC-CT.HOME.ATT.NET
Office Email: SAPC-CT@ATT.NET
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