3-19-06 Sermon by Pastor Barbara Currie
ANGER AND JUSTICE
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17, John 2:13-22
Sermon for Lent 3B, March 19, 2006
Have you ever felt confused if you look in the Bible to try to find out how God wants you to live? There are certainly a lot of different rules, especially in the Hebrew Bible. The most famous grouping of rules is the Ten Commandments, sometimes called the Decalogue which means ten words. If you keep reading after the chapter that ----read for you this morning, you will find many more commandments, different lists of how to live. In the New Testament both Jesus and Paul give us many different instructions about how we should treat each other and God. For myself, I think the answer is summed up by Jesus in Matthew 22: 37-39 when he was asked what is the Greatest Commandment : 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 'This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Both of these are taken from the Hebrew Bible: The first part is from Deuteronomy 6:5 and the second from Leviticus 19:18. Today I want to look briefly at the Ten Commandments and then focus on Jesus and his anger in the Temple.
The Ten Commandments are given to Moses after God has brought them out of their slavery in Egypt and during the process of making a covenant with them, to bring them to a new land and to be with them always. These words were more than rules; they were a way of life. They were not given as some short sound bytes but in a narrative form, telling a story of the relationship of God and the Israelites. They speak of God’s holiness and of love and justice for our neighbors. Besides being in narrative form they are really part of a religious ceremony describing the covenant between God and the people. The first three commandments concern the relationship between human beings and God; the fourth established the principle of Sabbath rest; the final 6 regulate relationships with one another. The words are spoken, expounded on and then the people respond by making a vow, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” These kinds of words were etched on stone but more importantly they were etched on the human hearts of those that heard them. We must remember that Jesus was part of this Hebrew religion that had a covenant with God; however, Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promise in Isaiah to do a new thing. In the gospel of John, Jesus’ identity is very closely tied to his Father’s, and it is an identity of the unity of peace and love. So what are we to make of this explosion of Jesus’ anger?
First we need to set the scene, go back for some historical background. Passover was a spring holiday, a holiday of renewal and of freedom for the Jewish people. Rev. Ed Markquart describes it thus: “It was Passover time and the city was jammed. …The hackers were hocking their wares, “Lambs for sale. Lambs for sale.” “Good deal on matzo; come have your Passover dinner with us.’ What a madhouse. Dirty streets and dusty mules. Camels baying off in the distance. Pilgrims chanting their prayers. What a mess. But it was a great week for business and a great week for making money. …Thousands of people were crammed in and around the temple and sacrificial animals being sold and money changers all around the courtyard.” Just try to imagine the chaos of so many folks shouting and buying animals. The sellers were making big money off the temple business. It was the biggest racket in town. People would bring their roman and Greek coins with images of the emperor on them. These coins could not be used in the temple because they were considered unclean due to the pagan image. So they had to be exchanged for Jewish ‘kosher’ coins. Any of you that have traveled in foreign countries know how easy it is to be overcharged when you have to exchange currency.
The purpose of Temples or other religious buildings then and now is to provide a place where people come to be in contact with God, to give thanks and to ask forgiveness of wrongdoing. In Jesus day the temple was also the place people went to present their sacrifices. In the days before Jesus, such a sacrifice was fairly easy. In the rural setting people usually had sheep or goats or pigeons right there on the farm. But in the cities both now and then, folks don’t usually have animals around their apartments. So when it was time to take a sacrifice to the temple, the temple authorities made it easy by having sacrificial animals for sale right there for you. Of course you had to buy them and had to have temple coins to pay for them. Having the money changers there in the temple was another service provided from the Temple authorities.
The richer people would buy the larger animals at a much inflated price; for example a lamb bought in the country would be $1 and at the temple, $15. One source equated this business at the temple to be worth about $170 million in today’s dollars. Quite a racket! This business was plain and simply extortion.
Our gospel reading today tells us that Jesus walks into this full-service Temple and sees what is going on and he becomes tremendously angry. He takes some cord, probably the belt of his tunic similar to what I am wearing, and lashes out with it. He tosses over the tables of the money changers and the sellers. He opens the cages and let’s the doves go free; he chases out the cattle and the sheep from the courtyard, shouting all the time: “Stop this! Get these things out of here. Stop using my father’s house as a marketplace. Get out! Get out!”
Now in the gospel rendering of this passage in the other gospels, Jesus says, “Is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of robbers!” It seems to me from my research that Jesus’ anger was both an anger at injustice—the dishonest dealings, extortion, of those doing business there as well as the irreverence—the lack of respect for God and the things of God. I think it’s clear that Jesus did not confine God just to the temple, yet this was a place—a building--dedicated to the Holy One; and therefore, worthy of respect. This was his Father’s house and I’m sure he was offended at the extent that it had become a commercial enterprise. I believe that Jesus saw these merchants and money changers as part of an unjust system whose day was done. There is another reason for Jesus anger—a protest against religion of the time. Yes, all of these things that had gotten out of hand and were rejected by Jesus were originally put into place to facilitate the worship of God, the sacrifices to show the people’s desire to please God, to praise God, and it ended up turning into an exploitation of the people. Jesus wanted to cleanse out this evil, make religion what it is suppose to be: loving God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. What do you think Jesus would want to cleanse our temples and churches of today? Would he be horrified or pleased at the huge amounts of money spent each year in some churches for building and renovating facilities? If he were to visit our budget discussions, what do you think he would have said? Our charge budgets as well as our national budgets show where our values are. I wonder if he would be pleased with our priorities. He might look at the pastor’s package and compare it to our mission/outreach budget, and ask me and you if we believe this distribution is just? One of our local pastors was so concerned about the lack of giving to missions that he gave back all of his salary raise to the missionary fund. I was very impressed by this, and it’s still on my mind.
What do you think about Jesus getting so angry? Let’s talk a little bit about anger. Some people seem to have a lot more anger than others; certainly anger comes out in different ways. I wonder how you handle anger. Do you think it is an okay emotion to have? The APA defines anger as a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion that inspires powerful, often aggressive feelings and behaviors which allow us to fight and defend ourselves. I see Jesus’ anger as righteous anger that was important to cleanse the temple and the religion from unhealthy, damaging things. Robert McAfee Brown says we need moral outrage within the Christian community to motivate us to bring about the justice God wants in our society. It seems that anger signals attention to our awareness that all is not right in our world. The power of anger can increase our work of love and justice. Anger energizes us for action. It helps us say No to the Caesars of our day who clamor for our allegiance and want to move in directions where the poor continue to suffer and the rich continue to flourish. George Johnson, the director of the justice conference I went to in Tijuana, says, “This feeling of rage in the pit of one’s stomach has something to do with God. It is the presence of God in us that yearns for justice and hurts when injustice takes place.”
When it comes to the commercialization of religion, we have no scarcity of this type of activity that made Jesus so angry. One of my resources pointed out how many religious folks today exploit others—or as he put it—“cash in on our needs for forgiveness and a loving word—those who seek money so that God will bless them.” He goes on to say that the easiest ones to detect are what he calls the “modern merchants in the temple” and describes the “40 million dollar man in his prayer tower in the middle of the university named after him, a university built by funds raised from old ladies for the work of God.”[1] He also mentions another playful minister who turned his ministry into an amusement park where one can take a water slide for Jesus and buy the latest holy music sung by his daughter, his wife, etc.[2] He says these temple merchants are easy to see; harder to see is the disrespect and irreverence to God that comes from false teachings and false examples. He’s talking here about the teachings that link God with success of a worldly nature rather than a God who is concerned with the poor and oppressed. The Ten Commandments talk about having no other gods before the Lord our God. I wonder how many of those who have profited from the corporate scandals of recent years have considered themselves Christian. Who is your God and whom do you serve? As you know from scandals of TV evangelists and those highly placed in their denominations, ordained ministers are not exempt either. I believe that whenever we make an idol of material success and ignore our neighbors that are hurting, we have some soul searching to do. The eighth commandment is “Do not steal.” I had just finished my income tax when I read in a commentary, “Before we pat ourselves on the back for not robbing anyone this week, perhaps we ought to delve deeper. Along with other homeowners, I profit on my taxes from what I pay in interest on my mortgage. Am I a thief if I don’t advocate for comparable tax savings for those without homes, who are usually poor people? Am I living ethically when I support politicians who craft laws only in favor of those who are wealthy while millions go hungry, or when I buy clothing produced in factories where the workers have been paid unfair wages? Am I stealing when the richest one-fifth of the world’s population including my country uses up 86 percent of the world’s resources, while the poorest fifth only consumes 1 percent?”[3]
There is nothing wrong with prosperity, and I know that often times when we surrender our life to Jesus, abundance of all kinds tends to follow. There’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to be careful we don’t take the good that we have and make it into our God. The important point thing to look at is where your heart is and what kind of action your faith leads you to in terms of making this world a better place for all.
Lent is a good time to recognize our own complicity in both injustice and the commercialization of religion. Lent is a season of self-examination and I have a lot of attitudes and practices that need some examining and cleansing. What about you? I pray that we can all see our selves as we truly are and ask God for help and guidance in being more what God would want us to be. I’m so thankful that we belong to a God that loves and forgives, a God that promises to be with us always. Help us and have mercy on us all I pray. Amen
[1] Richard Fairchild, online sermon for Lent 3B.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Michelle Tooley in Hunger for the Word, Lectionary Reflections on Food and Justice, Year B, ed. By Larry Hollar, p. 68-9.
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17, John 2:13-22
Sermon for Lent 3B, March 19, 2006
Have you ever felt confused if you look in the Bible to try to find out how God wants you to live? There are certainly a lot of different rules, especially in the Hebrew Bible. The most famous grouping of rules is the Ten Commandments, sometimes called the Decalogue which means ten words. If you keep reading after the chapter that ----read for you this morning, you will find many more commandments, different lists of how to live. In the New Testament both Jesus and Paul give us many different instructions about how we should treat each other and God. For myself, I think the answer is summed up by Jesus in Matthew 22: 37-39 when he was asked what is the Greatest Commandment : 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 'This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Both of these are taken from the Hebrew Bible: The first part is from Deuteronomy 6:5 and the second from Leviticus 19:18. Today I want to look briefly at the Ten Commandments and then focus on Jesus and his anger in the Temple.
The Ten Commandments are given to Moses after God has brought them out of their slavery in Egypt and during the process of making a covenant with them, to bring them to a new land and to be with them always. These words were more than rules; they were a way of life. They were not given as some short sound bytes but in a narrative form, telling a story of the relationship of God and the Israelites. They speak of God’s holiness and of love and justice for our neighbors. Besides being in narrative form they are really part of a religious ceremony describing the covenant between God and the people. The first three commandments concern the relationship between human beings and God; the fourth established the principle of Sabbath rest; the final 6 regulate relationships with one another. The words are spoken, expounded on and then the people respond by making a vow, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” These kinds of words were etched on stone but more importantly they were etched on the human hearts of those that heard them. We must remember that Jesus was part of this Hebrew religion that had a covenant with God; however, Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promise in Isaiah to do a new thing. In the gospel of John, Jesus’ identity is very closely tied to his Father’s, and it is an identity of the unity of peace and love. So what are we to make of this explosion of Jesus’ anger?
First we need to set the scene, go back for some historical background. Passover was a spring holiday, a holiday of renewal and of freedom for the Jewish people. Rev. Ed Markquart describes it thus: “It was Passover time and the city was jammed. …The hackers were hocking their wares, “Lambs for sale. Lambs for sale.” “Good deal on matzo; come have your Passover dinner with us.’ What a madhouse. Dirty streets and dusty mules. Camels baying off in the distance. Pilgrims chanting their prayers. What a mess. But it was a great week for business and a great week for making money. …Thousands of people were crammed in and around the temple and sacrificial animals being sold and money changers all around the courtyard.” Just try to imagine the chaos of so many folks shouting and buying animals. The sellers were making big money off the temple business. It was the biggest racket in town. People would bring their roman and Greek coins with images of the emperor on them. These coins could not be used in the temple because they were considered unclean due to the pagan image. So they had to be exchanged for Jewish ‘kosher’ coins. Any of you that have traveled in foreign countries know how easy it is to be overcharged when you have to exchange currency.
The purpose of Temples or other religious buildings then and now is to provide a place where people come to be in contact with God, to give thanks and to ask forgiveness of wrongdoing. In Jesus day the temple was also the place people went to present their sacrifices. In the days before Jesus, such a sacrifice was fairly easy. In the rural setting people usually had sheep or goats or pigeons right there on the farm. But in the cities both now and then, folks don’t usually have animals around their apartments. So when it was time to take a sacrifice to the temple, the temple authorities made it easy by having sacrificial animals for sale right there for you. Of course you had to buy them and had to have temple coins to pay for them. Having the money changers there in the temple was another service provided from the Temple authorities.
The richer people would buy the larger animals at a much inflated price; for example a lamb bought in the country would be $1 and at the temple, $15. One source equated this business at the temple to be worth about $170 million in today’s dollars. Quite a racket! This business was plain and simply extortion.
Our gospel reading today tells us that Jesus walks into this full-service Temple and sees what is going on and he becomes tremendously angry. He takes some cord, probably the belt of his tunic similar to what I am wearing, and lashes out with it. He tosses over the tables of the money changers and the sellers. He opens the cages and let’s the doves go free; he chases out the cattle and the sheep from the courtyard, shouting all the time: “Stop this! Get these things out of here. Stop using my father’s house as a marketplace. Get out! Get out!”
Now in the gospel rendering of this passage in the other gospels, Jesus says, “Is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of robbers!” It seems to me from my research that Jesus’ anger was both an anger at injustice—the dishonest dealings, extortion, of those doing business there as well as the irreverence—the lack of respect for God and the things of God. I think it’s clear that Jesus did not confine God just to the temple, yet this was a place—a building--dedicated to the Holy One; and therefore, worthy of respect. This was his Father’s house and I’m sure he was offended at the extent that it had become a commercial enterprise. I believe that Jesus saw these merchants and money changers as part of an unjust system whose day was done. There is another reason for Jesus anger—a protest against religion of the time. Yes, all of these things that had gotten out of hand and were rejected by Jesus were originally put into place to facilitate the worship of God, the sacrifices to show the people’s desire to please God, to praise God, and it ended up turning into an exploitation of the people. Jesus wanted to cleanse out this evil, make religion what it is suppose to be: loving God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. What do you think Jesus would want to cleanse our temples and churches of today? Would he be horrified or pleased at the huge amounts of money spent each year in some churches for building and renovating facilities? If he were to visit our budget discussions, what do you think he would have said? Our charge budgets as well as our national budgets show where our values are. I wonder if he would be pleased with our priorities. He might look at the pastor’s package and compare it to our mission/outreach budget, and ask me and you if we believe this distribution is just? One of our local pastors was so concerned about the lack of giving to missions that he gave back all of his salary raise to the missionary fund. I was very impressed by this, and it’s still on my mind.
What do you think about Jesus getting so angry? Let’s talk a little bit about anger. Some people seem to have a lot more anger than others; certainly anger comes out in different ways. I wonder how you handle anger. Do you think it is an okay emotion to have? The APA defines anger as a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion that inspires powerful, often aggressive feelings and behaviors which allow us to fight and defend ourselves. I see Jesus’ anger as righteous anger that was important to cleanse the temple and the religion from unhealthy, damaging things. Robert McAfee Brown says we need moral outrage within the Christian community to motivate us to bring about the justice God wants in our society. It seems that anger signals attention to our awareness that all is not right in our world. The power of anger can increase our work of love and justice. Anger energizes us for action. It helps us say No to the Caesars of our day who clamor for our allegiance and want to move in directions where the poor continue to suffer and the rich continue to flourish. George Johnson, the director of the justice conference I went to in Tijuana, says, “This feeling of rage in the pit of one’s stomach has something to do with God. It is the presence of God in us that yearns for justice and hurts when injustice takes place.”
When it comes to the commercialization of religion, we have no scarcity of this type of activity that made Jesus so angry. One of my resources pointed out how many religious folks today exploit others—or as he put it—“cash in on our needs for forgiveness and a loving word—those who seek money so that God will bless them.” He goes on to say that the easiest ones to detect are what he calls the “modern merchants in the temple” and describes the “40 million dollar man in his prayer tower in the middle of the university named after him, a university built by funds raised from old ladies for the work of God.”[1] He also mentions another playful minister who turned his ministry into an amusement park where one can take a water slide for Jesus and buy the latest holy music sung by his daughter, his wife, etc.[2] He says these temple merchants are easy to see; harder to see is the disrespect and irreverence to God that comes from false teachings and false examples. He’s talking here about the teachings that link God with success of a worldly nature rather than a God who is concerned with the poor and oppressed. The Ten Commandments talk about having no other gods before the Lord our God. I wonder how many of those who have profited from the corporate scandals of recent years have considered themselves Christian. Who is your God and whom do you serve? As you know from scandals of TV evangelists and those highly placed in their denominations, ordained ministers are not exempt either. I believe that whenever we make an idol of material success and ignore our neighbors that are hurting, we have some soul searching to do. The eighth commandment is “Do not steal.” I had just finished my income tax when I read in a commentary, “Before we pat ourselves on the back for not robbing anyone this week, perhaps we ought to delve deeper. Along with other homeowners, I profit on my taxes from what I pay in interest on my mortgage. Am I a thief if I don’t advocate for comparable tax savings for those without homes, who are usually poor people? Am I living ethically when I support politicians who craft laws only in favor of those who are wealthy while millions go hungry, or when I buy clothing produced in factories where the workers have been paid unfair wages? Am I stealing when the richest one-fifth of the world’s population including my country uses up 86 percent of the world’s resources, while the poorest fifth only consumes 1 percent?”[3]
There is nothing wrong with prosperity, and I know that often times when we surrender our life to Jesus, abundance of all kinds tends to follow. There’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to be careful we don’t take the good that we have and make it into our God. The important point thing to look at is where your heart is and what kind of action your faith leads you to in terms of making this world a better place for all.
Lent is a good time to recognize our own complicity in both injustice and the commercialization of religion. Lent is a season of self-examination and I have a lot of attitudes and practices that need some examining and cleansing. What about you? I pray that we can all see our selves as we truly are and ask God for help and guidance in being more what God would want us to be. I’m so thankful that we belong to a God that loves and forgives, a God that promises to be with us always. Help us and have mercy on us all I pray. Amen
[1] Richard Fairchild, online sermon for Lent 3B.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Michelle Tooley in Hunger for the Word, Lectionary Reflections on Food and Justice, Year B, ed. By Larry Hollar, p. 68-9.
posted by Sermons given at Deering Community Church @ 11:17 AM
<< Home