I learned a nursery rhyme when I was a child that you might have learned as well. It described the church by having us interlace our fingers and repeat the rhyme: “Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open the doors, and see all the people.” It’s memorable, but what does it say about the church? Is it a building, with a steeple, or is it people?
When Paul described the church, he used the image of the “body of Christ.” That doesn’t sound like a building or an institution. When Paul envisions the church being the “body of Christ,” it’s clear that he has people in mind. In fact, this is a very relational image since Paul talks about how the members of the body are equipped with spiritual gifts, so they can work together for the common good (1 Cor. 12:4-11).
Now you might be wondering why I started out talking about the church when our Lenten reading from John 2 tells the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple. The reason I’m doing this is that in this story Jesus compares his body to the Temple. So stay tuned as I try to connect the church with Jesus’ Passover visit to the Jerusalem Temple where he causes quite a ruckus when he tries to clean the Temple.
Although all four gospels tell the story of the cleansing of the Temple, they place it in different spots in Jesus’ ministry. John puts it right at the beginning rather than at the end, and in this version of the story Jesus goes to Jerusalem to observe the Passover. Like any good pilgrim, Jesus went to the Temple to worship. He doesn’t go as a tourist as I have when I’ve visited ancient cathedrals. So, when he enters the Temple he’s horrified by what he encounters. He sees all kinds of animals being sold at a profit for the sacrifices along with money changers at work at their tables, again making a profit. Jesus is so offended by what he sees that he gets extremely angry. He went expecting a sacred place where God is encountered but instead, he encountered a marketplace, what the other Gospels call a den of thieves. In his anger at the desecration of what he called his Father’s house, he makes a whip of chords and drives out the animals, turns over the tables of the money changers, and tells the vendors to get out of his Father’s house. Thus, we have the story of the “cleansing of the Temple.”
While John’s telling of this story might shock us if we envision Jesus as meek and mild and never getting angry. This story suggests that on occasion Jesus can get angry and even a bit violent. Jesus’ actions in the Temple quickly caught the attention of the authorities, which is why John slips in the comment that zeal for his Father’s house will consume Jesus. This story lets us know that as we read John’s story of Jesus, he will often be at odds with the religious and political authorities. Ultimately, that leads to the cross.
Since in John’s Gospel this appears to be Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, you have to imagine what he felt, coming from Galilee, when he saw this magnificent building that sat on a hill overlooking the city of Jerusalem. When Herod the Great took over as the vassal king of Judea, he decided to turn the rather small dingy Temple the returning exiles constructed to replace Solomon’s Temple destroyed by the Babylonians into one of the great wonders of the world. Herod the Great might have been a Roman vassal but he had a big ego. So by remodeling and expanding the Temple, he created something to match his ego. While Herod saw the Temple as an expression of his ego, Jesus claimed this Temple for his Father. So we witness a clash of values. Jesus saw the Temple as a sacred space, while Herod viewed it as a public building. Since it takes a lot of money to build and maintain a building like this you have to find ways of paying for it. So, the Temple authorities turned part of the Temple into a marketplace.
As you can imagine the Temple authorities didn’t appreciate Jesus’ disruptive actions, especially since this took place during Passover. With so many visitors to the city, they stood to make a lot of money. So they confronted him. They wanted to know by what authority he thought he could cause this disruption of business as usual. After all, Jesus was nothing more than a peasant from the backwaters of Galilee who happened to be visiting the city. They wanted to see his credentials, since Jesus claimed to speak for God, they wanted him to prove it with a sign. Show us what you can do!
Now the sign Jesus gave the authorities wasn’t what they expected. In fact, what Jesus said next caused confusion among these rather angry Temple authorities.
In his response, Jesus told the authorities that if they destroyed the Temple he would rebuild it in three days. Now the authorities knew that you can’t rebuild a magnificent building like the Temple in only three days. You might be able to build a small house in a few days. Habitat for Humanity does that all the time, but replacing a Temple that took decades and lots of money and labor to build will take a lot longer than three days. This is where Jesus turned the tables on them. He’s not speaking of the Jerusalem Temple, which by the time John’s his Gospel had been destroyed by the Roman legions, but his physical body. While the religious and political leaders might conspire to destroy his body on a cross, God would raise that body from the dead in three days. This is the sign Jesus offers his audience. It’s a sign that the disciples only understood after his resurrection (Jn 2:22).
When Jesus compares his body to the Temple, he suggests that his body is the true Temple where God is encountered. Therefore, no human-built building, no matter how magnificent, can truly be a place of divine encounters. Instead, it will be his crucified and resurrected body that serves as the sacred space where God is encountered.
So what does this story have to do with the church? I would suggest that while Jesus defends the sacred nature of the Temple in Jerusalem when he speaks of his body being the true Temple, he invites us to interpret this word through a Pauline lens. If we follow Jesus’ logic, then he is “Beth El,” the house of God. If Jesus is the house of God then our experiences of communion with God involve his body, which Paul suggests is the church. By the church, Paul has in mind people who are indwelt and gifted with the Holy Spirit rather than a building or an institution. As Paul reminds us, although the body of Christ has many members, it’s still one body. When Paul speaks in this way, he uses a relational definition of the church.
If the church is the Body of Christ, then like the Temple in Jerusalem, this body, the Temple may need to be cleaned once in a while. As Hulitt Gloer of Truett Seminary puts it: "The ways of the world invade the church gradually, subtly, never intentionally, always in service of the church and its mission. Soon the church is full of cattle and sheep and turtle doves and money changers!" [Feasting on the Word, p. 95]. When that happens, it’s time to clean house!
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about this being a “post-Christian” age. Christendom, which involved the merging of Christianity with the dominant culture, has collapsed. Therefore, being a member of a church no longer has much social value, although there are some in our country who seek to gain political power in the name of God so they can enforce “Christian values.” Unfortunately, history has taught us that this is never a good thing for either the church or the state.
Remember that after Constantine granted Christianity favored status, the cross was transformed from a symbol of disgrace to a symbol of political power. Ever since that “Constantinian Shift,” church and state have jockeyed for power over each other. Again, this isn’t good for either church or state. In fact, when the church has achieved political power, it has tended to experience the kind of corruption that Jesus protested when he cleansed the Temple. We’re seeing lots of examples of the corrupting effects of power over others taking place in churches across the land.
When it comes to matters of power, if we understand power to be the ability to do things, we see Jesus call his followers to embrace power that is submitted to God. Therefore, instead of seeking power over others, which is coercive, his followers should seek power with others, which involves working together to accomplish our goals. Again this work should be done in submission to God. As David Fitch points out in his book Reckoning with Power, the church fails when it finds itself on the wrong side of power.
So, while buildings and institutions have their place, they do not define the church. To be the church of Jesus Christ is to be the Body of Christ. According to Jesus, that body cannot be destroyed.
As we continue through Lent, perhaps Jesus is calling us to do a bit of soul-searching. In the midst of our reflections perhaps he’s calling us to let go of the things that get in the way of being Christ’s body, equipped by the Holy Spirit to accomplish the common good.
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church
Troy, Michigan
Lent 3B
March 3, 2024
Image attribution: Koenig, Peter. Christ Overturns the Tables of the Moneylenders, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58520 [retrieved March 2, 2024]. Original source: Peter Winfried (Canisius) Koenig, https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/.
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