In our reading from the book of Exodus we hear the 10 commandments,
which summarized teach us that there is only one God, that it is wrong to
make gods of other things, that we must balance work with rest because
without adequate rest, it’s far too easy to fall into practices that make our
own work, or other’s, fall short of the holiness that God calls for. Finally, we
learn that God has provided us with families and extended families to help
us survive and share our faith and our love with others. So there are things
we shouldn’t do because it tears down our family networks.
Jesus, who fulfills this law perfectly summarizes the commandments like
this: love God first. If you love God first, as we see Jesus do, then like
Jesus did, you will love your neighbour, sacrificing your own ways and will
so that your neighbour can come to know and respond to God. As Paul
says in his letter to the Corinthian Church: it’s not your wisdom or strength
or your signs that will allow others to see God through you. Rather it’s
simply by acting and reacting like Jesus that other people will see God.
Why? Because when people see Jesus at work in the world, they are
seeing God himself.
And what do we see when we see Jesus today? Well, not the Jesus that
most folks think of when talking about him! When I think about Jesus I tend
to see someone who is calm, cool, collected, concise in words and not
intervening with physical force.
But here comes the much fuller view of God that Jesus displays to us: the
Passover is near and so Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and enters the
Temple. He looks around at all the marketplace affairs going on and then
he makes a whip of cords and drives all the people selling cattle, sheep,
and doves, and all the money changers out of the temple. Imagine that for
a moment. You’re sitting there going about your usual business as you’ve
probably done for most of your life, gathered with friends, maybe family,
certainly members of your temple, and suddenly this one whom many of
you consider an outsider starts lashing you with a whip and then pours out
the money changers coins and flips over all of the tables. He says to those
selling doves: take those things out of here and stop making my Father’s
house a marketplace.
Why would Jesus be so perturbed about the selling going on in the
marketplace? Well Jesus has gone to the temple in preparation for
Passover, so it is likely first day or the start of Passover. What are the
Israelites supposed to be doing on the first day? In Leviticus we hear: “On
the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any
ordinary work.” Then follow six days of food offerings to the Lord with a
seventh day, being another holy convocation where no ordinary work is to
be done.
I would suggest the violation Jesus is most angry about here is that the
Israelites have substituted their own labour for God’s, imagining that their
selling of lambs and doves for the Passover is in fact doing God’s work. But
the point of Passover is not what the Israelites do, what work they
accomplish, but rather what they receive from God.
In the case of the Passover, it is solely by God’s power, the power of his
mercy to refrain from killing the first born males of those who enslave other
people, in this case, the Egyptians. Listen to God. Love God, love your
neighbour. The Egyptians neither listen to God’s warnings to turn to him,
and so they do not abide his will to stop enslaving other people. This evil in
depriving others of their God given freedom to follow God, is punishable by
death. The Israelites who are likely just as morally bad as the Egyptians,
are nonetheless granted and undeserved mercy. They’re told to mark the
lintels of their houses (the outside that is, of their houses) with the blood of
a lamb so God will know to avoid killing their first born sons. Passover is a
celebration of receiving God’s mercy. It is not a celebration of Israel’s power
to buy, sell, and make money from God’s mercy.
Hence Jesus comes to overthrow not just the tables in the temple. Those
are a mere tangible symbol of a much greater overthrow that Paul gets at in
his letter to the Corinthians: your power, wisdom and money are nothing
compared to even the foolishness of God. In his foolishness, our never
changing God perseveres in wisdom exercising wisdom that only he could
execute in providing the true blood of lamb, his own, that would save not
only the Israelites, but all people who drop their presumption to accomplish
or profit off God’s provision, and instead, give up all their presumptions and
efforts resting, sabbath like, in Christ’s own ways.
This certainly isn’t a passive rest. Rather it is letting go of our own ways
and taking on Jesus’s own. The blood that protects us is not from our own
flesh and blood bodies. It isn’t constituted from our bodily wisdom,
knowledge or power. It doesn’t manifest itself in our temples or our
churches. If we substitute these things for the true temple – God who
comes to us in Jesus Christ – we will become just like those selling lambs
and doves, counting our coins of success by how many programs we
establish or how many butts in the pew we have or even whether we stay
open. The reality – as Jesus says explicitly to the Israelites and so to us - is
that all and I mean all of these things can and often are torn down, taken
away from us. And that’s okay. God doesn’t discard us in tearing down our
proverbial temples. Instead, he is fitting us for his Kingdom; he is drawing
us into his mission; he is whittling away our temptations so that we might
look more and more like Jesus to others, being dressed in the wedding
gown for the final wedding supper when God will come for all of us.
What we’re called to do is to love God. To love God is to first receive his
mercy; to rest in Jesus’s way rather than our ways. But to do that we’ve got
to know who Jesus is so that where we face the temptation to do things our
way (as Satan tempted Jesus and does so with all of us), we can answer,
not this time Satan, I belong to God. God’s got me even when I’m
confused, frustrated, scared, filled with doubt, or think I’ve got everything
right and don’t really need him so I’ll answer you with God’s word, Jesus’s
way instead.
If the source of all that exists has me, nothing and no one can
pry me from him. So go on and do your worst. This allows us to act with
true freedom: the freedom to be the perfect being God created us to be in
spite of all the false idols that tempt us to conform ourselves to in this life.
And when we’re free from the paralyzing, soul sucking traps of coveting
what others have, comparing ourselves to others, worrying incessantly that
we’re not good enough, valuable or worthwhile, we’re free to think about
others rather than getting our heads stuck up our own bleepbleeps. Are you
ready for such a mission of freedom in exercising your faith and love?
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