Bringing Down the House

John 2:13-22 New International Version (NIV)

Jesus Clears the Temple Courts

13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”[a]

18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

As I listened to John Eldredge’s take on the very scripture I just read to you, I couldn’t wait to preach on it.  I am so glad it came up in the lectionary for this week. Beautiful Outlaw offered me a great new perspective on these important verses.  Prior to hearing Mr. Eldredge’s perspective, I believed this scripture to portray Jesus in a moment of frustration giving us a pass as similar situations arise for us.  We could use this scripture as a way to justify similar feelings of frustrations and an attitude that changed on a dime. “Jesus had a freak-out moment in the Temple so it is ok if something similar happens to us.” In fact, when I preached on these very same verses in 2015, the anger of Jesus was my focal point.  I took time to set up the scene and explained why Jesus was so angry. I spent 15-20 minutes justifying Jesus’ anger and never once spoke of our interaction with him. I don’t think I was totally wrong and as I re-read that sermon, I feel like I made some good points. However, my new perspective on this scene altars my view of how this went down.

On Friday and Saturday, the Fairgrounds hosted the NAIA National Wrestling Championships and the set-up for such an event is incredible.  Dozens of people are involved in making an event like that go on. Volunteers are needed to set up and tape the mats, athletic trainers are present to help with injuries, Mediacom brought in a broadcast truck in which ESPN used to broadcast the signal live on their app, individuals ran Track Wrestling and the scoreboards, security was in place to monitor the crowd, and State Fair staff helped set up the event and take tickets.  Concessionaires fed the masses. Wrestlers and their fans came from all over the United States, some from as far as Oregon. Catch Des Moines staff cleaned the mats and organized the event. Miles of electrical and data cords were ran so everything had power and could broadcast live on TV and over the internet. Radio stations were given phone lines, data and electrical cords to power their broadcasts. For the championship matches, a six foot riser was brought in and assembled so those matches were wrestled on a platform.  The lights were set up in a way to spotlight the championship matches as well. Countless bags of garbage were collected and disposed of. And to be honest, the enormity of such a set up pales in comparison to that young man who gets his arm hoisted as National Champion.

Imagine the chaos if a person decided to take a large set hedge trimmers and cut all the cords.  We would not say that such a person was “cleansing” the event. We would say that this person had stopped the event.   In the same way those wrestling championships depended on all that equipment to run, you needed cattle and sheep and doves and money changers to run the Temple.  The actions of Jesus made it impossible for people to buy animals for the required sacrifices, and impossible for those who have come from all over the Empire to change their money and pay their tithes.  Jesus stopped the event. Our common held belief is that Jesus made such a decision in a moment of haste. He saw what was going on and flipped that switch to shut it down. Eldredge believes that this was much more calculated than we give the situation credit for.  Our impression of the quickness of how the situation transpired is not really our fault, however. John only uses two verses to describe the entirety of the scene: “So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’”  That’s it.  That is all were are given to explain the craziness of what is going down.  It would be like me trying to explain the enormity of the scene for the wrestling championship with “There is a lot of people and equipment needed to pull off that event.”  That simple sentence totally undermines the scope of such an event. I spent a few minutes trying to explain it to you and I didn’t mention everything. The scope of what happened in the temple the day Jesus stopped the activities there was summed up in a couple verses.  

This is where Mr. Eldredge’s take has helped shape my thoughts.  Let me read a snippet from Beautiful Outlaw:

In two verses he empties the temple, a report that reads like the crack of a bullwhip. But take the action slowly. First, Jesus observes the shenanigans, and it makes him furious. Then he takes the time to make a weapon. Where did he get these cords? That required some looking around. Having found them, he had the patience and forethought to weave them together effectively to make a usable whip—he knows what it takes to move large, sedentary cattle and self-righteous profiteers. There’s time enough here to cool off if this is merely an outburst of anger. But no, this is a planned and sustained aggression.

Did you catch that?  After observing the scene, Jesus was furious.  However, there was ample time to cool down. First, he had to find the chords needed to construct the whip and then he had to weave them together.  The scripture says, “He made a whip out of cords.”  If this was a simple moment of anger, that anger would have subsided in the course of finding and constructing the whip.  “There’s enough time here to cool off if this is merely an outburst of anger. But no, this is a planned and sustained aggression.”  To be honest, it is much easier to explain away that single moment of frustration than it is to explain a sustained aggression. We can better understand if the situation was just a simple moment of anger.  

Our view of Jesus does not have room for a sustained aggression for this reason: if we use Jesus to justify our actions in all the good he does, then we are able to justify our own sustained aggression.  Some may see this as an opportunity to do just that, but this is not the case. You see, trying to figure out who Jesus was/is and the reasons he acted the way he did is much easier than experiencing who Jesus is personally, intimately and regularly, just as the disciples did.  That is the intent of our relationship. Being a Christian isn’t about figuring out religion and how Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit play out in our faith. We were intended to be involved personally with all facets of God. We would rather spend time justifying our own issues and actions through the actions of Christ rather than sitting down with him daily and working our way through it.  That is the take away here. We can read all we want to about who Jesus was and what he did but our faith is about that personal interaction with him. Tip-toeing around who Jesus was is the easy way out. And this has been the route we have been traditionally encouraged to take. However, our duty as Christians is not to explain who Jesus is. Instead, we are to champion a personal relationship with him.  Religious costumes allow for us to fit Jesus into our lives in order to have less impact on us at the core of who we are. Jesus is not a religious costume. Our interactions with God were designed to be personal and intimate. But we know that this kind of relationship is difficult and messy so we take the easy way out. Just as Jesus stopped the events of the Temple that day, just as the theoretical person with the hedge trimmers could shut down the wrestling championships, I am attempting to shut down the misconceptions we have about Christ.  Christ isn’t a picture hung on the wall to be adored and admired, our relationship with him is a personal and intimate and living thing. When Jesus is viewed in this manner, our perspective changes. The meaning of religion changes. Our lives change. Our view of Jesus should never be that, a view or even an understanding. It should be a constantly revolving door of daily interaction. We see the kind of response this kind of relationship grants us in verse 22: “After Jesus was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.”