The Temple of His Body

John 2:13-22

March 4, 2018

            I read a story recently about an event that took place in a Washington, D.C. metro station. A young man with a violin was playing for the commuters passing by. His case was open and on the floor in front of him, and occasionally people would walk by and throw change into it. The only people who really paid any attention to the violinist were children. They would stop and watch until their parents shooed them along.

            I used to live outside of D.C. and while it was not completely uncommon for a street performer to be found in a metro station, it was not an everyday sight either. You would notice someone playing the violin. But the passengers who walked by him that day were either too busy or too distracted to care. So the young man played on, and by the time he quit there was about $32 in his case.

            Here’s the thing; the musician was world renowned violinist Joshua Bell. A few weeks before this train station concert, he had played to a sold out crowd in Boston, where the cheap seats were more expensive than what he collected in the metro station. I couldn’t find out the name of the piece of music he was playing, although apparently it was one of the most intricate and complicated pieces every written for the violin. And Mr. Bell was playing it on a Stradivarius violin worth over 3.5 million dollars.

            The people in that metro station had the opportunity to enjoy a free concert from a renowned violinist on a magnificent instrument, and they didn’t stop. They didn’t look. They didn’t take notice. They didn’t know what they had right in front of them.

            Unless we read all four gospel stories of Jesus cleansing the temple side by side, we might not know what is right in front of our eyes either.

            This story of Jesus cleansing the temple is found in all four gospels. On the surface it may seem that John is telling the same – or at least a similar – story as the other gospels. But there are some significant differences. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, this event is placed after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It comes after the people have gathered to wave and welcome Jesus into the city like a king. The synoptic gospels place it as part of the culmination of events that lead to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. In fact, Jesus cleansing the temple is the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the religious leaders and authorities.

            But in John’s gospel, Jesus turning over the tables in the temple follows the story of his turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. We are just at the beginning of John’s gospel and at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He was barely getting started. Which begs the question, why was Jesus so angry? It makes sense that he was angry in the other gospels. He had been preaching, teaching and proclaiming to anyone who would listen, that the kingdom of God was in their midst. He had been on the move for three years, speaking truth to the powers that be, calling out the leaders for corruption and abuse. So it is understandable that when he went into the temple and saw further evidence that the poor were being exploited and taken advantage of, he was furious.

            But as Karoline Lewis pointed out in the WorkingPreacher podcast, it was too soon in John’s gospel for Jesus to be angry. It was too soon in Jesus’ ministry for Jesus to be angry, and she made the point that in John’s version of this story, Jesus wasn’t angry. He was zealous. He was filled with zeal and a righteous fervor, but he was not angry.

            In the other gospels, Jesus accused the moneychangers for turning his father’s house into a den of robbers, but in John’s version, he just told them to stop making his Father’s house a marketplace. Yet, this is also confusing. The marketplace was a necessity. The people could not use Roman coins to buy their sacrifices. So the Roman coins had to be exchanged for Hebrew coins. To bring a foreign coin into the temple was sacrilege, a glaring violation of the Law. There is no indication in John’s telling that the moneychangers were doing anything but their job. There is no sense of violation or exploitation.

            But this scene in the temple inflamed Jesus’ zeal. Why? What are we not seeing? I think what we are not seeing is that the people in the temple were not seeing. They did not see Jesus for who he was. They did not see that God inhabited more than just a physical space that they visited on religious holidays. They did not see that the temple of God was in Jesus’ very body.

            If the gospel of John were written as a stage play, John would be the narrator and his remark about the temple of Jesus’ body would have been an aside to us, the audience. When Jesus was questioned about what he was doing, he told them,

            “Destroy this temple, and in three days time I will raise it up.”

            Sure you will. This temple has been under construction for almost half a century, and you’re going to rebuild it in just three days? Right.

            “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”

            The temple of his body; God within Jesus and Jesus right in front of them. They did not know what they were seeing. They didn’t know who they were seeing. They didn’t know who was right in front of them.

            It seems to me that Jesus wanted them to understand – or at least begin to understand – that God was not limited to the temple. God was not limited to the walls and enclosures of a human made building, even one that was sacred and divinely appointed. God was not limited or restricted only to where they thought God would be or should be. God was in Jesus. Jesus was God’s Son, and God was in the temple of his body.

            This makes me wonder how many times I have encountered God and not seen. How many times have I talked with God, laughed with God, ignored God, and not realized it? How many times have I overlooked the hands of Christ or the feet of Christ because they were not hands or feet that I expected?

            But isn’t that why we make this trek through Lent? To prepare ourselves for the unexpected? Isn’t that what Paul was referring to when he wrote of the cross as foolishness? It is foolish. It is! It is nuts. God dying on a cross?! God dying?! That’s absurd! Yet that’s what we believe, and that is what we are moving toward. Every day brings us closer and closer to God’s great foolishness; God’s absurd and ludicrous cross.

            So if God does what is unexpected and foolish, why do we only expect to see God in certain places and in certain people? The people in that metro station did not expect to see a world renowned violinist, but there he was, right in front of them. The people in the temple that day were there to see God in those four walls, but Jesus said, no. Jesus said that he was the temple. He was the temple that would be destroyed but raised again.

A commentator wrote about the church using centripetal and centrifugal force. Centripetal force is the force that pulls you in. Centrifugal force pushes you out. If you have ever been on a whirling, spinning amusement park ride it is centrifugal force that keeps you plastered to the wall of the ride. His point was that instead of thinking of church as centripetal, drawing people in, we need to see church as centrifugal – sending people out.

It seems to me that we need both. We need to draw people in, not because this is the only place where someone can find God. It isn’t. But because this is where we learn and this is where we remember. We remember what God has done. We remember who God is. We remember through the stories and we remember through the table, and we find strength and hope and courage once more.

And then we need to be pushed out, pushed out to the world expecting to see God, expecting to see God alive and at work. We need to be pushed out to see God in the heavens that tell of God’s glory and in the people God created. We need to be pushed out, sent out so that we can be the body of Christ and so that we can be Christ’s hands and feet and heart. We need to be pushed out and sent out so that just as we can see Christ in others, others can see Christ in us. Look around and know that God is here. Go out and know that God is there. God is right in front of us; may our eyes, our minds and our hearts be opened to see.

Amen and amen.