The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed twice. The first time was, as my confirmation students all know, was in 587 BCE, when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and led the people away into captivity. When the Persians conquered Babylon, they allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple, and so a more modest version was constructed and finished by 515BCE. That Second Temple was desecrated and its treasury plundered, and thus the Second Temple itself was rebuilt and expanded under the auspices of King Herod the Great. That work took 46 years, and that’s the temple as our Gospel passage this morning refers to it.
John’s Gospel itself, of course, is written in the decades after the Romans destroy that Second Temple in the year 70 CE.
So that Temple in which Jesus is teaching, and driving out animals, and overturning tables, is already a figure for struggle. It has already been built and destroyed and rebuilt and desecrated and rebuilt and expanded. It represents the permanent presence of God among people, but it is itself impermanent. It represents both loss and consolation. There is one wall of this temple, of course, that still stands today, and it’s often referred to as the wailing wall. Powerful prayer takes place there, right at the location of human impermanence. Prayer is strong at the temple wall in the twenty-first century precisely because it is located right where the struggle happens. You can’t pray there without being mindful of history and loss and struggle and pain.
When we think of this story being written in the Gospel of John, we have to think of the disciples remembering both the resurrection of Jesus and the destruction of the Second Temple, and we hear recorded in this morning’s story the insistence that Jesus himself is now the Temple. The earliest Christians understood that Jesus in his body was where they met God, where the glory of God could be found.
And meeting God in Jesus, in the flesh and blood of Jesus that dies and is reborn, that meeting with God in this strange bodily temple takes place against a background of the Temple’s impermanence, its susceptibility to being destroyed and desecrated and plundered. The flesh and blood Jesus is also destroyed and mocked and humiliated, crucified and vilified, and restored to life. They get the message twice: God dwells among us, right where the trouble is. Right in the community. Right in the flesh. God is establishing presence and love among us, even where we experience death and loss and horror. Powerful prayer takes place within the body of Christ precisely because, like the Temple, it is the location of suffering and unspeakable loss and uncertainty as well as presence and joy and reassurance.
So prayer at the heart of both Judaism and Christianity is paradoxical, wrapped up in both grief and hope.
That’s not the only paradox in this gospel story, though. If we look carefully at what Jesus does, we may find that there are many unanswered questions about why he does it. Why exactly does Jesus drive the moneychangers and the sellers of animals out of the Temple? It may seem obvious to us that buying and selling are not sacred activities, but in fact Temple worship depended on those very activities to take place.
Does Jesus object to the fact that the Roman occupiers are also profiting from commerce in the Temple? Does he object to the use of that particular part of the Temple as a place of commerce? John doesn’t tell us. Jesus just makes this grand either/or gesture, driving what’s wrong out of the Temple. Light conquers dark but we don’t know exactly what’s in the darkness.
There another set of questions we may ask about this scene. What exactly does Jesus want us to think about Temple worship itself? When he declares that he is the Temple, he would seem to be replacing or disrupting or superceding some foundational practices of Jewish life. But we know that that sharp sense of supercession, of replacement of the Jews by Christians, is a mistaken and bloody concept with a vile history. Whenever it appears among us we are in need of God’s help to read differently. In urgent need.
We need to remember, for instance, that those who see Jesus driving out the animals and overturning the tables are reminded of Psalm 69, and its depiction of a suffering servant who declares “Zeal for your house consumes me.” How can Jesus declare himself to be full of zeal for something he wants to replace? If he is here to declare Temple worship outmoded, why is he reforming Temple worship?
For our purposes this morning, gathered as we are with a sharp awareness of loss and impermanence, this story is powerful enough not to urge easy hope or cheerful acceptance. IT doesn’t promise quick recovery. This story urges remembrance of the past. It urges awareness of change. It urges us to acknowledge that there are times when we cannot understand the history we are part of, cannot map it onto some easy version of God’s plan for our lives.
In the face of that loss of certainty, this gospel passage offers a long process of carrying on, of seeking to follow Jesus wherever he takes us. There is no easy “out with the old, in with the new” logic here. There is no simple act of reform that we can all somehow understand and agree with. Sharp change and painful loss are signs here that the flesh and blood Jesus is with us in our actual suffering. Not in some airbrushed version of what’s best for us or what God wants for us.
No one who lives for the resurrection can escape the fact of death. No one who preaches restoration and rebuilding can sidestep loss and destruction. No real presence of God can avoid the pain and injury to which the flesh is subject. No building can stand forever, though it may well be rebuilt and expanded and repaired.
If we are listening, this story from John’s gospel teaches us to hold on. It teaches us to hold on because we came here in the first place seeking a god who would be with us through all that we actually suffer. We came here to this Temple, not because coming here was an easy consolation. Worship here has always been tinged with struggle and pain and loss, just as it is in any authentic house of God. There has always been a quality of unknowing. We approach that as carefully as we can. We use that understanding not to excuse what we don’t like, but to help us pledge ourselves more deeply to Jesus. No one who loves Jesus can urge us to avoid this truth. Jesus himself came to be torn down and raised up, and we who follow him must follow his cross.
Preached by Mtr. Nora Johnson
3 March 2024
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia
