Third Sunday in Lent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
Roman Catholic
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:22-25
John 2:13-25
Episcopal
Exodus 20:1-17
Romans 7:13-25
John 2:13-22
Theme For The Day
As the commandments tell us, and as Jesus' cleansing of the temple shows us, we need to be ever-vigilant in keeping ourselves from idolatry and injustice.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 20:1-17
The Ten Commandments
God speaks the Ten Commandments to Moses. An alternate version is found in Deuteronomy 5:1-22.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
The Foolishness Of The Cross
The Corinthian church is divided into factions, each one declaring allegiance to a specific teacher. Each faction is claiming their own teacher to be wiser than the others. Paul observes that, far from seeming to be wisdom, the message of the cross is "foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (v. 18). God, he promises (alluding to Isaiah 29:14), "will destroy the wisdom of the wise." "Why are you people fighting over wisdom?" Paul is asking, in effect. "There's nothing 'wise' about our proclamation of Jesus Christ, the son of God crucified. To the world, we are the people who preach utter foolishness!"
The Gospel
John 2:13-22
Cleansing The Temple
At Passover time, Jesus enters the temple precincts, where the officially sanctioned concessionaires are changing money from Roman into Jewish currency, and selling animals for the temple sacrifices. Making for himself a whip of cords, he drives these merchants from the temple area. When challenged to say by what authority he does this, Jesus responds with the cryptic comment, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (v. 19). John explains that by this Jesus is referring not to the temple, but to his own body (although no one understood this at the time).
Preaching Possibilities
Jesus' cleansing of the temple is a difficult passage for many modern readers. Some have trouble with Jesus' evident anger; their image of the Savior is of a more even-tempered, placid personality. Others see his action as a sort of civil disobedience, a demonstration: a tactic they consider ethically questionable. To John, however, Jesus' rampage through the temple is no fit of pique. It is righteous anger. It's the sort of emotion true prophets are supposed to feel, when confronted with injustice. Some prior knowledge about the temple system is necessary to understand why.
The temple of Jesus' day is riddled with injustice. Pilgrims -- diaspora Jews -- come here from around the Roman world. Some of them have saved for years to make the journey. When these travelers arrive at the temple, they must pay a temple tax -- and this is no minor admission charge. Biblical scholar, William Barclay, reckons the tax to have been about two days' wages for a laborer.
The problem is not so much the high amount, but that many of the pilgrims' money is no good. Most of them carry either Roman denarii or Greek drachmas: coins with emperors and gods engraved upon them -- but the temple authorities will accept only the coins of Israel, that do not display potentially idolatrous images. That's where the moneychangers come in. With so many pilgrims arriving from so many places, there's quite a market in currency speculation. The moneychangers have a monopoly, so their commissions are impossibly high (Barclay estimates as high as fifty percent).
There's one other thing religious pilgrims to Jerusalem need, besides Judean currency to pay the temple tax. They need an animal to sacrifice. Well, those thoughtful temple merchants have remembered that, too. Located conveniently nearby, in the court of the Gentiles, are live-animal stalls. The prices are several times higher than the market stalls in town, but these are special animals. The merchants guarantee them to be clean and without blemish, just as the law requires.
If any pilgrims should happen to bring animals in from outside, they must first stop at the booth of one of the temple inspectors, who will look the beast over for defects. The inspectors are meticulous in their examination of any animal not purchased from one of the official dealers. It's a rare day indeed when one of those animals passes inspection.
But that's not the end of it: all this commercial activity is taking place in the court of the Gentiles. That's the name given to the outer courtyard of the temple, the only place where non-Jews are permitted to enter. The court of the Gentiles is the only place of worship for Gentile adherents of Judaism, seekers after Israel's God who were not born into the faith, and who have not yet converted into it through circumcision. The atmosphere in the court of the Gentiles, filled with the raucous shouts of the moneychangers and the lowing of the livestock, is hardly conducive to worship.
It is a monstrous, unfair system, designed for the benefit of a favored few who profit at the expense of the faithful. No wonder Jesus gets angry. Contrary to the claims of some commentators, he's not upset because of the close proximity of commercial activity to a place of worship, as though money itself were evil. It's a matter of injustice.
The Bible has a word for this sort of thing: idolatry. The first commandment (from today's Old Testament Lesson) is, "You shall have no other gods before me." That's what Jesus is really saying as he pushes over the moneychangers' tables: "No other gods!" The second commandment says, "You shall not make for yourself an idol." Jesus knows that, for the moneychangers, the only object of worship is the coins in their purses. Money is not evil or dirty in itself, in Jesus' eyes. It's part of God's creation, and like all creation it can be redeemed for God's purposes. Money is no more evil than the wood or stone used to construct an idol -- but if money is the vehicle used to exploit those who have come to worship God, then it has indeed become an idol.
Prayer For The Day
Bring us, O Lord, from out of the cacophony of this striving world into that place of peace and stillness, that holy of holies, where you dwell in all purity and righteousness. Help us to seek out and cast down every idol that threatens to block our path to you. Bring us through this Lent to the simple beauty of the empty tomb, to the place where we are able to worship your son, Jesus, in spirit and in truth. Amen.
To Illustrate
Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be worshiped.
-- Anonymous
***
Echoing the World War II era, a company called Innovative Marketing Alliance is publishing the God's Armor New Testament, a bulletproof pocket-sized Bible for loved ones who are at risk. "While its fundamental function is to provide the spiritual assurance that comes from carrying God's Word next to the heart, its antiballistic qualities built into the cover provide a reminder of the world we live in." However, the armor is only capable of resisting a .38 caliber bullet.
-- Brian Kelcher, "Not So Good News," The Door, November-December 1996, p. 41
***
Rising above all the other buildings at the center of the city of Groningen in the Netherlands is the great and the ancient Martini Church. The people began building it in the twelfth century. When we moved to Groningen in 1975, the Martini Church was undergoing a major renovation and had been closed to visitors for about ten years. Friends of ours knew the custodian who lived in a house embedded in one corner of the large church. On a Saturday morning, he gave us a private tour and lecture. Among other things, he explained how the Protestants assumed control of the church in the sixteenth century and whitewashed all the frescoes on the walls and ceiling.
Gazing at the veiled frescoes, I felt in a new way the tension of the Reformation and the intention of the Reformers. They believed that artwork was a dangerous flirtation with idolatry and a possible violation of the ten commandments. Images, graven or otherwise, stirred up strong emotions in the hearts of people and encouraged them to worship the thing created rather than the Creator. The Reformers wanted a white sanctuary so that nothing could distract the worshiper from concentrating on the preaching of the Word of God. They tried to recreate the experience that the people of Israel had had on Mount Horeb. As Moses recalled: "The Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice" (Deuteronomy 4:12).
The custodian told us that unknown to the Protestants, the whitewash had a chemical in it that leeched into the frescoes and sealed them. Rather than destroying the artwork, the whitewash preserved it for future generations. After the renovators meticulously flaked off the white coating, the frescoes emerged four hundred years later in their original beauty. I remember the custodian telling this story with relish....
-- Thomas A. Boogaart, "Preparing the House of God: A Theme in Four Movements," in Perspectives: A Journal of the Reformed Faith, November 1999, p. 16
***
The second commandment implies more than the prohibition of images; it implies rejection of all visible symbols for God; not only images fashioned by man but also of "any manner or likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." And yet there is something in the world that the Bible does regard as a symbol of God. It is not a temple or a tree; it is not a statue or a star. The symbol of God is man, every man. God created man in his image, in his likeness.
-- Abraham Joseph Heschel
***
As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. If you want to be rid of the commercial spirit, then by all means do all you can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God. Live as if you did not exist. Expect and ask nothing in return. Then the merchant inside you will be driven out of the temple God has made. Then God alone dwells there. See! This is how the temple is cleared: when a person thinks only of God and honors him alone. Only such a person is free and genuine.
-- Meister Eckhart, from Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (New York: HarperCollins, 1972)
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
Roman Catholic
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:22-25
John 2:13-25
Episcopal
Exodus 20:1-17
Romans 7:13-25
John 2:13-22
Theme For The Day
As the commandments tell us, and as Jesus' cleansing of the temple shows us, we need to be ever-vigilant in keeping ourselves from idolatry and injustice.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 20:1-17
The Ten Commandments
God speaks the Ten Commandments to Moses. An alternate version is found in Deuteronomy 5:1-22.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
The Foolishness Of The Cross
The Corinthian church is divided into factions, each one declaring allegiance to a specific teacher. Each faction is claiming their own teacher to be wiser than the others. Paul observes that, far from seeming to be wisdom, the message of the cross is "foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (v. 18). God, he promises (alluding to Isaiah 29:14), "will destroy the wisdom of the wise." "Why are you people fighting over wisdom?" Paul is asking, in effect. "There's nothing 'wise' about our proclamation of Jesus Christ, the son of God crucified. To the world, we are the people who preach utter foolishness!"
The Gospel
John 2:13-22
Cleansing The Temple
At Passover time, Jesus enters the temple precincts, where the officially sanctioned concessionaires are changing money from Roman into Jewish currency, and selling animals for the temple sacrifices. Making for himself a whip of cords, he drives these merchants from the temple area. When challenged to say by what authority he does this, Jesus responds with the cryptic comment, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (v. 19). John explains that by this Jesus is referring not to the temple, but to his own body (although no one understood this at the time).
Preaching Possibilities
Jesus' cleansing of the temple is a difficult passage for many modern readers. Some have trouble with Jesus' evident anger; their image of the Savior is of a more even-tempered, placid personality. Others see his action as a sort of civil disobedience, a demonstration: a tactic they consider ethically questionable. To John, however, Jesus' rampage through the temple is no fit of pique. It is righteous anger. It's the sort of emotion true prophets are supposed to feel, when confronted with injustice. Some prior knowledge about the temple system is necessary to understand why.
The temple of Jesus' day is riddled with injustice. Pilgrims -- diaspora Jews -- come here from around the Roman world. Some of them have saved for years to make the journey. When these travelers arrive at the temple, they must pay a temple tax -- and this is no minor admission charge. Biblical scholar, William Barclay, reckons the tax to have been about two days' wages for a laborer.
The problem is not so much the high amount, but that many of the pilgrims' money is no good. Most of them carry either Roman denarii or Greek drachmas: coins with emperors and gods engraved upon them -- but the temple authorities will accept only the coins of Israel, that do not display potentially idolatrous images. That's where the moneychangers come in. With so many pilgrims arriving from so many places, there's quite a market in currency speculation. The moneychangers have a monopoly, so their commissions are impossibly high (Barclay estimates as high as fifty percent).
There's one other thing religious pilgrims to Jerusalem need, besides Judean currency to pay the temple tax. They need an animal to sacrifice. Well, those thoughtful temple merchants have remembered that, too. Located conveniently nearby, in the court of the Gentiles, are live-animal stalls. The prices are several times higher than the market stalls in town, but these are special animals. The merchants guarantee them to be clean and without blemish, just as the law requires.
If any pilgrims should happen to bring animals in from outside, they must first stop at the booth of one of the temple inspectors, who will look the beast over for defects. The inspectors are meticulous in their examination of any animal not purchased from one of the official dealers. It's a rare day indeed when one of those animals passes inspection.
But that's not the end of it: all this commercial activity is taking place in the court of the Gentiles. That's the name given to the outer courtyard of the temple, the only place where non-Jews are permitted to enter. The court of the Gentiles is the only place of worship for Gentile adherents of Judaism, seekers after Israel's God who were not born into the faith, and who have not yet converted into it through circumcision. The atmosphere in the court of the Gentiles, filled with the raucous shouts of the moneychangers and the lowing of the livestock, is hardly conducive to worship.
It is a monstrous, unfair system, designed for the benefit of a favored few who profit at the expense of the faithful. No wonder Jesus gets angry. Contrary to the claims of some commentators, he's not upset because of the close proximity of commercial activity to a place of worship, as though money itself were evil. It's a matter of injustice.
The Bible has a word for this sort of thing: idolatry. The first commandment (from today's Old Testament Lesson) is, "You shall have no other gods before me." That's what Jesus is really saying as he pushes over the moneychangers' tables: "No other gods!" The second commandment says, "You shall not make for yourself an idol." Jesus knows that, for the moneychangers, the only object of worship is the coins in their purses. Money is not evil or dirty in itself, in Jesus' eyes. It's part of God's creation, and like all creation it can be redeemed for God's purposes. Money is no more evil than the wood or stone used to construct an idol -- but if money is the vehicle used to exploit those who have come to worship God, then it has indeed become an idol.
Prayer For The Day
Bring us, O Lord, from out of the cacophony of this striving world into that place of peace and stillness, that holy of holies, where you dwell in all purity and righteousness. Help us to seek out and cast down every idol that threatens to block our path to you. Bring us through this Lent to the simple beauty of the empty tomb, to the place where we are able to worship your son, Jesus, in spirit and in truth. Amen.
To Illustrate
Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be worshiped.
-- Anonymous
***
Echoing the World War II era, a company called Innovative Marketing Alliance is publishing the God's Armor New Testament, a bulletproof pocket-sized Bible for loved ones who are at risk. "While its fundamental function is to provide the spiritual assurance that comes from carrying God's Word next to the heart, its antiballistic qualities built into the cover provide a reminder of the world we live in." However, the armor is only capable of resisting a .38 caliber bullet.
-- Brian Kelcher, "Not So Good News," The Door, November-December 1996, p. 41
***
Rising above all the other buildings at the center of the city of Groningen in the Netherlands is the great and the ancient Martini Church. The people began building it in the twelfth century. When we moved to Groningen in 1975, the Martini Church was undergoing a major renovation and had been closed to visitors for about ten years. Friends of ours knew the custodian who lived in a house embedded in one corner of the large church. On a Saturday morning, he gave us a private tour and lecture. Among other things, he explained how the Protestants assumed control of the church in the sixteenth century and whitewashed all the frescoes on the walls and ceiling.
Gazing at the veiled frescoes, I felt in a new way the tension of the Reformation and the intention of the Reformers. They believed that artwork was a dangerous flirtation with idolatry and a possible violation of the ten commandments. Images, graven or otherwise, stirred up strong emotions in the hearts of people and encouraged them to worship the thing created rather than the Creator. The Reformers wanted a white sanctuary so that nothing could distract the worshiper from concentrating on the preaching of the Word of God. They tried to recreate the experience that the people of Israel had had on Mount Horeb. As Moses recalled: "The Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice" (Deuteronomy 4:12).
The custodian told us that unknown to the Protestants, the whitewash had a chemical in it that leeched into the frescoes and sealed them. Rather than destroying the artwork, the whitewash preserved it for future generations. After the renovators meticulously flaked off the white coating, the frescoes emerged four hundred years later in their original beauty. I remember the custodian telling this story with relish....
-- Thomas A. Boogaart, "Preparing the House of God: A Theme in Four Movements," in Perspectives: A Journal of the Reformed Faith, November 1999, p. 16
***
The second commandment implies more than the prohibition of images; it implies rejection of all visible symbols for God; not only images fashioned by man but also of "any manner or likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." And yet there is something in the world that the Bible does regard as a symbol of God. It is not a temple or a tree; it is not a statue or a star. The symbol of God is man, every man. God created man in his image, in his likeness.
-- Abraham Joseph Heschel
***
As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. If you want to be rid of the commercial spirit, then by all means do all you can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God. Live as if you did not exist. Expect and ask nothing in return. Then the merchant inside you will be driven out of the temple God has made. Then God alone dwells there. See! This is how the temple is cleared: when a person thinks only of God and honors him alone. Only such a person is free and genuine.
-- Meister Eckhart, from Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (New York: HarperCollins, 1972)
