Zeal

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

This story is one of the few that’s in each of the four gospels, so there’s a lot that can be said about it. Initially, I was sure that for this sermon, I would focus on Jesus’ righteous anger and the fact that this reaction is so truly human—you know I love to focus on the humanity of Jesus. The anger, the passion, the frustration, all such human reactions and feelings we can relate to. Initially, I was sure I would focus on the fact that Jesus was looking out for the little guy, the poor and working-class pilgrims going to the Temple to pray for Passover and being scammed and extorted by the Temple authorities. And if I were preaching on this story coming from Matthew, Mark, or Luke, that is definitely what I’d be preaching on. But John always has to be a little different. John always has to be a little more cryptic, a little stranger, a little more mysterious. And while I will be touching on the anger of Jesus a bit (I mean, you can’t ignore Jesus running around with a whip), John kind of forced me to go in a different direction.

Because you see, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there are implications that Jesus is angry because the temple has been made into a “den of robbers,” a phrase that’s used in all three. While the story John tells is quite similar to the other three versions the biggest difference that jumped out to me while I was reading and comparing was that in John’s version, there’s no mention of a den of robbers. Jesus, instead, says very simply, much more broadly, “Stop making my Father’s house into a market-place!” Period. Actually, exclamation point. And this might not seem like a big deal to us—it may feel obvious to us that Jesus wouldn’t want this holy Temple to be a place of deal-making and trading. Imagine, when we can be back together, the narthex of the church here filled with folks trying to make a buck by trying to scam and upsell visitors and tourists and leaf-peepers on trinkets and goods to be offered or sacrificed. Obviously that wouldn’t be right. But in Jesus’ time, this was totally legal, and in fact, necessary—church and state was all completely intertwined, and there was money to be made for the Temple and the state because of complicated tax laws. People came from all over to worship at the Temple, especially during Passover, so there needed to be money-changers to deal with the foreign currency coming in. And in the other three gospels, the idea was that the Temple authorities weren’t, on the surface, doing anything wrong—but they were actually being really shady, price-gouging, hiking taxes, making money and profits for themselves, and this is what Jesus was rightly, understandably righteously mad about. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus wasn’t necessarily calling for the entire practice of money-changing, taxing, etc., to stop, he just wanted it to be done ethically, he didn’t want people taken advantage of. John takes it all a step further. John writes that Jesus wants the market-place activity to stop entirely. In this version, Jesus wants the very nature of the Temple changed. And then Jesus is challenged by the authorities—“What sign can you show us,” they ask—essentially daring him to show them some kind of miracle. Instead of doing something like, say, turning water into wine, as he did immediately before this in the gospel of John, he responds cryptically, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.”

Now, Jesus wasn’t going to physically destroy the Temple. Jesus had no intention of coming with a sledgehammer and knocking it all down and wreaking anymore havoc than he already had in this instance, with his whip and by flipping tables. “In three days, I will raise it up.” Here’s some dramatic irony for you—because we know what Jesus is talking about here. It’s a mysterious foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Here’s Jesus slyly saying that after he is killed and rises from the tomb, what was once known as the Temple will be no more. What was once thought of as reverence, worship, will become wholly changed; and something new will rise from the ashes. Jesus was setting the stage for a whole new Temple, for a whole new era, setting the stage for unimaginable changes and revelations.

We New Englanders, I think, can be kind of stuck in our ways sometimes. And there are some ways in which this can be endearing, charming even. In fact, one of the facts about this church that really drew me to you all after reading your profile was the fact that, like the church I grew up in in Salem, you have the old red Pilgrim hymnals still in the pews alongside the black New Century ones. Is this a bad thing? Does keeping an old hymnal available in the pews that may be a little less gender neutral than we’d prefer keep us farther from God? I don’t personally think so. But there’s a fine line to walk, church. Because this world is changing quickly, all the time. And if this year has taught us anything, it’s that we have to be prepared to adapt, we have to be prepared to change, and we have to be prepared to see church in a whole new way. We have to prepared to roll with the punches, and I know that can be a little tough for us sometimes.

And here’s another thing that tends to make New Englanders a little uncomfortable: anger, conflict, and confrontation. Even when something makes us mad, I think we have a tendency to keep it all bottled up, right? We’re a quiet, reserved people. We don’t want to make trouble. We don’t want to make a scene. We just want to keep our heads down, and mind our own business. So this passage is one that’s a little tough for us! It’s all about anger and big changes. But this anger, these big feelings, these strong and passionate emotions—that’s what leads  to the positive, real changes. This is a clinical fact. In an article by professor of medical social science Judith T. Moskowitz, about recognizing anger as something positive, in a world where phrases like, “good vibes only,” “look on the bright side,” are all too common, she writes, “Anger is a signal from the psyche that something needs to be changed or addressed and if we instead focus solely on trying to feel better at the expense of feeling the feelings that motivate us, we are not likely to act, nor are we likely to heal.”[i] So the more we give into our quiet, reserved New England nature, the less things will be able to change for the better. The slower we will heal from the hardships and trauma brought on by this year of pandemic. But if we can harness those supposedly negative feelings and emotions, we can turn it into something else—we can turn it into, as his disciples mention, quoting from a Psalm 69, “Zeal.”

“His disciples remembered that it was written ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Zeal for what house though? Zeal for this Temple that Jesus just said should be destroyed? No, because Jesus says, “In three days I will raise it up.” The zeal is now for Jesus. The zeal is now for the Temple that Jesus embodies. The zeal that will, after Jesus is risen, rise out of grief, death, and trauma. The zeal will be for a brand new thing, it will be for real lived faith, for authentic prayer and worship and good works. As I’ve mentioned before, I do my best stay away from the idea of “silver linings” in the midst of a deadly pandemic. I think it can be damaging to the people who have truly suffered, and continue to suffer. But I have hope that a better world, that a better church will rise from this.

There is so much hope on the horizon right now. Vaccines for everyone! Daylight savings next week, a sure sign that Spring is coming, when the sun’s out, we can actually feel its warmth now. But we’re still on Zoom. It’s still freezing outside. It is still a struggle to feel zealous right now. It’s a real struggle to force enthusiasm right now. And we’re not even sure what we’re enthusiastic for! There are a lot of unknowns right now. There is so much uncertainty. What will the church, what will the world look like when we emerge? We don’t know. But you know what? The disciples didn’t know what to be zealous for either. This is made clear at the end of the passage: “After he was raised from the dead, the disciples remembered that he had said [the temple would be raised in three days]; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” But in the moment, when Jesus said that the temple would be destroyed in raised in three days, they didn’t yet know that Jesus would be killed and raised from the dead. They were surely just as confused as the Temple authorities who said, “Umm, this Temple is almost fifty years in the making, you think you’re gonna tear it down and raise it up in three days? What?” This passage makes it clear that it wasn’t until after the cycle was complete, of Jesus being rejected, killed, and resurrected, that the disciples truly understood what he meant—that the disciples truly understood that everything would be different now. That the Temple was no longer just a building. The Temple is Jesus, and the Temple is everywhere.

I know we’re all aching to be back in the sanctuary together, and surely we will be soon. But as the pandemic drags on just a little bit longer, as we remain stuck in our homes, as we grow more impatient, (and I say we, because trust me, I am right there with you all) let us take some real lessons from this scripture passage. Let us remember that the church isn’t just a building. The church isn’t bricks or a steeple or stained glass or a pulpit. Church—I call you church for a reason. You are the church. We are the church. It is such a testament to you all that I have felt so welcomed and loved starting as a first time parish minister during such a strange and trying time. It’s a testament to the fact that you are all truly embodying the church, that you are all truly being the church. You are all truly doing the work Jesus asks of you by being flexible, by remaining faithful, by being kind, and by holding onto that zeal that you clearly all still have, or else you wouldn’t sign onto Zoom every Sunday!

I don’t know about you all, but this pandemic has made me feel a lot of feelings, mostly feelings perceived as negative—anger, sadness, grief, frustration, anxiety... and It’s not fun to have these feelings, but let’s turn them into something good. Let’s muster up some long-dormant zeal for whatever awaits us. We will surely be back together soon, but we might be outside for a while. And things might look a little different for a bit. But we will continue to be the church, no matter where we are, I know that much. Like Jesus’ disciples, who didn’t understand but trusted Jesus anyway, we can’t know that’s coming, but we can trust that wherever we are, whether it be on computer screens, whether it by outside under the sky, whether it be safely in the sanctuary, we know that Jesus is with us.

So please Church— in this time of understandable, wholly valid impatience and frustration, make some room to transform some of that into zeal for whatever the future holds. Keep up some zeal for Zoom church. Keep up your zeal for Zoom Bible study, for more Zoom committee meetings. And show some zeal for warm weather and gathering together outside as soon as we can. And show some zeal for the time, soon enough, when we can gather together in church again. But more importantly than all of that, know that wherever we worship, and however that worship looks, that Jesus is with us, and we are together in our zeal for our commitments to this church, and commitment to justice for all God’s children. Let us make this promise, “Zeal for your house will consume me—wherever and whatever that house may be.” Amen.  

[i] https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/378422-go-ahead-and-feel-the-anger-it-will-encourage-social-change?rl=1