Third Sunday of Lent 2021

 

Third Sunday of Lent 2021

 

‘For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

 

‘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.

John 2:13-22

 

 

In our Gospel reading today, we find Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. The temple Jesus knew was not so much a building as a complex made up of successive spaces, a journey into God’s presence. The outermost space was known as the Court of the Gentiles, a space open to anyone. A place for enquirers to draw near, to pray to the god they had heard of but had not been raised to know. But at pain of death, gentiles were not permitted beyond a partition wall. Only Jews could enter the middle court, or Court of the Women, a large space that was home for various activities, including: the temple treasury; storerooms for essential supplies; provision for the fulfilling of vows made to God; provision for lepers—usually excluded from society—to draw near to God; the public reading of scripture; and activities relating to certain festivals. Beyond again was the Court of Israel, a space open to Jewish males and itself part of the Court of the Priests, where the round of ritual sacrifices was made. At the heart of the Court of the Priests was the Sanctuary building, itself a succession of spaces from vestibule to Holy place to the Holy of Holies, a space where only the High Priest could go, and then only once a year.

These successive spaces were not, exactly, mandated by scripture, so much as a cultural interpretation and application of the instructions found in scripture for approaching God. We have our own architecture: our narthex and our baptistry; our nave and our chancel, the chancel itself sub-divided by the altar rail; our sacristy and our Lady Chapel. We have our own flow through spaces, public and private, from birth to death, from earth to heaven and back again, sent out into the world to proclaim the good news afresh in every generation. Each space has its place and its purpose, and we note the disruption of the pandemic: most of the chairs have been cleared out from the nave, their temporary home blocking-off the baptistry; the Lady Chapel, a space so meaningful to so many of us, has been out-of-bounds for a year now. These spaces work for us, and we have had to find ways to ‘make do,’ such as my relocation from the high altar to the chancel step…

And in our reading this morning, Jesus is in the Court of the Gentiles, a space provided for the outsiders to pray. But this space has become a permanent market, where goods and services are exchanged. Here you could enquire as to what animal you needed for a particular offering, and then buy the animal, certified unblemished, addressing all of the risk of bringing your sacrifice with you. But first, you needed to exchange your money. The universal Roman currency was not acceptable to the temple authorities, due to its low silver content. But the Romans did not permit the Jews to mint their own coins; so, the temple authorities had secured an arrangement by which they could use Tyrian coins, which had a high silver content, but which bore the image of the Canaanite god Baal, or Beelzebub. I guess you choose which hill you are prepared to die on, and which compromise you are prepared to live with. Money changers, animal wranglers; in this market you could also buy tours of the temple complex (various levels of access), and souvenirs to enable you to take the encounter with God home with you—with proceeds going towards running costs. None of these things are bad things. Indeed, the system worked acceptably well enough for those for whom it worked; but it did so at a cost. And the largest cost was borne by outsiders who wanted to come and take part, by those who were not part of the congregation of Israel, who were forced to fit in where they could, and be grateful.

In the other Gospel accounts, Jesus disrupts this space at the very end of his ministry; but in John’s Gospel, he does so at the very outset. His first public act is to disrupt the status quo. He ‘causes a scene,’ behaving in such a way that demands the social contract of Acceptable Behaviour in a Given Setting be restored: I can almost see the veins throbbing in the necks of those looking on, apoplectic. And I wonder, how would Jesus kick off, make a scene, in this place? What ways of doing things, that work for us, make it hard for those who are beyond the congregation to draw near to God, in this place? What, for that matter, distracts us from hearing Jesus speak, and responding with faithful obedience?

The past year has been extremely disruptive to our patterns of worship. It might even feel like we have been driven out, that all the familiar tables, the patterns and structures that help us approach God with confidence, have been tipped over. Coming back into this space, and finding it not the familiar space we long for, may be less than comforting. And yet, in all this, Jesus comes to us with both invitation and challenge. The invitation is no less than to see his body raised up in God’s new beginning, the resurrection life of the Church. The challenge is that we will need to let go of our preconceptions, and die to a past that was beautiful in its time. Now is not a moment to restore things just as they were, but to recognise Jesus in our midst—the one in whom the partition wall between Jew and Gentile, between insiders and outsiders, has been torn down. Now is the time to take up our cross and die to self, to embrace the foolishness and the weakness of God—stumbling-block though that is to those of us who are ‘the new Israel.’

Perhaps, with the best will in the world, we overcomplicate it all. Perhaps we just need to throw the doors open, and invite everyone we meet to come in; not offering answers to life’s unanswerable questions, but room within the mystery of divine love.