Lectionary readings: 1 Kings 8.22-30 and Matthew 21.12-16
There’s
a story in the Gospels of Jesus going to the Temple at Jerusalem, and, finding
it filled with money changers, drives them out so forcibly that it is presented
as an exorcism.
It
helps to know some things about the Temple.
Firstly,
the Temple was a deeply symbolic architecture, a representation on earth of the
ordering of the cosmos. The Temple was a series of concentric spaces around the
Holy of Holies, God’s house on earth, not because God needed or could be
contained within a house, but for people’s sake, a visual representation.
Around this was, first, space for the priests, mediators between God and
humanity. Then space for Jewish men, representatives of their families. Then
space for Jewish women. It should be noted that distance from the centre does
not imply that most men are less holy or important or valued than priests, or
that women are any less holy or important or valued than men, and more than
Earth is less holy or important or valued than Mercury or Venus for being further
from the sun at the centre of our solar system. While misogyny twists what is
good, in our rightful calling out of misogyny we should not fall into the error
of antisemitism. The Jewish women surround the Jewish men because they are the
mothers who birth the community into existence, and the warriors given by God
to deliver the people from their enemies. Beyond the space for the women was
space for the Gentiles, non-Jews who chose to worship the Jewish God, and whose
presence at the outer edge of the Temple was prophetically symbolic of a time
when all the surrounding nations would come to worship.
Just
as many people come to church today, people came to the Temple to mark
significant moments in their personal or communal lives. And when they came,
they brought an offering, usually an animal or a crop. This was blessed by the
priest, killed (if an animal), prepared, and eaten, sometimes as a family,
sometimes as a wider community, sometimes including the priests, in much the
same way that those who come to church for a funeral, christening or wedding go
on to a wake or reception, to which the vicar is often invited. What people
brought was weighted according to means, but at the heart of coming to the
Temple was coming to celebrate God’s goodness, and the principle was that all
who participated, contributed.
Over
the centuries, Jewish communities spread out beyond the boundaries of Israel.
This resulted in a logistical problem for pilgrims. If you are travelling to
Jerusalem from, say, Alexandria, it isn’t easy to bring a sheep along. And so, at
some point, animals were made available on arrival. At some point, someone also
decided that pilgrims couldn’t buy these animals with common currency but would
have to exchange their money for Temple currency. This is understandable when
you recall that the Greeks had desecrated the Temple. Those who operated the
bureau de change may well have added a small commission, but there is no
evidence that they were exploiting pilgrims. They had, however, spilled into
the court of the Gentiles. When Jesus declares to the money changers and
sellers of doves—the poor person’s offering—that, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer [for all
nations]”; but you are making it a den of robbers’ it is likely his objection
was that they had stolen the house of prayer from the nations.
Jesus says that they are making the house of prayer
into a den of robbers, or cave of bandits. This is an interesting choice of
words. It was king David who had first wanted to build a Temple at Jerusalem
for God. But before he was king in Jerusalem, David had been king of outlaws or
bandits hiding in a cave; and God told him that he had too much blood on his
hands; instead, his son Solomon would be the one to build the first Temple. That
had been destroyed, a second Temple built, and later significantly extended;
even so, space was at a premium, and it was the nations who were missing out. Perhaps
the import of Jesus’ words was that, like David, their heart was in the right
place, but they weren’t going about it in God’s way.
The immediate effect of the exorcism is that the
blind and the lame receive healing, and children shout for joy.
When we come to God’s house to thank God for his
goodness, the grace and mercy we have received, the blessings we enjoy,
everyone is meant to bring their contribution. God’s house, wherever it may be,
is a house of prayer, for all nations. We come bringing not sheep or doves or
grain but—first and foremost—prayer. And the space in which we do that can be
stolen, encroached upon. What might Jesus want to exorcise from his Church
today?
One of the things that often needs to be exorcised
is our perfectionism, which has little to do with doing all things well and
much to do with our own narrow view of how things should be done. Too often
people have had the confidence to pray in public stolen from them by church
leaders or fellow members who have passed judgement on their offering, as not
being acceptable: ‘Those prayers were lame!’ Too often people have been
disabled, rather than enabled. Too often those who are inexperienced—those who
are children in what they bring, who have not yet learnt the sober and at times
sombre ways of Getting It Right—are overly-corrected, told what to say, made to
read out prayers written by someone else. This, too, is a disabling and not an
enabling.
But when Jesus comes into the Temple, he turns over
tables. He disrupts business as usual. He sees with fresh eyes and acts with
strong limbs, in such a way that others are empowered to praise, to bring their
previously silenced contribution to the party.
Exorcisms are concerned with restoring things to
their rightful place in order that no one is trespassed upon by anyone else. In
Jesus, there is room for all. Sometimes we just need things to be shaken up to
rediscover it. Sometimes, we resent it, as if leaving room for others will mean
less room for ourselves. But it doesn’t work like that. And Jesus will exorcise
us until we discover him to be true.
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