Sermon Library
“Jesus and the Temple”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
March 02, 2008
Service Theme: Lent IV 2008
Lent IV – 2008 March 2, 2008
Jesus and the Temple
The Ark of the Covenant
Tonight on the History Channel there will be aired a new program entitled The Lost Ark of the Covenant. It will feature an archeologist and writer named Tudor Parfitt who has previously demonstrated a Jewish lineage in, of all places, Zimbabwe, Africa. This has led him to investigate further and has since discovered a type of clay container in a storeroom of a museum in Zimbabwe. The pot is only dated to be in the 8th century CE, but Tudor Parfitt believes it to be a replacement by the people who would have held the lineage of the so called original Ark of the Covenant. Parfitt claims to have good historical and scientific data. This documentary on the History Channel should be interesting.
New Biblical Research and Technology
What is also interesting is the amount of research and discovery that is going on today regarding biblical stories. There are a number of factors that account for this interest and research. I think we are always interested in religion and spirituality by simply being human beings. And today’s technology and computers create greater communication and cross referencing unprecedented in any other time of history. As I have always said, understandings of religion changes and evolves over the centuries. I do believe we are living in very interesting times as we begin this new millennium. I guess all times in history are interesting times, but advanced technology is a relatively new concept. Bill Gates has stated that the computer will change the world in an even bigger way than the printing press changed the world during the last millennium.
The Last Week and Two Processions
Finding out more about our actual Biblical history is most fascinating. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan are two historians doing this today. It has been interesting to read one of their latest books entitled Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem during these few weeks before Easter. Last week I talked about the contrast between two processions entering Jerusalem for Passover. One was the procession of Pontius Pilate complete with cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, and the band of drummers. This procession represented the militant Roman domination over Jerusalem. There existed in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus political oppression and economic exploitation. Unfortunately there was also some religious legitimation of such oppression and exploitation due to complicity by some of the Jewish aristocracy and hierarchy in partial collaboration with the Roman government and the authority of the Jewish temple.
In direct contrast to this dominating, militant and authoritative procession was the humble procession of Jesus on a donkey entering Jerusalem with simple palms and branches being waved to show respect to a servant of the Lord. His procession was a direct contrast to the dominating Pontius Pilate procession. Jesus advocated equality, compassion, justice and peace for the masses of people in Jerusalem. Pilate and Herod wanted to maintain control and affluence for themselves and selected others at the expense of the common people. One of Jesus’ purposes in Jerusalem was to change such separation and inequality. By the end of the week Jesus was crucified for interrupting the status quo and the holdings of the ruling rich, mostly Roman and some Jewish.
The Next Day and a Fig Tree
After Jesus entered Jerusalem on a Sunday, he entered the temple on a Monday. On the way Jesus passed by a fig tree. When he approached the fig tree, he discovered nothing but leaves. So he said to the fig tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Jesus has always been critical of plants or vines which do not bear fruit. This particular parable exists to introduce the next well known passage in Mark during the last week of Jesus.
The Next Day and Entering the Temple
The very next verse in Mark is “Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? but you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.”
Turning of the Tables
There is something unique and attractive about this particular passage. I think most of us like it. Jesus is primarily portrayed as the premier pacifist. We have so many docile descriptions of Jesus and make him out to be a sedentary saint. But in this report about his presence in the temple during the beginning of Passover, we find a very real and very human Jesus who gets mad just like us. Much of the time it is hard to identify with the perfectionistic persona of Jesus, but now we can with his very human reaction upon entering the temple and discovering such sacrilege. We want to cheer Jesus on and say, “All right Jesus, go for it, throw those hypocrites out, we’re with you and completely identify with you. We get mad as well.” It is almost as though we can use this passage to justify any of our anger or so called “righteous indignation.”
Traditional Interpretation
We typically and traditionally interpret this popular passage as Jesus being angry at people using and abusing the temple to sell their wares for personal and selfish profit. And the people who were exchanging money for foreigners to pay taxes during Passover were doing so at an illegal profit. And they were also selling doves for the temple sacrifices. We have used this popular text to discredit the concept of sacrifice. Jesus was mad about all of this and so mad that he allowed his anger or righteous indignation to be seen by all.
New Intepretation
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan provide a more specific and historical perspective to this passage which places this incident in a different light and greater understanding. They say that the fig tree illustration just before this report of Jesus entering the temple is a specific prelude to the point of the temple. Just as the fig tree did not produce real fruit so also did the people at the temple not produce real fruit.
According to Borg and Crossan the concept of animal or blood sacrifice was not a bad thing and a most acceptable way of relating to God at the time. Sacrifice is a common yet complicated concept historically and contemporarily. The etymology of the term sacrifice is from the Latin sacrum facere. The word “facere” means “to make.” The word “sacrum” means sacred. The word sacrifice simply means to “make sacred.” Borg and Crossan do not believe Jesus’ anger was over the selling of doves to be sacrificed. Nor do they think it was necessarily over the money changers because they were providing a necessary service as taxes needed conversion to Roman coinage. And it would be customary to do this in the temple square for it was considered both a holy temple and a Roman seat.
Instead Borg and Crossan focus in the term “house of prayer” taken from Isaiah and the term “den of robbers” more than likely borrowed from Jeremiah. Jeremiah has made accusations about worshipping without practice. He writes, “If you truly amend your ways and your doing, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever . . . Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight.” (Jeremiah 7: 5-7, 11)
In this context the meaning of the phrase “den of robbers” is pretty clear. The people’s everyday injustice makes them robbers, and they think the temple is their safe house, den, hideaway, or place of security. The temple is not the place where the robbery occurs, but the place the robbers go for refuge.”
“Jeremiah is not inventing anything new with that indictment. There was an ancient prophetic tradition in which God insisted not just on justice and worship, but on justice over worship. God had repeatedly said as reported by the prophet, ‘I reject your worship because of your lack of justice,’ but never, ‘I reject your justice because of your lack of worship.’”
Jesus would have been well aware of this relatively recent prophecy of Micah. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6: 6-8)
Jesus’ primary concern was not necessarily the exchange of money, the selling of doves or this even being conducted in the temple square, but it was the lack of justice and equality. People perform sacrifices, but do not practice compassion. This is why the symbol of the fig tree immediately before the scene at the temple is purposeful by Mark. The fig tree and the temple coalesce. The tree was shut down for lack of the fruit Jesus demanded – and so also was the temple shut down for the lack of deeds after words.
“There is nothing wrong with prayer and sacrifice – they are commanded in Torah. That is not the problem. But God is a God of justice and righteousness and when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God’s temple – or, for us today, God’s church. Jesus’s action in the temple was a symbolic fulfillment of Jeremiahs’ prophetic threat about its divine destruction if worship substituted for justice.”
The Entrance Into Jerusalem Along With The Entrance Into The Temple
Combining the meaning of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and then his entrance into the temple, Borg and Crossan conclude that “those action-word combinations proclaim the already present kingdom of God against both the already present Roman Imperial power and the already present Jewish high-priestly collaboration. Jerusalem had to be retaken by a nonviolent messiah rather than by a violent revolution, and the temple ritural had to empower justice rather than excuse one from it. What is involved for Jesus is an absolute criticism not only of violent domination, but any religious collaboration with it. In that criticism, Jesus stands with the prophets of Israel such as Zechariah for the anti-imperial entry against violence and Jeremiah for the anti-temple action against injustice, but he also stands against those forms of Christianity that were used throughout the centuries to support imperial violence and injustice.”
Peace and Justice
Peace and justice, righteousness and compassion, have always been essential themes throughout the Hebrew testaments and in the life of Jesus. It is significant to have Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan place the passion of Holy Week within historical, political and contextual perspective. It brings greater meaning to the life of Jesus. An important part of Jesus’ life was to, shall I say, remind people of their religious tradition and spiritual faith.
Without minimizing anyone’s belief in Easter and even Resurrection, we might consider not minimizing the message of Easter to only meaning “On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Borg and Crossan historically explain the cultural conflicts between Jesus and the authorities. What happens if we consider the politics of Jesus as importantly as we do the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus?
Jesus spoke much more about establishing the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven on earth than he did about resurrection. In fact, he spoke about it one hundred more times if you count them up in all four gospels. Is it possible that Palm Sunday and Holy Week are as much, if not more, about peace and justice, than dying for sins and resurrection? I am beginning to believe it is and it should make a difference in how we live today and not just where we will be later. What do you think? Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611
http://www.aspenchapel.org