Destroy This Temple

Jesu Juva

St. John 2:13-22                                                                    

March 7, 2021

Lent 3B                                                        

 Dear saints of our Savior ~

          What’s gotten into Jesus?  I mean, how often do we see the Savior with a whip of cords in his hand, driving both man and beast from the temple, overturning tables and scattering coins and currency helter-skelter?  As unusual as this behavior is, it fits right in with all riots and demonstrations we’ve seen in this past year.  Is this “social justice Jesus?”  He even makes a veiled threat about “destroying” the temple—the most sacrosanct structure on the face of the earth.  Is Jesus inciting a rebellion?  Hardly.  The way of Jesus is never the way of riots or rebellion.  Jesus was never rebellious; but zealous?  Yes, indeed.  His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

          It’s that house—the house of God—the Temple in Jerusalem—that holds the key to understanding the Savior’s unusual exuberance.  The Passover of the Jews was at hand, after all, and that meant that the temple was doing a brisk business.  Pilgrims from all over the world were arriving in town.  The moneychangers and the sellers of sacrificial animals were actually providing a needed and necessary service. So why did Jesus get so worked up about this?  Why does He say, “Get these things out of here; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade?”

          The other gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) might give us a clue.  For when they write about this event (assuming Jesus only cleansed the temple once) they record Jesus saying that His Father’s house had been turned into a “den of robbers.”  We know what robbers are; but what is a robbers’ “den?”  The robbers’ den is not the place where the crime is committed.  The robbers’ den is where the robbers hide out once they have fled the scene of the crime.  The robbers’ den is their “safe house,” their hideout.  The robbers’ den is where the bad guys go to put distance between themselves and the long arm of the law.

          It was actually the prophet Jeremiah centuries earlier who first accused God’s people of turning the temple into a robbers’ den (Jer. 7:11).  That’s because the people were living lives of crime.  They were routinely breaking and ignoring God’s Law as summarized in the Ten Commandments.  And when they did bother to show up at the temple, it was all for show.  It was just an exercise in hypocrisy.  They didn’t go to the temple to confess their crimes and seek God’s pardon.  They viewed the temple as a kind of good luck charm.  The temple meant that God was dwelling with them—that God was on their side—that they had a get-out-of-jail-free card.  It gave them a false sense of security and complacency.  They thought they could continue their comfortable lives of crime and sin, go through the motions at the temple and say a few prayers, and then go right back to their sinful living.

          Are you following me so far?  Jesus called the temple a “den of robbers.”  And a den of robbers is where the bad guys go to hide out and feel safe—even as they plot and plan and scheme for future crimes and victims.  The temple had become a magical good luck charm, which had nothing to do with sin or faith or forgiveness.  The temple had simply become a safe house for unrepentant sinners.  And Jesus says—emphatically—“This cannot be.”  Nothing fires up the zeal of Jesus more than when people misuse God’s gifts, including the temple.

          It’s all a good reminder—and a fair warning—for us who gather regularly in this temple.  Our doors, of course, are wide open to criminals of every stripe.  Sinners are welcome here.  Murderers, adulterers, robbers, liars, the greedy—those are the kinds of folks who regularly occupy the pews in this place.  But this place can never serve as a sinners’ “den.”  This temple can never be merely a hideout for the guilty—a religious oasis between crime sprees where you can toss some coins and currency in the offering plate and say a few prayers and then head off to find your next victim.  That’s using the temple as a talisman—the church as a good luck charm. 

          And that, dear hearers of the Word, is faithless religion—fake religion, phony religion, pseudo-spirituality.  And nothing makes Jesus angrier.  Sinners are welcome here, it’s true; but what sinners are welcome to do here is to confess their sins—to give them up and hand them over—to plead guilty as charged—and to look in faith to the only man who can take our sins and crimes and bear them all away.  There’s nothing fake or phony about that.  That’s faith.  That’s repentance.  That’s what this temple is for.  That’s why you are here.

          Jesus drove out all those sacrificial animals because He Himself would be the ultimate sacrifice—the once and for all atoning sacrifice for sin.  He’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  And in today’s Holy Gospel God’s Lamb had come to His temple.  And God’s Lamb brooks no competition.  He turns the tables on the whole religious system of Israel.  The blood of goats and bulls and pigeons cannot cleanse from sin; but the blood of this Lamb does just that.  Jesus wanted to make clear that the time of sacrifice was coming to an end.  He was about to put the whole system out of business, when the Lamb of God would land on a cross for the life of the world—once and for all.

          “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” Jesus said.  Those who heard Jesus thought He was referring to the building—to Herod’s temple which had taken forty-six years to build.  What Jesus said made no sense.  Unless “he was speaking about the temple of his body.”  The temple, which was God’s dwelling place on earth—God’s presence among His people—that temple was soon to be vacant, empty—a temple without a divine tenant.  Jesus was shifting attention away from the building to His own body.  He, Jesus, is God in the flesh—God dwelling among His people, the place where heaven and earth intersect, where divinity and humanity are united, where God and man are reconciled.  That happens not through a building but through a body—the body of Jesus.

          Most religions have temples—buildings in which men try to reach God.  But only Christianity has a temple that is a human body—God reaching down to us—God with us.  Only Christianity claims a temple not made with human hands, but a human man who is the Son of God, who took on our humanity, that He might die in our place, rise from the dead on the third day, and give us eternal life in His name.  All religions have their temples.  Only Christianity has a temple built of human flesh and bone—the temple of Jesus’ body—through which God forgives us and loves us.

          So where do you go with your sins?  Where do you go when you’ve been crushed by the unbearable weight of God’s commandments?  Where do you go when your crimes catch up with you?  You go where Christ is—where His Word is preached and proclaimed, where the supper of His body and blood is served.  And there you will find the church—the body of Christ.  The church, properly speaking, is not a building, but a gathering—a gathering of sinners in the presence of Jesus.  It’s not a place to pretend to be good, but a place to confess our bad and receive all the good Jesus earned for us, when He died for all.

          Way back in the first centuries of Christianity, when the church was just starting out, if you were to go to Ephesus or Antioch or Corinth and ask where the church was, you wouldn’t be directed to a building.  Instead, you would be directed to a meeting place and a meeting time.  Go to such and such a house at sunset or sunrise, or whenever it was.  There you would find the church, the body of Christ, the temple of the living God—a temple not of bricks and mortar—but a place where two or three were gathered in the name of Jesus.

          History is probably going to repeat itself.  The day is probably going to come when nice church buildings like this one will no longer be possible—when taxation or persecution or some other threat we can’t yet see will make it necessary to abandon our buildings and to meet in less conspicuous places.  I’ll miss the sound of the pipe organ and the beauty of the stained glass.  But no matter where we end up, we will still have all that matters:  Jesus and His Word, His body and His blood, His holy baptism, and the Keys of the Kingdom.  Jesus will continue build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

          If you’re struggling to make sense of all this—if you lack understanding—that’s okay.  Jesus’ own disciples didn’t understand any of this until after Jesus was raised from the dead.  The temple of Jesus’ body was destroyed on Good Friday.  And “Christ crucified” is what we preach.  But after three days Jesus rose from the dead, never to die again.  Your body too is a temple—a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you.  Your body will also be destroyed in death.  But like the body of Jesus, your body will be raised and resurrected on the day of Jesus’ return—glorious and immortal—designed to live in fellowship forever with Jesus. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.