March 8, 2015
The Day the Tables Turned
by James McCrea
John 2:13-22
Our Gospel lesson today has to be on the list of the top ten Bible passages that have been widely misunderstood and misused. That’s quite an accomplishment since the competition to appear on that list has always been quite fierce.
Out gospel lesson has led to everything from awkward trips out of the sanctuary to the fellowship areas of a church in order to sell tickets to church-sponsored fund-raising events to outright bans on selling Girl Scout cookies in the church altogether. But those things are based on cultural misunderstandings. I really don’t think Jesus has anything against Thin Mint cookies.
This story is perhaps best known as the one time when Jesus apparently got fed up and popped his cork. I’ll bet any of you who’ve read this story before or heard someone talking about it — including me in some past sermons — have heard about Jesus’ anger in this story.
But there’s one problem with that. This story appears in all four gospels in one version or another, but none of them use any form of the word “anger” in their reports. The closest any of them comes is in John’s version — the one I just read to you. John quotes an Old Testament prophecy about consuming zeal for the Lord’s house. However, zeal is passion, not anger.
So if this story isn’t about exactly what we thought it was, what is it about? According to Mark’s version, Jesus overturns the tables of the moneychangers and drives the animals out on the day after his initial trip to the Temple. That would imply that Jesus’ attack was premeditated, not some overwhelming, impulsive reaction to unexpected conditions that make his emotions rage. Not to mention that he returns to the Temple each day that week until he was arrested and he apparently doesn’t bother either the animals or moneychangers again. Nor does he get arrested for causing this scene. So what gives? Don Hoffman explains the story with these slightly-modified words:
- “I used to assume that Jesus drives all the animals out of the temple, and turns over all the tables in the whole place. But wait, the temple grounds are huge. We should be imagining something like the [Dubuque] County Fairgrounds. We should be imagining something like [Kennedy] Mall. It’s going to take Jesus all day to drive out all the animals. It’s going to take at least a couple hours just to find all the tables to knock over. And that’s assuming he can move easily through the crowds.
“And come to think of it, where are all the temple guards? They should be converging from all over. Why don’t a couple burly shepherds just step up and grab Jesus and restrain him? Why don’t we have a huge John Wayne style fist fight, Jesus and the disciples against all the money changers?
“[…] imagine this: there’s four tables of money changers, and you’re sitting at number four. Jesus knocks over table one. Coins flying in all directions. Jesus knocks over table two. Table three. Then he comes to your table, and you pull your feet back so they don’t get stepped on and you [calmly] ask, ‘Jesus, why are you doing this?’ Is that all you do? I don’t think so.
“[…] There is something weird going on, and from two thousand years later, we’re not getting it. What’s really happening? What is Jesus really doing?
“Here’s a guess: when you read the stories of the Old Testament prophets, you see similar things going on. They name their kids awful names. They dress up weird, or they run around naked, or they do something to attract attention. And people ask them, why are you doing this? and then they deliver a sermon. They do some kind of attention-getting action, they do an object lesson, and follow it up with a sermon.
“My guess is that Jesus is acting like a prophet. He’s making a scene, gathering a crowd, acting out an object lesson, so he can follow up with a sermon. Of course, this is only an assumption, too, a really wild assumption, it could be dead wrong, but let’s follow it up and see where it leads.”
The first reason had to do with architecture. The Temple was constructed in the form of a series of progressively smaller rectangles that were designed to exclude more and more people from the holiest of places. The outer rectangle was the Court of the Gentiles — that was the only part of the Temple that non-Jews had access to.
Inside that, was the Court of the Women, then the Court of the Men and finally the inner sanctum that led to Holy of Holies. Clearly posted on every gate that led from the Court of the Gentiles to the Court of the Women was a warning that stated any non-Jew who dared to enter beyond the Court of the Gentiles would be put to death and the responsibility for that death would be their own.
Yet the Temple’s sacrificial system had transformed the only part of the Temple that Gentiles could use into a busy marketplace with bleating animals and loud commercial transactions, thus destroying worshipful atmosphere of the Gentile’s area. Ostensibly the market was located within the Temple walls in order to provide services for Temple worshippers. But the reality was that that location was designed to create a monopoly for the High Priest, who was in charge of market stalls.
Of course, anyone was allowed to bring their own animals into the Temple for sacrifice as long as those animals were without blemish. But somehow the inspectors appointed by the temple always managed to find at least a minor imperfection in every animal brought in from the outside. That meant the only alternative for worshippers was to purchase their animals from the Temple vendors.
And so, instead of paying the equivalent of two days’ wages for a pair of doves outside the Temple, their sacrifice might suddenly cost as much as 40 days’ wages inside. In fact, the cost of birds rose so rapidly during Jesus’ lifetime that a history of that era tells us that that women began lying about giving birth or even aborting their babies in order to avoid having to pay the punitive fees for the sacrifices required on behalf of newborns.
The Money Changers’ job was to make sure that no coins which violated the second commandment — the one that prohibited the making of idols — would enter into the heart of the Temple. The normal currency in Israel anywhere other than the Temple were Roman coins. However, those coins had an image of the emperor and an inscription that proclaimed him to be a god. Clearly that violated the Second Commandment, so they couldn’t be used for worship.
As a conquered country, Israel didn’t have right to mint their own coins and there were precious few in circulation that fit the Temple’s strict requirements. So the High Priest decided to use silver coins from the town of Tyre. Those coins were all stamped with an image of Tyre’s god, Heracles-Melqart; however, they had one important advantage over Roman coins. That is, they contained the greatest purity of silver of any coin available, so they were worth more than any alternative coin.
That fact alone should be enough to explain what had gone wrong in the Temple of Jesus’ time. But when you added in the inflated exchange rate and the exaggerated fees for changing money — in addition to the artificially-high cost of animals — you’ll discover that a single day’s stay in Jerusalem for one of the three major annual festivals could cost between $3,000 and $4,000 dollars in today’s money. That became a huge hardship for poor people.
All of those things combine to provide the immediate reasons for Jesus’ symbolic overturning of the Temple market stalls. The Temple system had become corrupted and was causing genuine harm in the lives of the people it was created to serve. Jesus was trying to draw attention to that corruption and its consequences.
But the long-term reason for his actions was beyond that. In spite of the way many Bibles label this story, it isn’t about cleansing the Temple system. It is about replacing it altogether. Quoting Rev. Hoffman again:
“It’s not that the sacrifice system depended on commercialism, it was commercial! It’s something the ancient Israelites borrowed from their neighbors, who burned sacrifices to feed their gods. I’ll burn a sacrifice, I’ll feed God, and then God will pay me back with something good. It’s a trade.
“I do something nice for God, and God does something nice for me. When we are burning sacrifices, the house of God can’t be anything else other than a marketplace. God is our trading partner. We and God are buying and selling things to each other. Tit for tat. I scratch God’s back, God scratches mine. It’s a marketplace. It’s a stock exchange. It’s a trading floor. God is locked into a cozy little arrangement. God is domesticated. God is commercialized.
“Jesus is not saying, This is over for a few hours, while you hunt your animals down and set your tables back up. Jesus is saying, This is over forever. […] Jesus is saying, God will not stand to be domesticated, God is not willing to be a trading partner. God is wild and God is sovereign and God is in control, not the religious establishment. This truly is about tearing the old temple down and building a new one, this is about death and resurrection. This is about the uncontrolled wildness of God. This is about grace.”
In place of the Temple system, Jesus offers himself. If you want forgiveness, look to the cross; if you want eternal life, look to the empty tomb; if you want to come into the presence of God, look to Jesus.
In him, old sins may be washed clean; in him, old habits may be broken; in him, old lives may be transformed; in him, death may be defeated; in him, resurrection may be found in the most dire of circumstances.
He is our sacrifice, our inspiration and our model for living. Let’s embrace Christ as the heart of our worship and our lives. Amen.
(Comments to Jim at jmccrea@galenalink.com.)