In the name of God . . .

Perhaps it’s a problem with the genre – it’s often difficult to read action and suspense into a translation of a two thousand year old Greek text – but I’ve always wondered why no one seems to get too excited about the chaos Jesus causes in today’s Gospel. . If we envision the story like a movie, we are faced with something that appears almost comical, sort of like Monte Python or a British Sitcom.

The scene opens as Jesus and the disciples are making their way to the temple in Jerusalem. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the crowds are gathering – its going to be a great Passover. When they enter the gates, however, the top comes off. Without warning, Jesus starts yelling and screaming and making a fuss. And where are the disciples? They rush right in beside him, right? No, they just stand there – thinking about scripture. Peter strokes his beard and nods in agreement, James and John share a knowing glance, Andrew, quietly remembers, "Oh yeah, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me,’ now I get it."

The action continues: There’s Jesus driving away the flocks and turning over the tables. And here comes the temple authorities – but they seem to be in no hurry, they simply walk up and politely ask him to explain himself.

We pan back to Jesus – still seething, still puffing and sweating. He looks right into the camera and says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." There is a tense, uncomfortable pause. "Oh, don’t be silly," the Jews respond, totally oblivious to the audacity of Jesus’ statement, "This temple has been under construction for 46 years . . . there’s no way you could do it all by yourself in just three." Even the narrator of the scene seems to be totally divorced from the magnitude of the story as he calmly gives his voice-over "But he was speaking of the temple of his Body." Fade and Cut.

I can’t help but think that we have a tendency, as modern readers of the Gospel, to get caught-up in the same kind of nonchalance about this story that the supporting actors are portrayed as having. The violence, the recklessness and strong language fade into the background when this story is removed from its position in the escalating drama of Holy Week. Seen as simply another day in the early career of Jesus – remember, this is only the second chapter of John and we are only in the 3rd week of Lent – the story of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple can appear somewhat tame: an object lesson or passion prediction at best, there’s nothing to get too upset about here.

Or maybe there is . . .

Let’s back up for a moment. What I want to challenge us to do this morning is to not be satisfied with the same old reading of this story. I want us to remain, if even for a few moments, in the tense space which this story creates for its readers. This is a story about Jesus – that we’re sure of – but this is not the Jesus that we have come to know and love to this point in the Church year. This is neither the long expected priest-king of Advent nor the cuddly babe in swaddling clothes of Christmas. He is neither miracle working Jesus of Epiphany nor the great and glorious transfigured Son of God from just a few weeks ago. This is not the fasting Jesus who did battle with the Devil in the wilderness and it certainly isn’t the triumphant, regal, victorious Son of David that we follow on Palm Sunday.

When Jesus comes on the scene in today’s gospel lesson, he is somehow rougher, and grittier than we have experienced him before. He is certainly more violent that we have known: perhaps even more dangerous and reckless than we would like. When he enters the Temple, he does something completely out of the ordinary. He does not conform to what one would expect from reading along in the Gospel narrative. Yesterday he was turning water into wine at Cana in Galilee, today, seemingly without warning, he is on some kind of maniacal rampage. And not only that, he seems to be actively rejecting everyone’s attempts to make meaning out of the chaos he creates.

His disciples look on, perhaps embarrassed, but with a certain sense of amused understanding. He was their teacher, so they might just have figured that this was some kind of visual example or object lesson for their edification. But there would be no "teaching time" alone with the disciples today, not like the ones we get elsewhere in the Gospels.

Similarly, the temple authorities knew about prophets and their so-called prophetic actions – like Hosea marrying the harlot or Jeremiah donning the yoke. They had most likely dealt with more than one wanna-be prophet in their time and while they were probably annoyed at Jesus, they just wanted to wait him out. Some kind of proclamation was sure to follow. But again, there would be no grand "Amen, Amen I say to you" proclamation of how this particular rampage is like the kingdom of God or a symbol of the end of the age.

There is only Jesus, hulking, sweating, seething, wielding his whip of chord and crying out: "Destroy this temple." But they think he’s just being silly.

"Destroy this temple!" he shouts to his disciples. But they’re to busy trying to decode the metaphor.

"Destroy this temple," Jesus proclaims across the ages; to you and to me.

"Destroy this temple," Jesus is pleading. But what does he mean?

For one thing, he is not just threatening the status quo of second-temple cult in 1st century Jerusalem. Neither is he simply embedding clues in the narrative that will show his omniscience when we get to the end. He is pleading with us not to fall into the trap that the others in the story did: Not to try and fit him into a mold of our own creation and not to rest on our pre-conceived notions of who Jesus is and how he does what he does.

But we do it anyway, don’t we? Sure, it starts out innocently enough – we can all list half a dozen ways that Jesus is talked about in the Bible. And if we really try, we could even add a few more from our own experience. Where this becomes a problem, however, is when these images and metaphors become too static, too real for us. When Jesus becomes only the babe and never the revolutionary, only the king and never the victim, then we become fixed in our ways and the tools that we use to talk about the infinite God become idols for us. We worship the image rather than the reality, our understanding rather than the revelation, the Temple rather than the God who agrees to meet us there.

So Jesus calls out to us, "Destroy this temple." Let go of your so-called understandings and your preconceived notions. Pull down your mental images and your idols. Seek after me while I may be found.

Beloved in Christ, in this season of Lent, the Church calls us to an attitude of self-reflection and discipline. We are asked, during these forty days to take stock of our lives, to remove those things which distance us from the love of God and to prepare ourselves, with fasting and works of charity for the coming Paschal Feast. In addition to all of the giving up and taking on that we do, I think Jesus is also calling us to something more subtle, but equally powerful. He is calling us to take stock of our relationship with him. To give up our idolatrous, partial notions of what he means for us and to examine carefully the ways in which we try to conform the infinite love of God to our own limited notions and desires.

This is not an easy task. The understandings that we have about Jesus are deep-seated and they lie very close to the core of who we are as Christians. Like the Temple in the Old Jerusalem, they have been built over many years and to purposefully tear them down is a risky proposition. But for our effort, Jesus has promised us a great reward. If we labor to bring down the temple of our own understanding, he has promised to remake it for us; to come to us and to show us, in the glory of his resurrection, the truth of who he really is. Then we, like the New Jerusalem, will have no need of any temple any more, for the true Christ will be in us and he will be our light, he will be our strength and he will be our understanding. We will no longer be bound to our preconceptions and our feeble facsimiles of the truth, we will no longer sit and wait for a teaching or a sign of the kingdom, God will be among us. Our time of sack-cloth and ashes will be over and we will truly celebrate the eternal feast of the resurrection.

"Destroy this temple," he said, "and in three days, I will rebuild it."

AMEN