Posts Tagged ‘destruction of the Temple’

Where is God’s house? Cleansing of the Temple

March 2, 2024

Lent 3 – 2024

John 2:13-22

Marian Free

May we respond to God’s word by loving God with all our hearts and all with our souls and with all our minds. Amen.

There can be nothing more certain than the resistance that is offered when a church is threatened with closure or the resentment that results from the same[1]. Even though members of the congregation may be able to articulate the belief that the church is the people not the building, emotions run strong when their place of worship is threatened with closure. The congregation may be a shadow of its former self, there may be several other churches within easy driving distance, their priest may be overworked and there may be better uses to which the resources might be put, but they will be able to come up with all kinds of reasons as to why the building must be retained. If a church is closed there will be a number of reactions. In the worst-case scenario. the “offended” parties will no longer attend worship anywhere. Some will join a different community, but never really integrate and a few will hold the view that God is not in the building and will fully engage in the life of the community which they find themselves.

Churches (the buildings) become so much more than a place of worship. They hold memories of baptisms, weddings, and funerals, of shared joys and sorrows not to mention memorials in the form of windows and other furnishings. There is the history that the building shares with the community in which it finds itself. Some feel that all this will be lost if the physical building is moved or becomes the property of someone else.

Today’s gospel is about a building. The Temple was the focus of all Jewish worship and ritual. It housed the Holy of Holies which was entered only once a year on the Feast of Atonement and was a visible sign of God’s presence with God’s people[2].

Interestingly, the author of the gospel of John, introduces the Temple at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  According to the Synoptic writers, Jesus goes to Jerusalem only once and that at the end of his ministry.  John has Jesus visit Jerusalem three times and he brings the ‘cleansing of the Temple” forward from Jesus’ last week on earth, making it his first public action. Each gospel includes this event, but there are several differences between John and the other gospel writers apart from the timing. John’s account is longer and includes different OT quotes and a discussion with the Jews about the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple. It is only in John’s gospel that Jesus speaks of the temple of his body. Most significant perhaps is that in John’s version, Jesus fashions a whip out of cords and uses it to drive the traders and moneychangers out of the Temple. This is a very deliberate and quite violent act. Jesus loses his temper, but he is controlled enough to make a weapon.  

We cannot be certain why John moves this event, or why he adds the details that he does, but we can see that by moving it to the beginning of the gospel, he introduces a sense of foreboding that hangs over the gospel as a whole. Jesus has offended the whole religious establishment by his actions and from now on his life will be in danger. At the same time, the author has (at the beginning) alluded to the end of the story – Jesus will die, but three days later he will rise. (Allusions to Jesus’ death and resurrection permeate this gospel). Another theme that occurs here for the first time is the idea that in some way Jesus will replace the Temple and the Jewish festivals.  (“He was speaking of the temple of his body.”)

This latter theme is significant because at the time the gospels are written the Temple – that centre of Jewish faith and practice – had been destroyed. Those who believed in Jesus (and those who did not) had to work out how it was possible to continue to worship God and to practice their faith when there was no longer anywhere to make offering and to gather together to celebrate God’s past actions. – the Passover, the Festival of lights, 

The Pharisees concluded that the way forward lay in the law and so Rabbinic Judaism was born. The Johannine community believed that neither the law nor the Temple were needed to be in a relationship with God. Jesus’ body is the Temple, there is need for anyone or anything to mediate between the believer and God. In other words, this gospel writer eases the grief and addresses the confusion and trauma. of those who are lost without the Temple. He makes it clear that there is no longer any need for a physical Temple and no need for the various rituals that made one right with God.

Given how different John’s account of the cleansing of the Temple is, one wonders if it is possible that Jesus’ anger here reflects the author’s frustration with those who are tied to a building not a living faith; with those who are looking back with longing rather than forward to God’s future; or with those who continue to believe that God is found only in one place.

We will never know why John changed the story, but we can still allow the story to challenge us. 

Are we so attached to our church building that we cannot imagine practicing our faith anywhere else? Are we guilty of looking back to a past that is no more, or are we waiting expectantly to see what God will do next? Do we place our confidence in places and rituals or in a relationship with the living God? 

Is there anything about our practice of the faith that would drive Jesus to distraction?

[1] That said, when I was a Parish priest I oversaw the closure of a church, which was managed with grace.

[2] Synagogues were places of meeting, teaching, and discussion – worship and ritual happened in the Temple.

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A Jewish Christian view

June 17, 2017

Pentecost 2 – 2017

Matthew 9:35-10:42[1]

Marian Free

In the name of God who reveals Godself to us in many and varied ways. Amen.

Thanks to the interruption of Lent and Easter, you may be forgiven if you had forgotten that this is the Year of Matthew. What that means is that just as we travelled through Luke last year, so this year we will make a journey through the gospel of Matthew. Matthew has many distinctive characteristics that will, I hope become obvious as we work our way through the passages set for the remainder of the year. Today I’d like to provide a broad bush stroke of some of the characteristics that set Matthew apart from Mark and Luke.

By way of reminder, it is believed that the first gospel to be written is the one that we know as the Gospel according to Mark. Within a decade, Luke and Matthew put quill to papyrus and composed their own accounts. To do this both Matthew and Luke used the gospel of Mark extensively. They have also used a common source that scholars have named Q. At the same time Luke and Matthew include material that is unique to them. In the first 12 chapters Matthew relies heavily on Q after which he follows Mark quite closely. Material that is unique to Matthew includes the parable of the 10 maidens and the parable of the sheep and the goats.

In trying to come to grips with Matthew’s gospel it is important to understand something of the background situation. The gospel is written, we think, for a Jewish Christian community in the 80’s of the first century. That is, it is written after the Jewish revolt that led the destruction of Jerusalem and, more importantly, the destruction of the Temple. The Temple was not only a symbol of unity and the liturgical centre of the Jewish faith; it was also the place where God met the people and the place in which reconciliation with God was possible. Without a Temple, the Jews had to rethink who they were and how they would continue as a people of faith.

Fortunately, the Pharisees, with their scepticism in regard to the Temple and their emphasis on the oral law, were well placed to step into the vacuum. In fact it can be argued that without them Judaism might have fallen into disarray and eventual decline. Instead their practice and teaching led to the development of rabbinic Judaism with its focus on the interpretation of the law. One consequence of this development was that there was less tolerance of difference and this included their fellow Jews who believed that Jesus was the one sent by God for their salvation.

Matthew’s community, that consisted of Jews who believed in Jesus also had to re-think who they were – in relation to the law and in relation to their ancestral religion that no longer held them to be members. Who were they in this vastly changed environment and how would they govern their life together? This search for identity and meaning explains what appears to be an over-emphasis on the law in Matthew’s gospel. While the Pharisees were building a new look for the Jewish people based on the law, the Jews who believed in Jesus had to determine what their relationship with that law would be. In the light of their relationship with Jesus, would they abandon the law altogether, would they transform the law or would they keep the law more rigidly even than the Pharisees?

In respect to the community’s relationship with Judaism, the author of Matthew’s gospel is determined to assert that faith in Jesus is not only consistent with Judaism but that Jesus is firmly rooted in Judaism. In the introduction, Matthew’s genealogy makes it clear that Jesus is descended from Abraham (the founder of the Judaism) and of David (from whom the Messiah was to come). What is more, over and over again (explicitly and implicitly) Matthew makes it clear that Jesus is not only the fulfilment of the Old Testament promises but he replaces the Temple as the way in which the people are reconciled to God.

Because the law and its interpretation take centre stage in this gospel; Jesus is presented as the new Moses – the one who gives the law and who interprets the law.

Just as significant as the setting of the gospel is the way in which Matthew has organised his account. Matthew takes the material that is available to him and arranges it in a way that sayings and stories that have a common theme are gathered together in the same place. It is possible to discern five distinct discourses or sermons each of which concludes: “when Jesus had finished saying these things”. The parables of growth are found in chapter 13, teaching about community life is located in chapter 18 and instructions for the disciples in chapter 10. Accounts of Jesus’ healing and casting out demons are concentrated in chapters 8 and 9.

Today’s reading bridges two sections of the gospel – it concludes the accounts of Jesus’ healing ministry and leads into Jesus’ instructions for the Twelve, the second of the five discourses. Interestingly, the setting for this sermon is very similar to that of the Sermon on the Mount – Jesus is going about Galilee proclaiming the kingdom the curing disease. On this occasion, instead of Jesus’ healing being followed by teaching, Jesus’ compassion for the crowds is followed by action, that extends his ability to respond. He summons the twelve and equips them to cast out unclean spirits and to cure every disease and sickness. In other words, they are authorised to all that Jesus does.

The discourse continues by telling the twelve how they are to go and what they can expect along the way, but the lectionary makes us wait till next week for that.

Matthew’s gospel is a rich treasure trove to be examined and explored. It reveals an aspect of early church development that we find nowhere else and it presents a view of Jesus that is both similar to and different from that of the other gospels. For the remainder of the year we will be working our way through Matthew’s Gospel. Can I encourage you to read the gospel for yourselves, to have the courage to question it and to tease out things that you do not understand? Let us take this journey together – tell me if my explanations are not clear and share with me the parts that you find difficult or incomprehensible. As we probe the text together we will discover more about what make Matthew’s gospel distinct and why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] The reading for the day is much shorter, but the sermon gives an overview of the chapter.

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