“Literally”

John 2:13-22
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Of all the misused words that we say every day, I think the most common is probably, “literally.” I literally can’t believe it. I am so hungry I could literally eat a cow. I have literally 1000 things on my to do list. We say it all the time, even though we really mean figuratively, but it’s so common that most of us ignore it when other people say it. We know what you mean. Unfortunately, it gets sticky when we start talking about the Bible and how we understand it. What do we mean if we say, “we interpret the Bible literally”? Do we mean that everything happened just as we imagine when reading it– seven 24-hour days of creation or literal walls of Jericho tumbling down? And what does it mean to take literally what Jesus had to say? If we’re being honest, a lot of what he said doesn’t make sense if we only take it “literally.” When I was in Seminary, I took a class on the book of Revelation and for an assignment, the professor had us all draw– as literally as possible– the throne room scene from Revelation 8. It should come as no surprise to you that we had as many different artistic interpretations as there were people in this class. “Literal” isn’t always as cut and dry as we like to think it is. There’s a misconception that taking the Bible seriously and authoritatively means interpreting it literally, but that’s not true and today’s scripture passage is a great example of that.

As you may have noticed, our gospel reading this morning is not from the book of Mark, where we’ve been for the rest of the year, but instead from the book of John. Unlike his synoptic counterparts, John tells a very different story about Jesus’ life and ministry. In John, the focus is on Jesus’ divine nature in a way that is quite different from the other three. Just listen to how it begins– “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” It’s quite different from Matthew’s genealogy or Mark’s call of John the Baptist, isn’t it? 

John tells a different story in a different order than Matthew, Mark, and Luke do and this is especially relevant in today’s story. In the synoptics, this event takes place on the Monday of Holy Week just before the Passover and Jesus’ crucifixion. However, in John, it’s his first major, public demonstration of his authority. Unlike the other three, in John, Jesus will visit Jerusalem on three different occasions but John 2 is his first time there. The context is crucial and, of course, the people who want to take the Bible “literally” have to try and make sense of how it could be both at the beginning and the end of Jesus’ ministry. Maybe he cleansed the temple twice, they say? No, I don’t think so. I think that John is telling a different kind of story. 

Jesus’ “cleansing of the temple” as the story is called is a dramatic scene with an angry Jesus. He pulls out a whip, overturns tables, and sets loose a surprising amount of livestock. I imagine it must have been a chaotic event that was told and retold throughout Jerusalem in the days and years to come. But why was there a marketplace in the temple to begin with? Well, that’s how the Temple sacrificial worship system worked. One of the ten commandments is that you “shall not make graven images” which is to say pictures of people or God. We often translate it as “idols” now, but back then, it meant that the Roman currency of the day couldn’t be used to give tithes and offerings at the temple because they had Caesar's face emblazoned on them. In the case of Caesar Augustus, it was even more of a problem because he called himself the “son of God.” And so, there were money changers who take your Roman coins and give you back shekels that could be used for your offering. Think of them like the currency exchange at the airport– they take a cut in the exchange rate but you get money you can actually use. Then, you would take your shekels and you would buy an animal to sacrifice– doves, sheep, goats, and cattle.

The sacrificial system was central to Jewish worship in Jesus’ time, but it’s important to know that John is a late text– written at the end of the 1st century CE– so by the time that it was written, the temple had already been destroyed. A worship system centered around worshiping and sacrificing in the Temple had already been dismantled and both Jewish and Christian communities were reeling as they tried to understand what right and ordered worship meant in a world without a temple. 

But back to the story– Jesus comes into the temple in a rage and flips over tables saying, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” I imagine the vendors at their ruined tables thinking, “What do you mean, ‘stop making it a marketplace? What else could it possibly be?” It would be like me storming into Fred Meyer and running over to the cash registers with a handmade whip saying, “stop making this a marketplace!! The food should be free!” Everyone would look at me like I’m crazy because exchanging money for food is the entire purpose of a grocery store. There is no store without economic transactions. The same was true for the temple– there was no sacrificial worship without animals and people came from all around Palestine to worship, so they couldn’t necessarily bring animals with them. They didn’t have non-Roman currency laying around and so the money changers were necessary to allow people to worship.

And yet, Jesus comes in and wrecks the place. If we take this story “literally” we get to a confusing spot where we think the point that Jesus is making is that money in the house of God is the problem. I see why we might make that interpretation but it’s probably because we confuse John’s account with the other 3, where Jesus says, “‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.’ But you have made it a den of robbers.” There, he clearly is upset about unjust financial practices, but not so here. In John, Jesus flips not just tables but our interpretation as well. 

The observers of this event are clearly baffled by Jesus’ actions and so they ask, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Meaning, “who the heck are you to come in here and make a mess?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” They were interpreting his words literally. I imagine it would be like if Jesus came to Tacoma and said, “I will rebuild I-5 this weekend” and we would scoff and say, “I-5 was under construction for over 10 years in this city and you are going to rebuild iit again in one weekend?” And then, the author clues us in to what is really going on– “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”

There are many things that make the Gospel of John different from the three synoptics and one of them is that John does not include parables. Instead, perhaps the whole gospel of John is a parable. There are two levels to the story– the first is the obvious, face-value nature of the narrative, like watching sunbeams hit the surface of the water. And then, there is what is happening under the surface. Under the water, under the puns and symbolism and the strange stories is the truth that is trying to be communicated to those who are seeking it. When we risk jumping fully in the water to see under the surface, we see a different story. 

This is not about a literal building and a literal marketplace. Jesus isn’t saying, “your ways of worshiping need to be reformed” he is saying, “the whole thing is about to change.” Jesus is not there to reform Temple Judaism but radically and fundamentally change how people worship God through his incarnation. There is no temple– just his body. The same body we’ll break at the table later this morning.

Fundamental, radical change doesn’t come easily or simply. I was a young college graduate living in Seattle when the Black Lives Matter movement started. I distinctly remember the day that Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson and when Eric Garner uttered his last words, “I can’t breathe.” I went to protests and marches and participated in the chants that the protestors led. If you’ve never been to a protest before, it’s a powerful experience to be in solidarity with others, even if you’re learning as you go. One chant sticks in my mind all these years later, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” What we were protesting then, what people are still protesting now, is not just individual crimes against African Americans. It wasn’t just about “bad apples” or individual police officers. It was about the whole system of policing and incarceration that is predicated not on justice but on the subjugation of people without power. In our society, that has often meant people of color and the poor. When we said, “the whole system is guilty” what we meant was that this is about more than just reforming the system. It is about dismantling it and starting new. It’s as radical and seemingly impossible as Jesus waltzing into the temple saying it would be destroyed and rebuilt in three days.

Jesus did not come to earth in Human form to reform our worship but to radically change it. That building that you thought was essential to your worship? Turns out God doesn’t live there after all. Turns out, God wasn’t joking when God said God didn’t want or need a temple in the first place. The temple was a concession by God to the people of Israel who begged for a building. They just had to have what the neighbors had– a place to go and worship their God. But it got in the way of their ability to worship. They fought over the building, over its location, over its cost, and over every detail instead of simply worshiping God. And so the whole damn system was about to go. Instead, the Temple would be Christ’s body– crucified, resurrected, and returned into Heaven. There would be no building at the center of Christendom, though we sure have tried hard to make that way. 

I wonder what this means for us today. I don’t think there’s one answer but I sure do have some questions for us–  What tables would Jesus turn over in our church today? What would he see that would cause him to pull out his whip? I’m almost scared to ask because I don’t want to know the answers. What barriers have we put up that pushes people away from worship? What boundaries have we set– implicitly or explicitly– that leave some people on the outside, wondering what it means for them to worship God? 

Where are we in this story? Are we the moneychangers, just going about our business thinking we’re being faithful to God only to have Jesus walk in and turn our whole world upside down? I think this is the part that really gets me– the people in the temple whose tables Jesus flipped over thought that they were doing the right thing. They thought their work was for good, but it turns out to be part of an entire system that needed to go away in order for people to really and truly worship God. I wonder if the same could be said for us. Maybe we are so convinced that our way of worshiping and doing church is right that we have failed to see how the spirit of God is moving in new ways. Maybe. I don’t know for certain but I do want us to wonder and discern together. This side of Jesus– angry and straight to the point– reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. 

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." said Mr. Beaver

"Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"

..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

Jesus’ righteous anger isn’t always safe or easy for us, but God’s goodness is always, always true. So let us walk with boldness toward our God who has come to set us all free to live and be in right relationship with him.