Bishop Craig Schweitzer

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John 2:13-22 • March 11, 2012

 Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

I wonder what the temple must have looked like after Jesus finished his tirade. I bet it was a dusty, dirty mess. Does Jesus swinging whips and flipping tables over fit with your image of him?

What is your “image” of Jesus? In other words when someone says to you, “Jesus”, what do you see? When you think about Jesus, what picture comes to your mind?
Hold on to that image for a little while.

Today’s gospel reading from Saint John is commonly referred to as the cleansing of the temple. All four gospels share this text, but John treats it quite differently. In John, it’s near the very beginning of his narrative about Jesus. In John, Jesus spends a lot more time in Jerusalem. And not just casually visiting the city, but going to the temple. And not just going to the temple on ordinary days, but going to the temple during major Jewish festivals. Like Passover.

It’s estimated that the population of Jerusalem would swell from 50,000 to 180,000 people at Passover. Pilgrims would come from as far away as Persia, Syria, Egypt, Greece, and even Rome.

Think about it like this. I’m assuming that most of you are aware that its high school tournament season in North Dakota. Imagine that Bismarck is hosting the State Class A and B boys and girls basketball tournaments, the girls and boys state hockey tournaments, and all of the state swimming, diving, speech, dance, music and theater events at exactly the same time. And these events don’t only last one day; they take place over the span of an entire week! That’s a lot of people to feed who also need a place to sleep.

When the pilgrims came to Jerusalem for the Passover, they didn’t just need places to eat and sleep, they also needed to offer an animal sacrifice and pay the temple tax. That’s a lot of unblemished animals to have readily on hand and the ability to change an incredible amount of money from dozens of different currencies into the currency that was accepted in the temple. Get the picture? The impact, economically and physically, that Passover brought to every facet of life in Jerusalem was significant.
But it wasn’t only an economic impact, it was also a spiritual one. For Jews, the Temple was the place where the presence of God existed.

Theologian N.T. Wright calls the temple the beating heart of Judaism.

And Dr. Matt Skinner says that, “The Jerusalem temple was hardly one sacred site among many for those who worshiped there early in the first century. Here was the place, they believed, where God was most present.”

It’s significant that our gospel story today comes at the beginning of John’s gospel, because it reveals a very dramatic image of Jesus and how John uses that image to show us Jesus’ identity throughout his gospel. But before we think too much about that image, let’s back up a little. Recall with me the opening words of John’s gospel that set the stage for John’s image of Jesus – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Let’s journey a little further into that first chapter. In verse 14 John writes, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Or as Eugene Peterson offers in his paraphrase of scripture called The Message, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

The New Testament has two Greek words that are often translated into the English word, “temple.” In the 14th verse of our gospel today, where Jesus finds the moneychangers and people selling sheep, cattle and doves, the Greek word there (ieros) refers to anything that belongs to the temple, not the temple building itself. It usually refers to the temple precincts or the area around the temple, although this area is probably within the temple walls.

As we move a little further into the text, the 21st verse is where Jesus calls the temple his body. The Greek word there (vaos) is the actual temple. In essence, what Jesus is saying is that if we are looking for God, we should no longer look inside of a building. We simply need to look at Jesus.

In a dramatic display of emotion that has little to do with what our images of Jesus commonly are, Jesus declares that the temple can no longer function in the same way that it has always functioned. The temple, from the gospel of John’s point of view, is gone and will never again be the same.

In the ancient Jewish tradition and world the temple was the place where you could find the presence of God. Jesus takes those traditions and points of view and places them on himself. He is the reality that the Temple itself points. His death and resurrection will be the reality to which the whole Passover celebration points. [N.T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, pg. 26]

So if that is true, why do we still expend incredible amounts of energy wondering where the promise of God’s presence is? God’s presence in ancient Jewish life was in the Temple. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus reveals that God’s presence was now in him. And after the resurrection, God’s presence is wherever two or three are gathered in his name.

Clearly in the gospel of John, Jesus is the Temple-in-person, the place where Israel’s God has come to dwell in fulfillment of God’s ancient promise.

I’m not sure that I believe Jesus anger in the temple is only because of what’s happening – exchanging money and selling animals to be sacrificed. I think Jesus is angry and turns the temple upside-down because he wants everyone to understand that what they are doing is completely and totally unnecessary because of his arrival in the world.

Whatever image that you have of Jesus – whether it’s the masculine and well groomed supermodel looking Jesus who probably lives in a condo in upstate Michigan; or the gentle shepherd Jesus keeping watch over his flock in the field; brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t forget that it’s also OK to see Jesus flipping over tables and getting a little ticked off from time to time.

The images of Jesus that you and I are given in the gospels strengthen us, guide us, challenge us, and send us into the world to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Right now. Today.

There’s a powerful statement of this mission that we are called to live out on the homepage of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the denomination that Good Shepherd is part of. It speaks very directly to our image, or rather images, of Jesus.

Here’s what it says, “We are a church that shares a living, daring confidence in God’s grace. Liberated by our faith, we embrace you as a whole person – questions, complexities and all. Join us as we do God’s work in Christ’s name for the life of the world.”

As followers of Jesus, we need to remember each and every day that Christ is the center of everything. That Jesus Christ is our temple.

And I do not believe that the dust in this temple has settled yet. I hope and pray that it never will. Amen.

Mark 1:9-15 • February 26, 2012

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Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

I have a collection of hanging file folders in my office that contain old e-mails, or articles, or thoughts from books that I’ve read that I want  to remember because they may be of use for something someday. These file folders have titles like “Jesus” or “End Times” or “Grace.” There is even one that is simply called “quotes.”

I opened that file this week and came across a set of quotes from people in managerial positions communicating to their employees, or at least trying to communicate. Here a just a few of them.

“What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.”

“Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.”

Or this one from a manager to a brand new employee. Probably my favorite –

“No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We’ve been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I’ll let you know when it’s time to tell them.”

Thoughts like this kind make you scratch your head a little, don’t they? Sometimes I worry that the language of Christians is a little like that. Like the mangers that I just quoted. I think they knew what they were trying to say, but it didn’t come across very clearly when they said it.

As Lutheran Christians we share something in common with many other, not all, but many other brothers and sisters in Christ. We share a yearly journey in worship and really every facet of our life in Christ that’s known as the Liturgical Year – or the Church Year. This church year doesn’t begin on January 1^st. It begins four weeks before Christmas with the season of Advent and ends in late November with the celebration of Christ the King Day at the end of a season called Pentecost. This liturgical year is not focused on the seasons of a chronological calendar. Its focus is the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of a savior named Jesus. As Lutheran Christians, we live in the ebb and flow of the liturgical year as we seek to follow this Jesus.

Needless to say, I love the seasons of the church. I find comfort and hope and challenge and growth as the seasons change. But I was a surprised again recently to discover that not everyone shares my passion or even understands or follows the seasons of the church year as part of their life in Christ.

I was having coffee with a friend of mine who is an active member of a non-denominational Christian church in town. They celebrate big events in the church year like Christmas and Easter, but pay little, if any, attention to other seasons like Advent or Pentecost or Ash Wednesday or Lent. My friend knew that we were preparing for the beginning of a new season, but he didn’t understand what it was all about, so he asked me a very simple question. He said, “You have a new season starting soon, right? Is it Lent this time? What is Lent, anyway?” I wonder how many of us gathered in this worship space today have asked that same question before. “What is Lent?”

Of all the seasons, I think Lent is my favorite. One of the reasons why I like it is because it’s a season that hasn’t been high jacked by our consumer driven culture yet. I mean, there are no Lenten reindeer or jolly snowmen dancing around with ashes on their forehead. There are no colored food products like Easter eggs.

Another reason why I like Lent is that it’s not a one day event, but a journey. Lent is not like a New Year’s resolution where we try to give something up or start doing something healthy in our lives. Lent is a never-ending journey that invites you and me into relationship with God each day and into relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. In this journey of Lent, we are reminded once again just how much God loves us and how we are called to share that love with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

At about this time in my effort to explain Lent to my friend, I noticed that he was staring at me blankly. You know that stare. The one that screams out, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” I know for a fact that you know what that looks like. Actually, it’s very similar to the stare I’m receiving from many of you at this very moment.

So let’s try this again. Like nearly every aspect of our life in Christ, we can’t just look at Lent on the surface and expect to understand what it is and why it is such an important part of our journey as followers of Christ. If we only do that, it will be hard to understand how in the world we are ever going to live up to the expectations that seasons like this place on us.

Think about it in connection with our gospel reading today. This is the same “temptation” text that we hear every year on the first Sunday in Lent. Trying to connect our lives today with the temptation that Jesus experiences with wild beasts and wilderness and Satan lurking around while angels serve him is confusing for us; or at the very least a little intimidating. Wild Beasts. Wilderness. Satan. Angels.

But Pastor Scott Black Johnston seems to think that these images in the desert, the wilderness as the gospel of Mark calls it, are helpful. I hope you can relate to what he says about Lent and the wildernesses that we encounter in our lives.

Pastor Johnston says, “You can lose part of yourself in the desert. Of course, that is exactly what we need: a few key losses-letting go of ceaseless information gobbling, longstanding resentments and destructive dreams; refusing to care about the wrong things, the stupid things, the things that really don’t matter. Then, when the desert is done with us, we just might find ourselves with more capacity to care about the things that do matter-that matter more than anything else!”

So, Lent is not about giving up all of the things that tempt us each day for a prescribed period of time – in this case 40 days or so. Lent reminds us that as we struggle with temptations, regardless of where we are in life, God is with us. Through Lent, we remember that we are resurrection people even as we live in a world that often looks and feels and smells a lot more like the darkness of Jesus’ crucifixion and death on Good Friday. And as people of the resurrection we are invited to live in the hope and promise that God is always with us. In life and in death. In times of wilderness and in times of peace.

As Professor David Lose offers, “Lent reminds us that whenever we find ourselves in the wilderness of disease, loneliness, joblessness, depression, or all the other things that challenge us, Jesus has been there before and meets us there in order to bear our burdens with us and for us.”

So, “What is Lent, anyway?”

Lent is a season of the liturgical year, the church’s year, when we remember that Jesus has already been to every wilderness we will ever face. Jesus knows when we are lost in the wilderness. And Jesus will always meet you and me in those wilderness times and carry the weight of those times with us and for us. This God will never let us walk alone. Brothers and sisters in Christ, I think that is what Lent is. And that’s why Lent is my favorite season. May God bless you and keep you along your Lenten journey. Amen.