Southwest Community Church
January 11th

      • Psalm 65:1–5NIV2011

  • Only A Holy God
  • 10,000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)

  • Encountering Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem

    Introduction

    last week: abundance
    this week: excess?
    last week: a hidden sign (only a few people know what happened)
    this week: a very public action
    last week: water into wine
    this week: the clearing or cleansing of the temple
    last week: Jesus at a wedding
    this week: Jesus in Jerusalem for Passover
    Quick reminders:
    Passover is a major Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
    Temple - the centre of worship and national identity in ancient Israel - TWO temples - first built by David’s son Solomon, second built by Jewish exiles allowed to return from Babylon, completed in 515 BCE. This second temple was rebuilt by Herod the Great, a 46 year task as we’ll hear in our reading today - that had only recently been completed.
    We better just read it - as Margie comes, will you prepare to listen to God’s word from the gospel of John chapter 2? Please stand if you are able.

    Reading

    John 2:13–22 NIV
    13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
    This is the Word of the Lord. THANKS BE TO GOD.

    Sermon

    What does Jesus do & say?
    What does this show us about who God is?
    What are we supposed to do?
    Living & loving like Jesus the banner says… Ok… so the whip-making workshop is next weekend & once we have that down, we’ll practice our table-flipping?
    Flipping tables image…

    What does Jesus actually do & say?

    Jesus goes to Jerusalem for Passover
    Pretty normal behaviour for a Jewish man living in Galilee in the 1st century - 3 pilgrimmages a year, the most important one being Passover (so important, that there was in fact a “do-over” Passover for anyone that had missed the real one…
    So it’s normal for Jesus to go to Jerusalem for Passover. Normal AND somehow really important. How do I know it’s important? Because the “clearing or cleansing” of the Temple shows up in all four gospels. But in the synoptics, this happens right before the Passion - those events in the week leading up to his death and resurrection - the week whose story we tell and re-tell every year on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday & Easter Sunday… coming into Jerusalem (Palm), eating the meal that Jesus then commands his followers to continue to have to remember him (Eucharist - Maundy Thursday), his death on the cross (Good Friday) and his resurrection (Easter Sunday)
    But John, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke includes THREE passovers - and this is the first one. John tells the story of Jesus coming into the Temple at the start of the story of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
    When there are differences in detail or chronology, we have a few options,… one, the writer of the fourth gospel is correcting something he thinks the other gospel writers got wrong. (Meh)
    Or, the fourth gospel writer is trying to make a point of some kind. I have been thinking about how John’s gospel including 3 Passovers, both marks time - as we’ve mentioned before - John likes a timestamp - AND perhaps is a way of underlining the connection between Jesus and Passover.
    There is this first Passover in chapter 2, another will happen in chapter 6 where Jesus multiplies the loaves - a kind of new Passover meal? - and then finally teh one in chapters 18 & 19 where Jesus prepares to become the Passover lamb himself… (It’s the fourth gospel’s inclusion of three Passovers that gave us the idea that Jesus had an earthly ministry that lasted 3 years, by the way.)
    Why might John be underlining Passover for his readers? What connection is he wanting us to make? Remember how John the Witness announced Jesus and pointed other towards Him?
    Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! It’s a beautiful sentence.
    But when we hear this announcement and then keep running into Passover
    While in Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus goes to the Temple.
    Also pretty expected? I think so. The Temple as the centre of Jewish worship, but also of Israel’s identity and history.
    Jesus finds the people selling cattle and sheep and doves, changing money - WHY? Because pilgrims have travelled a long way to Jerusalem and need to change their currency and purchase animals so that they can make the appropriate sacrifices as an act of worship.
    So, on the one hand, this is “business as usual” … pun intended. ;)
    But, on the other hand, Jesus response to what he sees by making a whip and driving out the animals, then flipping the tables and sending the coins of the moneychangers everywhere.
    Why? a few possibilities: the Temple is not to be a shopping mall, nor a bank. These practices also have an element of social injustice. But where we might be used to hearing the synoptics version of this story that includes Jesus saying, “You have made [my Father’s house] into a den of robbers!” But the gospel of John doesn’t highlight that part. So, I don’t think that’s the angle we’re meant to focus on here. (Even if it’s a legitimate angle to consider the other accounts from - injustice does not belong in a house of worship! Amen!)
    And, if I were preaching a different gospel account, the emphasis might be on this response to injustice… and I love the flipping tables imagery and the challenge it poses to us about whether sometimes we’re sitting tables that Jesus would flip over… but that’s not today’s sermon.
    Jesus goes to the centre of Jewish life and worship, and He makes a statement that is John 2:19
    John 2:19 NIV
    19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
    And this leaves the Jewish leaders scratching their heads. And even his disciples won’t come to understand what he was saying until after. Until they’ve seen more.

    What does this story tell us about God?

    God wants to be with God’s people.
    As we saw two weeks ago though, the PLACE of God meeting with God’s people is shifting from a physical location to a person. A body.
    a new threshold between heaven and earth. This image of heaven opening and angels descending… does it make you think of another story?
    Genesis 28 - the story of Jacob stopping for the night and having an epic dream… including heaven opening and angels ascending and descending a ladder. The place is named Bethel - of house of God - the threshold between heaven and earth was a place.
    But now. Now, in Jesus, that threshold is a person. The kingdom of heaven is now walking around and dwelling in our midst.
    Word made flesh - and we beheld his glory.
    God dwells with God’s people. Has always - from the Garden of Eden right on through
    God wants to be with - We see this in the practice of the Tabernacle. The dwelling place of God that goes with the people during their time of mobility and impermanence.
    God wants to be with - We see this in the Temple in Jerusalem. In the sorrow over the first Temple’s destruction when Babylon conquers Jerusalem and destroys it in 587/586 BCE and the people are carried into exile.
    God wants to be with - We see this in the joy when the Persian king Cyrus allows the Jews to return and rebuild the Temple 50 years later.
    God wants to be with - We see this when Herod the Great rebuilds the second temple, completing it in 26CE - so the Temple Jesus clears is this newly rebuilt temple.
    But also, and this context is key, the original readers of the gospel of John are NOT reading this in Jerusalem, because not only has the Temple been destroyed in 70CE, but only the Western Wall still stands. So the original audience for this fourth gospel, are reading this while their beloved Temple no longer stands. How does Jesus beginning his ministry in this gospel resonate for people who are still mourning the loss of their sacred space? How does all the talk about Jesus being the Temple sit with them? - the new dwelling place of God with God’s people -
    God wants to be with - Even when the Temple building doesn’t stand, God still wants to be with God’s people. And, for John’s original readers, this would be good news.

    What do we do with this? What can we take away from this reading?

    What happens if we view things through the lens of resurrection?
    We can’t understand Jesus unless we see him through the lens of the resurrection.
    John 2:22 NIV
    22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
    What does it look like to see Jesus’ passion to be with?
    To glimpse his reaction - his anger even, at injustice perhaps, but also at the status quo - at the “this is just how things are”… Jesus doesn’t seem to be satisfied with the way things are. Jesus seems to think there is another way possible.
    What does it look like to listen to Jesus in this text?
    Passover - Jesus is the Lamb of God - the way we’ve been doing things is done now. (And in this case, the way we’ve done it has been pointing towards the Lamb of God who will indeed take away the sin of the whole world.
    Temple - Jesus is the new Temple (and this one has already been destroyed… and he’s gone through death and out into resurrection life - now the Temple is indestructible.
    Post-Ascension - Jesus the new Temple is at the right hand of the Father… so the location is heaven?
    Post-Pentecost - the Church is the new Temple because the Church is the body of Christ.
    Not individually - WE are the Body of Christ (and not us as SWCC but us as the Church historic and universal)
    But also, as individuals, we are little mini-temples of the Holy Spirit in which God dwells
    Closing
    Lesslie Newbigin: “And the struggle goes on while the Church pursues its mission through all generations to all peoples - for we do not fully “understand” Jesus until that day when his work shall be complete, all nations shall worship him, and every tongue confess him Lord. Until that day the Church can never absolve itself of the task of reexamining old patterns of understanding in the light of new experience of the work of the Spirit in bringing new peoples and new generations to confess in their own tongues that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
    Prayer
    Jesus, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us.
    You want to be with us.
    To live among us. To be God with us. To even live IN us by Your Spirit.
    And we want to see You. So clear our vision. Help us to look at you through the lens of resurrection so that we might catch a glimpse of You as You really are. Where we need to be set free from the ways of looking at things that have us stuck in adventures of missing the point, come and liberate us. Where we need to discard faulty images of God, help us to see You, Jesus and realize that You are the revelation of what God is really like.
    We want to see and we know that when we see you, we will be enabled to believe just as those who watched you turn water into wine did. And just as even seeing you chase animals out of the Temple courts and flip over tables somehow knew that You were bringing about a whole new reality.

      • John 1:14–18NIV2011

      • John 2:1–11NIV2011

      • John 13:1NIV2011

  • Goodness Of God
Southwest Community Church
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