John 2: 13-22

Sisters & brothers, grace to you & peace from our jealous God, the zealous Christ, and the disruptive Spirit of grace.  Amen.

For those of you who were here last week, you will recall that we were quite physically disturbed and re-arranged in order to better hear the disturbing and disruptive call of Jesus to “deny our selves, take up the cross, and follow.”  In an exercise of communal disruption, the preacher asked the congregation (or was it ordered the congregation?!) to pack up and move to the polar opposite side of the congregation from where they were presently seated. The homily was preached from the back of the sanctuary just to disorient everyone involved a little bit more. It was all a bit of Lenten fun (if there is such a thing) done in the spirit of Jesus’ disruptive call to self-denial, to cross-centering, and to Christ-following.   Perhaps the topsy-turviness of it all helped us to hear and to discern that call with new ears.

I suppose today’s Gospel might have been heard and discerned with new ears and eyes had you arrived today to find absolutely everything topsy-turvy.  Imagine arriving into this space only to find it completely turned upside down and inside out. If our pews weren’t bolted down to the floor, what would it have been like to come in and  find them upright and end-to-end, or upside down and facing backwards. Think of the sense of total disruption had you entered this space only to find everything kiddy-wampus and dissheveled, with nothing left untouched, everything overturned, and with only the cross standing upright, towering over the wreckage of everything.

The frustrated set designer within had considered at the very least having our Eucharistic table overturned with its legs pointing upward, but then I thought the better:  practical matters such as self-preservation from an angry altar guild became a concern as well as when and how we would get things back in order for the celebration of Holy Communion.

So the operative word this morning is IMAGINE. Imagine this sacred space overturned and in a state of total upheaval.  Imagine the shock, the sense of numbness, confusion, uncertainty, perhaps the anger (think altar guild and their careful preparations!).   I imagine we would each be met by an array of emotions.

Today’s Gospel is the story of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple.  It is one of just a very few stories from the life of Jesus that appears in all four Gospels. St. John places it early on in his Gospel account, with the rest of the story being an extended narrative on Jesus’ passion and death.  As John and his community remembered the story, this episode in Jesus’ life loomed largely as a reason why the religious establishment was out to get him, and it wasn’t just because Jesus came in and made a mess. It was because of that one certain troubling line that went along with the overturned tables and the spilling coinage:  “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

Again, using one’s imagination and just a bit of artistic license, one could just about hear the religious leaders saying, “Excuse me, whose Father’s house? You said your Father was…who?” And from that point on, Jesus was in hot water with the religious establishment.

After all, by driving out the money-changers along with their livestock, Jesus had called into question and in-effect desecrated the entire Hebrew temple sacrificial system. The vast, ornate, and magnificent temple in Jerusalem — which had taken nearly a half-century to build — stood as a symbol of the heart of Hebrew religion and culture, and for some backwater self-inflated rabbi to come in and attack its ritual system absolutely incensed and outraged the temple authorities.  Those well-connected insiders — priests and temple personnel — were allowed to occupy the outer courtyard surrounding the Holy of Holies, that place in the very center of the temple where behind a huge curtain-like veil it was believed God dwelled. From this outer courtyard, they sold (often at inflated prices) sacrificial animals to devout, economically-disadvantaged and unsuspecting pilgrims who had come from the outlying countryside to offer atonement for their sins:  doves, lambs, and cattle.

Yes, it was organized religion doing what organized religion does best:  regulating, mediating, and confining God to human rituals and restrictive dogmas.

And it infuriated Jesus to see it happening in “his father’s house.”  It was a bundled, corrupt religious and economic system: sort of like Jim Bakker, Pope Benedict, and Bernie Madoff all rolled up into one. Jesus enters into this chaotic emporium of socio-economic corruption dressed up like religion and says “Enough! Get out!” and spends the rest of his short earthly ministry embodying another way for people to experience God. Rather than keeping office hours in the temple and restricting access to the Holy One, Jesus goes out among the people, touching the sick, raising the dead, delivering the possessed, blessing the children, embracing the weeping, loving the unlovely and unloveable.

Sisters and brothers, this day as we hear this text proclaimed in our own sacred temple, within these stained glass walls and beneath these lofty rafters, we would do well to ask ourselves as a congregation and as part of a larger denomination — the ELCA — how we may need to be cleansed — in ongoing ways — of being a place of restrictions, of rules and regulations, of any attempts to mediate and confine God to our own puny and paltry human-made systems which defame the God of grace, forgiveness, and freedom who has been revealed in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one. Is there anything about our common life:  our building, our sanctuary, our liturgy, our precious Lutheran theology and ethos, that might keep people away or distract them from the God of unlimited grace and unconditional love?    Everything about us — as individuals, as a congregation, and as a wider church must proclaim and indeed exclaim:  “You are loved and welcomed as God’s beloved child. God is here with us and God is there with you.”

And on this day as we come to receive the healing power of the sacrament, we are reminded that access to God cannot be bought — either by our own good behavior or good intentions. Jesus boldly steps in and overturns all our attempts at justifying ourselves and proving ourselves worthy of God’s grace. With bread and wine, Jesus gently offers you a dining experience of full access to God — as the very real presence of the Holy One is infused into our bodies and blood streams.  With the caring hands of a sister or brother in Christ, Jesus compassionately touches you and offers you his healing presence amid your pain and or your burden for another.

With his cross and resurrection, Jesus seals the deal and foolishly gives us everything:  total access, total forgiveness, total grace.

Free of cost, free of charge, free of fine print.

Imagine.

Amen.