Text: John 2:13-22
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen.
I did a Google search of Jesus this
week. Yes, I googled Jesus on the
internet in order to see all of the pictures of Jesus. I was curious how the internet portrays Jesus.
From this basic Google search, what I
found was that the majority of the pictures on the internet portrayed Jesus
with long brown feathered hair, a well groomed beard, holding a shepherd’s
staff, and embracing a small lamb. If He
wasn’t holding a lamb, His hands were reaching out while He was smiling, as if
He wanted a great big hug.
There is no doubt about it that our modern
day pictures of Jesus have been influenced by the art of the High Renaissance
Age, where Jesus was depicted with ideal human beauty. Furthermore, there is no doubt about it that
our modern art of Jesus often portrays a more feminine side of Jesus; a Jesus
with perfect complexion, a gentle smile, bright compassionate blue eyes, and nicely
combed hair. Yes, many pictures today tend to portray Jesus as a little more feminine
than the picture on the front of today’s bulletin.
Is this tender and gentle portrayal of
Jesus wrong though? Technically, we
don’t know for sure what Jesus looked like, so it is difficult to critically
judge any picture of Jesus. But is it
wrong to portray Jesus as compassionate and tender? Actually, it is not wrong
to portray Jesus in a tender and compassionate way at all, for there are countless
scenes in the Bible where Jesus does go the way of sympathy and kindheartedness. For example, during His Sermon on the Mount,
we get the impression that Jesus was gently teaching. We also read in the Four Gospels the
countless stories where Jesus embraced children and showed considerable
compassion and sensitivity to the poor, sick, and dying.
All of this said though, the problem that
arises is when the church promotes the feminine side at the expense of Jesus
undeniable masculinity. Yes, the church
errs when we only portray a Hallmark Jesus and never portray the Rambo
Jesus. For example, at the death of
Lazarus, Jesus not only wept at Lazarus’ tomb, but He snarled and ground His
teeth in anger towards death as well.
Both the weeping and snarling at Lazarus’ death portray the full range
of Jesus’ emotions and disposition.
Only portraying a Hallmark Jesus may
have long-lasting consequences too. For
starters, most men will not respect or worship a Savior who they could beat
up. A man will not respect a frail,
passive, and feeble Savior who is simply a male version of the Mother
Theresa. Furthermore, only portraying a
Hallmark Jesus can communicate that we have a Savior who is far too nice and
simply too timid to condemn anyone to hell. This plays right into our culture, a
culture that wants a Jesus that would never offend anyone and wants a Jesus who
is tolerant of everything. In point of
fact, our culture wants a Mahatma Gandhi type Jesus that simply wants everyone
to get along and be happy.
Contrary to the wishes of our culture,
today’s Gospel reading does not give us a wimpy-sissy Jesus, but it shows us a
Rambo Jesus who wants to cause chaos in the temple. Yes, in our Gospel reading from today we get
a glimpse of Jesus as the Son of God with divine righteousness and
holiness. We heard from our reading that
Jesus does not lose control nor explode in sinful anger, but demonstrates a
righteous wrath and zeal against the people and circumstances in the temple.
More specifically, Jesus makes a whip
out of some cords and begins to drive everyone and everything from the
temple. He drove out the cattle and the
sheep along with the marketers. He
scattered the coins, overturned the tables and ordered those who sold the doves
to, “Get these out of here! How dare you
turn my Father’s house into a market!”
We can hear the responses of the
people in our minds, “Who is that man?
Who does he think he is? Is he
possessed, or what? Did you see his
eyes? They were aflame! He sure wasn’t very loving!” Not only were the Jews offended by Jesus’
perceived reckless actions, you might be a little taken aback too.
As Christians, I believe we have come
to terms with a compassionate and tender Jesus, as well as a suffering and
crucified Jesus, but we may find ourselves struggling with what to do with this
Jesus of our reading. This Jesus seems a
little too rambunctious; this Jesus seems a little too intense. Like Aslan, the great Lion, in C.S. Lewis’
book, “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” this Jesus in the temple with a
whip is not tame; He’s wild, can’t be tied down, and one would not dare press
Him.
The Jesus in the temple overturning tables
certainly does not fit into our preconceived molds of love, compassion, forgiveness,
and goodness. Or does He?
Dear friends, we must keep in mind
that Jesus’ love for the people of God includes righteous anger and yes, hatred
for anything that would separate a single child of God from the love of His
Father.
You see, during the time of Jesus in
the first-century, people across the land would come and gather at the temple
in Jerusalem for worship and to receive gifts from God through participating in
the sacrificial offerings. Instead of
bringing the animals for the sacrifices, it was a whole lot easier to just
purchase the animals right on site. This
was a good thing; however, because of the sinful nature of mankind, the prices
for the sacrificial animals were exploited and the business side of the temple began
to be an obstacle as the market overtook the temple. The main thing wasn’t the main thing
anymore. The temple was obstructed by
the market place. A layer of obstruction
developed between the gift giving God and His people. This layer was the market, thus we now
understand the reason for Jesus’ anger.
What this means is that selling baked
goods in the church or having a fundraising benefit for a person struggling
with cancer or taking an offering for a Lent Meal is certainly not sinful, but
rather, anything that detracts from God’s gifts or anything that obstructs and
cheats God’s children of His gifts should be driven from the church like the
cattle from the temple.
Truly, “One of the many things we can
learn from the Bible is that God takes action when someone or something
prevents His people from receiving His gifts.
Well, Jesus is God. We should
expect Jesus to take action when His people are not able to receive His
gifts. Jesus spoke against the scribes
and Pharisees for giving people their opinions instead of God's gifts. Jesus scolded Peter because Peter was trying
to stop Jesus from giving the greatest gift of all. Jesus took action in the temple because His
people were not able to receive His gifts.”[1]
Keep in mind, the clearing out of the
temple in our Gospel reading was not the first time or the last time that God
took action against things and people that blocked His gifts.
The Lord working through Hezekiah, the
king of Judah, removed the pagan sacred sites and broke down the pillars of the
pagan god Asherah, for the sake of the Israelites.
During the sixteenth-century, the
Roman Catholic Church obstructed God’s grace through indulgences. As a result, God raised up our Lutheran
forefathers to drive out the abuses of the sixteenth-century church, so that
the children of God might be able to receive the free message of the Gospel for
the forgiveness of sins.
Even today, instead of selling
sacrificial animals and profiting from the exchange of dirty money, we have
many religious leaders selling religious programs, pushing ten-step man-centered
books, pedaling religious lucky charms, and so forth; stuff that obstructs the
simple Gospel from people just like you. Furthermore, there are even
parishioners in our day and age across America and even in our very own Synod that
push faithful pastors to actually add layers.
In other words, some parishioners, who are bored with God’s gifts, are
pressuring pastors to introduce layers of meaningless obstruction.
Dear friends, beware! When God's people are not able to receive His
gifts, the Lord has historically taken action against those who block His
gifts. You and I need to be reminded of
the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:6,
“If
any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in
me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your
neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea.”
What all this means in regard to
today’s Gospel reading is this, Jesus’ zealous aggression against the market
place, even though it can be perceived as an act of hatred and uncompassionate,
is really compassion and love in action.
Jesus’ zeal to uproot whatever obstructs God’s gifts is an aggressive
masculine love, is it not?
As we take a step back and contemplate
today’s Gospel reading, what we see is that “Jesus is not an anemic,
effeminate, namby-pamby sort of God—He was anything but.”[2]
The picture we receive from today’s
Gospel reading illustrates to us the unselfish, sacrificial, and voluntary
quality of the crucifixion He underwent in our place and for our
salvation. In blunt terms, we get a
picture that the same Jesus who righteously drove out that which obstructed
God’s gifts in the temple is the same Son of God who laid down His life on our
behalf in order to deal with that which attempts to obstruct us from the
Father, namely, sin, death, and the devil.
That’s right; the crucifixion was not a result of a powerless,
namby-pamby, anemic, Savior who couldn’t defend Himself and was overtaken by
the religious leaders and Pontius Pilate.
No way, the “Son of God who laid down His life on our behalf was not one
given to lying down and rolling over.”[3] Jesus who is Lord; Jesus who walked on water;
Jesus who brought people back from the dead; Jesus who was transfigured; Jesus
who exorcized demons, zealously went to the cross not because He had to but
because He chose to. He chose to—for
you.
You, who have ears, hear! The same zeal that we see in Jesus at the
temple driving out obstructions is the same zeal that took our Lord to Calvary
in order to defeat that which obstructs us from the Father. Yes, Jesus zealously went to Mt. Calvary, to
the grave, to hell itself and back again to the right hand of the Father to not
merely drive away the condemnation of sin, the devil, and death, but to
actually put an end to them—all for you.
[1] James T.
Batchelor, “Third Sunday In Lent Sermon” (11 March 2012)
http://lcmssermons.com/index.php?sn=2658 (7 March 2015).
[2] Francis Rossow,
Gospel Handles (St. Louis, MO: Concordia
Publishing House, 2011), 278-279.
[3] Ibid.
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