Turning Things On Their Head (John 2:13-22 (23-25)
Written by Pastor Kuder   
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Imagine this, if you will.  The picture before you is a news station.  It’s the day before one of this stations biggest broadcasts in its history.  Everyone is excited and busily running around the station, doing final research for the broadcast … making sure all of the appropriate people are going to be there. The news anchors are going over their reports going to meetings to discuss the upcoming broadcast.

The people in advertizing are doing their part to make sure they can get the highest paying clients to fill these upcoming slots.  There is just this huge feeling of excitement going around the station

All of a sudden, one of the people form the station with some of his friends in tow, begins going around and grabbing the news reports out of the newscasters hands and throwing them into the shredders.  Everyone there is just starring at him with astonished looks on their faces, not knowing what’s going on.  Finally he announces, “This place is a disgrace.  It’s corrupt from top to bottom.  You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

Finally one of the staff quite angrily says to him, “Who do you think you are?  And since when do you have the right to behave like this?”

To which he answers, “You can fire me.  You can kick me out of here.  But I am going to start my own news station.  And I’m going to put and end to all of this corruption.  Your failed system is done with.”

Now, as with most comparative stories with Scripture, this one only partly parallels what must have been an astonishing scene at the Temple from today’s Gospel reading from John.  And as with any illustration, none of them can do justice to what Jesus did or still does.  

However, what it does do, is to help us to put some of what was going on at the Temple into perspective.  The Temple wasn’t like what we have here with several churches in a row going down Shelbyville.

The Temple was the very beating heart of Judaism.  It was the center of worship…music…politics…society…and a place of national celebration as well as mourning.  It also had more animals, both living and dead, than anywhere else.  But most importantly for them, the Temple was the place where they believed that God had promised to live in the midst of His people.  It was the focal point for all of these people as well as a way of life.

And to top all of this off … as John tells us, this was the time of Passover.  The Passover being the time when liberation and rescue from slavery were being both remembered as well as celebrated.

So as you can probably imagine, the Temple would have been quite busy.  And not just busy … but busier than it normally would have been because of the Passover celebration going on all around.

So amongst all of this busyness going on, this somewhat unknown prophet from Galilee, comes into the Temple and turned everything upside down.  Some times, some of us have who heard these passages before, forget just how shocking what Jesus did must have been.  Most of the society at that time would have thought that the practices that were going on in the temple were OK.  That they were just plain normal.

If that was the case … that the people felt that there was nothing wrong with what was going on in the temple … then it raises the question, “Why was Jesus do what he did?  And “Why was Jesus, in essence, turning it all on its head?”

Well, one thing we need to remember is that John Has already told us, earlier in his Gospel that Jesus is God’s Passover Lamb who will take away the sin of the world.  And it is no accident that at this point in John’s Gospel that he tells us that Jesus is visiting Jerusalem during Passover.  The time when they were celebrating their freedom from slavery.  What he is telling us is that Jesus is giving us a hint at a new meaning to Passover.  He is turning it all on its head.

Jesus is also giving a clear message that He is not happy with what is going on in the temple.  That He is not happy with the way that His Father’s house is being treated…a place of connivance.  People had turned God’s dwelling place, His home into a one stop shop.  Come to the temple.  What? You don’t have an animal sacrifice with you?  Well, we have a nice selection for you over here in this part of God’s temple.  What?  You’d rather give a money sacrifice?   Well, you know we only take a certain type of money here.  But if you go over to that part of God’s temple, there are some fellows over there, who would be happy to take care of you, and give you the correct currency used here.

And somehow…this is the attitude that had become to be considered normal at this point in time.  

Unfortunately though, some of this attitude of connivance, is still alive and well in at certain times and with certain people.  This attitude that church should be convenient or that God should be more convenient.  “I’ll only go to church if the timing works for me.”  Or “I’ll only go to church if they are going to play the music that I want to hear.”  Or “All I need to do is go to church and do my weekly duty and I’ll be done for the week, till next Sunday rolls around.”

And the list of excuses goes on and on.  But the reality is, the fact is, that when we try to use excuses like these … what we really are saying, is that we want God’s square peg to fit into our round hole.  We want Him to shave off some of His corners so that He fits into our idea of what He should be.  We want Him to forget about certain parts of His commandments that he has given to us.  We want Him to be more convenient for us.

In my office, behind my desk, I have a bumper sticker I picked up several years ago from a Lutherans-for-Life convention.  On that sticker, is a phrase which I think is absolutely fabulous.  The sticker says this, “God is not politically correct, but He’s right.”  

What a huge statement.  When I first read that sticker I couldn’t stop laughing … because it is so true.  And I am so ecstatic that it is true and that God is not politically correct.  

We serve a God who isn’t politically correct and in fact He turned things in that temple on their head and He continues to do that today.  

God’s only Son, used what we would think of as weakness and let himself come into this world as both fully God and fully man to be our Passover lamb.  To pay our debt of sin once and for all.  To let Himself be sacrificed on the cross for our very sins past and present and future.

The same God who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, continues to free us from our slavery to sin today and every day.  

In C.S. Lewis’ book, “Chronicles of Narnia,” there is a portion where there is a dialogue going on between two of the characters.  One of them, speaking of Aslan, the Christ figure, asks, “Is he a safe lion.”  And the Response that is given back is, “No, but he’s good.”

This is the God that we serve.  Our God isn’t safe, He’s not a one stop shop, He is not necessarily a convenient … but He is good.

And it is in His most precious name that we pray.

Amen
 

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