The Temple of the Lord – John 2:13-22

As I have mentioned in many of my sermons, John’s Gospel is different from all the others. He makes no attempt at chronology nor is he interested in telling the whole story of Jesus’ ministry. His focus is on giving us an account of Jesus as the incarnation of God and especially of Jesus as the Lamb of God. For John, when Jesus speaks, it is the God of creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who is speaking and he makes this abundantly clear not only in the beginning words of his account but all the way through with every instance in which Jesus says, “I AM”. That is the way in which God speaks to Moses in the burning bush and every time when those words are quoted in Scripture, it is a reminder that this is the same God from the beginning of that first creation of the earth and the heavens until the end of time and the coming of that new heaven and earth.

John is the one who first presents us with the doctrine of the Trinity only he never called it that because for John it was not so important that it be a doctrine as that we understand that the God we worship and follow is more than just a one-dimensional figure. For John, the God who was present at the beginning of all things and whose Spirit moved over the face of the deep and whose words brought all things into being is one God but this God has come to the world in different forms and yet one.

Over time God visited the world he created sharing truth and wisdom, giving guidance to each generation of the people and encouraging them to adopt his commandments and learn what life was intended to be.

Then God made the decision to enter the world in a whole new way, to take on our flesh and show by direct example the path we are to follow in life.  All the while Jesus knew that there would be rejection, suffering and death yet he continued to teach and to heal.  Every part of John’s Gospel is a revelation of the many ways in which God seeks to touch our lives and draw us to him.  There is no desire to build a kingdom in the traditional sense, no desire to rule with an iron fist or to subjugate people to his will. There is only the desire to overcome every obstacle that prevents people from living a truly free and full life.

The cleansing of the temple is not intended to be an indictment of the people or an attempt to do away with the sacrifices which were prescribed in the law that had been given to the people.  Jesus’ cleansing of the temple had more to do with the fact that by bringing the money changers and the animals into the temple, the place that was to be a place of prayer and sacrifice had become nothing more than another marketplace.  The profane had overtaken the sacred and there was no distinction between them.   The temple was meant to be a place of rest, peace, and prayer.  Who could even begin to do such things in the midst of the cacophony that must have existed in that place.  Rather than buying your sacrifice and then entering the temple to present it to the priests, you were probably just handing it over and leaving. The whole concept of sacrifice was overshadowed by the transactional nature of the market that had overtaken the outer court of the temple.

The Jews challenged Jesus looking for a reason why Jesus would do as he did. The answer he gives them seems unbelievable. How can you rebuild in three days something that had been under construction for forty-six years?  Of course we know that Jesus was speaking about the temple that was his body. John makes sure to tell us that that is what Jesus was referring to but in the moment, what Jesus said sounded like the ranting of a crazy man.

The temple in Jerusalem was first constructed by Solomon in fulfilment of the promise that his father David made to build a house for God in Jerusalem. This reconstructed temple that Jesus had entered was the second one built.  But its purpose was not to be a marketplace but a place for people to come and offer their sacrifices and to seek absolution for their sins.

But more than that, the temple in Jerusalem was for Jesus his Father’s house and as such deserved to be a sacred place, an honoured place, a place for people to come into the presence of their God. And when he declared, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” he was saying that he was the place, the person, the incarnation of their God and they could come into the presence of God and find the healing, the peace, the absolution for their sins that they sought.  And if this temple would be destroyed, Jesus would raise it up as an eternal temple that nothing could ever destroy.

The I AM sayings that we find in John’s Gospel revealed to the people of that day that they were in the presence of the God of their ancestors – the one who is, who was and who shall be. In Jesus, the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among them full of grace and truth.  In Jesus, the veil of the Holy of Holies was torn and the people could see God face to face. And while the people had sacrificed lambs and shed their blood for their sins, God now had come to be the Lamb whose blood would be shed not for just a time but for all time.  This sacrifice of the embodiment of God would appear to be a destruction of that temple that Jesus spoke of but in reality that temple would not only be restored, it would become a temple that could never be destroyed.

We are invited to put our faith not in any temple built by human hands.   We are invited to put our faith in the temple that overcame rejection, suffering and death.

We are invited to  put our trust in the Lamb of God, the beloved Son of the Father of us all, our Lord and Saviour!

AMEN