Third Sunday in Lent

Sunday, March 15, 2009

St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY

The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector

“Holiness”

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."

The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes to Jerusalem and visits the Jewish temple there.  As you might know from visits overseas, temples were scattered all over the ancient world –  set atop hills or out in grassy country sides, or on islands, or at the tip of a peninsula. 

They served many purposes: Some for healing or for offering prayers for safety or good fortune; some as halls for the local populace to celebrate its history and to give thanks to their patron god and beg its continuing favor; some were social centers too, for meals and conversation or conducting business; some served all those purposes.

Of all the temples in the ancient world, few were as magnificent or as large as the temple in Jerusalem. The structure was enormous –longer by far than a football field, just as wide, and so high as to strain one’s neck to look up at it. Just one of some of the stone blocks used to build its walls weighed 100 tons.

Here in the temple religious rites were conducted, including the priestly offering of the appointed sacrifices. Beside that, the Jerusalem temple was a major commercial and banking center.  It housed the largest repository of gold in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Like Disneyworld today, it was a also great tourist center. Jewish pilgrims flooded into the temple on major festivals.  It was most crowded at Passover, which celebrated Jewish independence, much like our July 4^th. Passover recalled the freedom gained by Israel when Moses led a revolt against the Egyptians, guided a band to freedom through the waters, and then gave to them the Ten Commandments.

But at the time of Jesus, freedom was only a remembrance. Jews were now subject to Roman rule and tyranny.  Through puppet kings, Rome ruled with an iron hand, and guarded against the slightest hint of possible revolt by crucifying people on the spot.

The celebration of Passover, the remembrance of Jewish freedom from oppression, was potentially, then, an explosive and incendiary time.  Rome feared outbreaks of violence at the festival leading to wide-scale insurrection. They flooded the area around the temple with soldiers.

The Jewish temple priests too had no wish for revolt or violence. They lived the good life as aristocrats, in friendly alliance with Roman rulers. Any commotion, they realized, could get out of hand and lead to their own downfall.

The job of the priests was to manage temple affairs, including its banking system and to conduct the appointed religious rites at the proper times.  They also maintained and enforced temple rules: who could go where and be where within the walls of this holy edifice.  In an outer court all could be – to shop and trade, to see the sites, to take a tour - Gentiles and Jews, male and female, even some who were unclean. But into the first inner court no Gentile could enter and no one with any impurities of body or mind.  Into the next court no woman could enter, only men, who from there could peer into the next court reserved for priests alone who offered the sacrifices. Finally, there was the inner room, the holy of holies, into which only the High Priest could enter on the Day of Atonement.  Here at one time was housed the Ten Commandments.

A code of holiness, then, marked off the spaces that different people were permitted or not permitted to stand within.

Our Gospel texts tells us that on a Passover Day Jesus strode into that Jerusalem temple, went to where money was being exchanged for animal sacrifice, and with a whip drove out the money exchangers along with the animals, and turned their tables upside down.

In doing that Jesus was as much as sealing his death from two quarters: from the Romans who would not tolerate any disturbance, and from Jewish priests and leaders who did not want the Romans to be provoked.

Now what are we to make of our text and this story against the background I’ve outlined?

Were the events of that day an impetuous act, in which somehow Jesus lost his temper and went so far as to create a disturbance with awful consequence for him?  Or was what he did well planned, as I believe, and meant as the symbolization of his entire ministry? A stand he took that demonstrated al alternative vision of how people could be together.

To answer that, we need to explore the one word ‘holy.’

‘Holy’ at its root means ‘other.’  In an ethical sense, holiness means not acting like others, separating oneself from the immoral behavior of others, therefore, leading a just life, not an unjust life.  But the application of the word extended further, when out of fear or will for domination, those who deemed themselves holy kept women at a distance as lesser beings, kept the sick at a distance as unholy, blamed others for the ills they suffered in body and mind, and created a caste-like system in which people were categorized and differences were maintained and accorded privilege. And God was made the foundation of that order in which certain people were treated as ‘unlike.’

Holiness meant then that you were not to go near those who were sick, for God was punishing them; you were not as a male to freely associate with women, for they could lure you; you were to shun those who were different, like Samaritans or Romans, for they might contaminate you.  You were holy. And to wash away impurities you might acquire, or for your own sins, you needed to offer the necessary temple sacrifices to be forgiven.

I see Jesus ministry as an attempt to turn that entire holiness system on its head – a system that categorized and separated people; a system whose center was a temple which marked off who stood where; a system in which people were labeled and blamed for their illnesses and privilege was said to be awarded by God based on gender or the accidents of life or birth; a system where priests controlled forgiveness.

If we look at all the recorded words of Jesus in the Gospels, nowhere did he ever bid anyone to be holy.  Nowhere!  He used the word ‘holy’ in reference to God.  God is other than we are.  God is separate.  We are not God.

For the word ‘holy’ he substituted the word ‘mercy.’  ‘Be merciful.’ he said.  ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’  ‘Do not judge.’  ‘Do not condemn. ‘ ‘Forgive as you have been forgiven.’  ‘When you are invited to a feast, don’t take the best seat to set yourself apart.’  ‘Wash each other’s feet.’  ‘Heal the sick.’  ‘Preach good news to the poor.’  ‘Bless and do not curse.’ 

And when we read about his actions, they match his words.  He freely welcomed, talked with and dined with people of every stripe – with the religious and irreligious, with male and female, with Jew and Gentile, with the moral and immoral.

His words and actions were all about engaging others, not separating from others; they were about being with others, not distancing oneself from others.  For him the essence of religion was compassion, not holiness. The greatest danger was not contamination but isolation.

Which brings me to the First Reading for today – the Ten Commandments. How did Jesus understand the Ten Commandments?

The Gospel of John gives us more than a clue in the Story of the woman who had committed adultery.  Jesus enters inside a circle of men to stand next to a woman about to be stoned for committing adultery.  He says to the men, Whoever is without sin, pick up the first stone.  And each put down his stone.

The Ten Commandments for Jesus revealed the sin of each one us, the sins of body, and of mind and heart where our values are twisted, our compulsions have hold of us, and our thoughts are on the wrong things. The Commandments for him revealed the unholiness of all of us before God, not just of some out there, whom we would look down on and stand apart from in judgment or contrived separation.

God, yes God is holy, different from us, but not by distancing himself, but in love for all. God requires no temple and sacrificial system to bend his will toward us - for us or anyone to stand before God.  God loves the world as it is and us as we are, and through the engagement of love, not holiness, wills to change the world.

And that leads us to the end of today’s Gospel text, which speaks of Jesus as the new temple of God, the temple into which all can enter, the temple in which there are no inner courts and outer courts, no separation of male and female, no division between holy and unholy, but the one in who we are all united through a mercy that accepts us all and makes us one.

If you ever get to thinking that somehow your sin is so great or your shame too deep to ever be loved as you are, forgiven, and renewed, know that God in Christ has already made the decision to take you into his heart.  The only thing perhaps remaining is to wake up to that reality and see yourself and others that way.

If you ever get to thinking that somehow illness is punishment, that injury or suffering are signs that God is against us, know that God in Christ has come to heal, not to hurt, to make better not worse.

And if you ever get to thinking that people of other faiths are not as loved by God as Christians are, know that in Christ God has revealed his love for the world and not just part of it.

For God so loved the world …! And we are in God, when we live in love.