A Holy Anger
“Making a whip of cords, Jesus 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!”
John 2:15-16
The
Reverend Luther Zeigler
3
Lent 2012
I come from
German-American stock, and my family life growing up pretty much fit the ethnic
stereotype: I was taught the value of
order, discipline, and quiet obedience to authority. “Children are meant to be seen and not heard”
was a line frequently whispered in our household, and my brother and I were
expected do as we were told, without having to be asked twice, and without
complaint. And we did, more or less. Indeed, we didn’t think we had any other
option. For these reasons, and for
better or worse, the Zeigler house was a peaceful place with little to no emotional
volatility. I can count on one hand the
number of times either of my parents, God rest their souls, raised their voice
or otherwise expressed anger. To this
day, I confess, I am a bit overly sensitive to outbursts of emotion.
Perhaps because of this upbringing
and delicate sensibility, my ears perk up when I hear Jesus getting angry. And for the past two weeks, Jesus has been nothing
short of furious. In last week’s gospel
text, you will remember, it was Peter who set Jesus off. Peter has his own idea of what a Messiah
should look like. Peter wants a
“winner”: a wise teacher, a great
leader, a powerful ruler, someone who would rise to the top and reclaim
Israel’s true destiny in the face of a brutally oppressive Roman Empire. The Messiah Peter yearns for is nothing less
than a new and improved King David.
So, when Jesus begins to
disclose to his disciples, as he did last week, that his future will be that of
a suffering servant who will be humiliated, mocked, and ultimately crucified,
Peter cannot believe his ears and openly chastises Jesus. “Get behind me, Satan!,” Jesus blisters in
reply, letting Peter have his due in no uncertain terms. Jesus’ anger is provoked by Peter’s complete
misapprehension of God’s fundamental character.
Peter thinks that God’s
redemption of the world is to be achieved through powerful coercion; Jesus
reveals that God redeems through tender vulnerability. Peter thinks that God’s destiny for his Son
is glory and kingship; Jesus reveals that God wants his Son’s future to be one of
humility and selfless sacrifice. Peter
thinks that discipleship will be riding on the coattails of an inevitable
coronation; Jesus reveals that our true identity as his followers comes only
when we are prepared to take up our cross and die to our selves.
Hence Jesus’ righteous anger. This is not the distorted anger of human sin
that lashes out at another for selfish motives, or out of the weakness of
insecurity. This is a purifying anger
fueled by love. Jesus rebukes because he
needs to break open Peter’s fundamental misunderstanding of who God is and what
it means to follow God. While anger is
more often than not a manifestation of sin, at times it can be an instrument of
grace that saves people from their own folly.
In today’s gospel – the
famous cleansing of the Temple scene – Jesus’ anger is equal in intensity to
last week’s but different in its object.
Here, the question that gives rise to Jesus’ ire is how should we
faithfully worship God. By overturning
the moneychangers’ tables and chasing the animal vendors out of the Temple
Court, Jesus leaves no doubt that something is fundamentally amiss. “Take these things out of here! Stop making
my Father’s house a marketplace!,” Jesus shouts. But what precisely is the problem?
It is tempting, but I
think ultimately wrong, to conclude that the problem here is merely that some
profane lenders and merchants got a little too close to the sacred space of the
Temple, defiling its integrity. For the
truth is that both the moneylenders and the animal vendors were in fact integral to Temple worship at the
time. The reason moneylenders were
required is because Roman denarii and Attic drachmas were not an acceptable
means by which to pay the required temple tax because of the pagan images they
bore. For Jewish pilgrims to pay their
appropriate share of financial support to the temple, the imperial coinage
first had to be exchanged for legal Tyrian coinage having no graven
images. So, moneychangers were necessary
to the system.
Likewise, because animal
sacrifice was part and parcel of Temple worship at the time, animal merchants
were needed. The faithful had traveled
long distances to get to Jerusalem for the Passover, so they could not
reasonably be expected to carry clean sacrificial animals with them. They needed animal traders near the Temple to
make their sacrifices through the Temple priests.
Thus, Jesus’ wrath is not
about the presence of moneychangers and merchants per se, but to the whole Temple system of worship, which had lost
its bearings and had become corrupt and corrupting. What began in Solomonic times as a holy
attempt to create a sacred space in Jerusalem within which faithful Jews could
encounter, praise, and be transformed by their God, had by this time
degenerated into something very different.
What had once been a relationship was now an exchange; what had once
been authentic prayer was now a negotiation; what had once been a gathered
community of the faithful was now a highly stratified bureaucracy of priests,
scribes, and others coopted by imperial authority. These distortions in the religious life of
the Temple were the real focus of Jesus’ outburst.
Another tempting, but I
think equally misguided, interpretation of this text is to view it as a story
about the triumph of Christian over Jewish worship, as if Jesus’ anger reflects
a criticism of Jewish institutions and practices that Christians have somehow
moved beyond. The truth, of course, is that
these very same critiques can and often do apply with equal force to Christian
church life. The Protestant Reformation
was just one historical chapter in that ongoing and never-ending renewal of
authentic human worship. Jesus did not
come to replace the Temple with other buildings, as if swapping out a bema for
an altar or a menorah for a cross would do the trick. As our gospel text today teaches, Jesus’ aim
is to instill, what Catholic writer Gary Wills calls, “a religion of the heart,
with only himself as the place where
we encounter the Father.” (emphasis
added).
Jesus’ willingness to
confront the abuses of institutionalized religion is, of course, a big part of
the reason he ends up getting killed.
And to some extent, institutionalized religion keeps trying to kill
him. As the great American preacher
Harry Emerson Fosdick used to quip, people have for thousands of years been
trying to get rid of Jesus. First, they crucified him. And when that didn't work, they started
worshipping him. Worship can be just another form of crucifixion when we use it
to get ourselves off the hook of answering the real question Jesus poses. For the truth of the matter is that Jesus asks
not so much to be worshipped, as he asks to be followed.
There is a danger,
though, in taking this last point too far.
Some read Jesus’ critiques of Temple worship, and his stand-offs with
hypocritical religious leaders, as an invitation to chuck institutionalized
religion altogether. Often in my life I
have heard friends say: “Yes, I try to
follow Jesus, but I really don’t need the Church to do that.” Indeed, there have even been times in my own
life when I’ve felt that pull, and that sense of disappointment with the
church.
But as messy and
imperfect and hypocritical as the Church sometimes can be, we musn’t forget
that it was Jesus himself who first gathered his twelve followers into a
community, who prayed and sang psalms with them, who instituted the common meal
we now know as our Lord’s Supper, and who allowed himself to be baptized into
the community he created. And it was
Jesus himself who commissioned his followers at the end of his earthly ministry
to build more communities just like that first one. So, it would be a mistake, I submit, to read
too much into Jesus’ righteous anger in cleansing the Temple. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath
water.
Lent is a purifying time. It is a time of honest self-examination, when
we inventory our own spiritual lives to clear out the debris so that we keep
only that which matters. We read this
gospel text this third Sunday in Lent because this should be a purifying time
for the Church as well. Jesus’ righteous anger should catch us up short, should
take our breath away, and should prompt us to ask whether what we are doing
every Sunday in Church is ultimately faithful to His life and teachings. Why are we here? Why do we do what we do? When Church becomes empty ritual or just
another comfortable space or just some pretty music, we are in trouble.
Today’s gospel invites us
to take a hard look at everything we do here in church and to ask whether it is
an authentic expression of our devotion to Christ such that when we leave this place we are strengthened in our
commitment to follow Jesus and do His work in the world. The genius of Anglicanism, I would submit, is
that over the centuries we have developed a liturgy whose elements of prayer,
word, sacrament, music, and beautiful space, work together to draw us into a
deeper and fuller relationship with Christ.
But there is an ever-present danger in our common worship of becoming so
caught up in its beauty that we neglect its aim. The risk is one of complacency, of allowing
ourselves to become so comfortable and content in our time together, that we
forget that the ultimate purpose of this time with Christ is for it to change us so that we might follow and do
Christ’s work in the world.
Let us take this moment,
then, to hear anew the holy anger in Christ’s voice so that our worship today,
and every day, may be purified of all hypocrisy and cleansed of all
self-satisfaction. In the beautiful
words of one of our Eucharistic Prayers:
“Deliver us, Lord Christ, from the presumption of coming to your Holy
Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for
renewal. Let the grace of your Holy
Communion make us one body and one spirit, so that we may worthily serve the
world in your name. Amen.”
