Cleaning the Temple -- Cleansing Our Lives
Sermon
The View from the Cross
Cycle B Gospel Text Sermons for Lent and Easter
Having heard the gospel this morning let me introduce a word from Paul when he said to the church in Ephesus, "And that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love" (Ephesians 3:17 NRSV).
What Paul is saying here is the more Christians know about Christ; the more amazed we are at Christ's love for us. When Jesus lives in our hearts, we discover a love that goes right down into the soil of God's loving revelation and creation.
By extension then, if we allow that love to grow and become secure, we then become a dwelling place of God. Quoting Paul again, "Or don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NLT).
The key to our gospel reading for this Third Sunday in Lent is the repetition of the idea concerning belief. It is so important in fact, that John uses the word "witness" no less than 27 times in his gospel. For John there is a single reason to witnessing and that is to force people to confront what they believe, or do not believe, and help them find the gospel that is Jesus Christ. That is always John's theme. In fact it is so important that he says in John 20:31 (NLT), "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life."
John was especially impressed with the wondrous deeds that he himself witnessed. John not only saw miraculous things take place, he also knew those miracles were not done to make Jesus look like a "rock star" but rather they were performed as signs to manifest the true nature of the Christ who worked them.
In John we see a man who believed, followed, and changed. John entered into a new and personal experience with Jesus. John became more than just a friend, he became a personal witness who was so filled with the love of Jesus and the hope offered through that love that he had to tell others about it. His heart became so full, it had to be emptied!
John discovered that the very idea that Jesus lives in us is enough to make us want to get on stage and tell anyone who will listen all about him. I guess you can say that I myself am doing that very thing, right now! You see, the fact that Jesus Christ the Son of God would be humble enough to be in me is almost more than I can comprehend. If I were to go into the hospital and have an MRI it will not show the outline of a person living in me. The Bible reminds us that God is Spirit. You cannot touch Spirit, you cannot see Spirit, but you feel that Spirit within your very soul! How cool is that? To think that the God that created the universe and all that is in it lives in me, is present in me, and wants to live in the hearts of all creation is overwhelming.
In discovering this indwelling of the Spirit of God I find that I want to share with you some of that which I have been lucky enough to experience myself. Lent is a good time for the pastor to do some personal witnessing. In point of fact, it is a good time for all of us to do some witnessing. And I say that knowing it is an uncomfortable subject for many. For most folks in the more "traditional" churches this idea of witnessing is a bit foreign.
When we begin to understand that God loves us so much more than we can ever know, we just may begin to see why it is so important to become that temple of the Holy Spirit that Paul spoke of to the church in Corinth. Everything God is, God is to the fullest: God's love is 100% loving; God's gentleness and peace is 100% gentleness and peace. God is all the peace we need and God is by definition holy. But we should also remember that as much as God loves us, God hates that which separates people from God. In other words, God hates sin! God absolutely hates anything that keeps us away from God's presence in our lives. In the story of creation it is instructive to remember what words were spoken. God did not tell Adam and Eve that God thought they had been a little unorganized and perhaps a bit messy. God did not tell Noah to do the backstroke or tread water for a few days. No, God makes it clear that there are and will be consequences to sin. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23 NLT).
I think it is important that we understand God's disdain for sin. It was why Jesus hung on the cross. God's feelings about sin are pretty evident throughout this chapter of John's gospel.
One of the things that John's gospel portrays so well is that Jesus is in a sense a local commodity. The people Jesus are with and those with whom he is speaking have an idea of who he is and where he comes from. Most of them probably thought of him as Joseph's son, the kid from Nazareth. Others may have known him as a carpenter in his own right. However, Jesus had crossed a line and he was messing around in much more disturbing territory. We know that Jesus had already been to visit John at the River Jordan. He had already accepted John the Baptist's claim that he was the Son of God and now he had stirred the city up by booting all the moneychangers and cattle dealers from the temple. Just consider what is going on here.
John records the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Remember the other three gospels all have Jesus at the temple toward the end of his public ministry. John may well have been aware of what the other gospels contained but believed it was important to place the story early on as a way of highlighting the fact that Jesus attended the temple and he knew what was going on there.
The buying and selling of animals in and around the temple was common practice. The activity was probably seen as a convenience for the pilgrims who came to the Holy City for Passover. But as is often the case with unsupervised business (Wall Street, banking), abuses developed, and the people who were the consumers became the consumed! With money to be made, worship would soon take a backseat.
It is likely that Jesus did not protest the use of the temple in this way as it did help the pilgrims to be able to make a proper sacrifice. He was angry with the way in which it was being accomplished. He protested that the entrepreneurs who were operating in the temple were more concerned with profit than with the reason they had been allowed to do business there in the first place. This was the temple of God and as such it deserved better attention and respect. For the better part of his life, Jesus had been to the temple and watched those people pollute the house of God in the name of the almighty dollar instead of the almighty God. He was furious at their disrespect and greed. He was disgusted that the temple floor was soiled with animal feces and the smell of urine burned his nostrils. This was the place where people came to worship God, it was for them and for Jesus, God's house. The sin of the cheating moneychangers and the greed of those men broke his heart. So Jesus decided it was time for someone to clean the place up, and he drove them back out into the streets.
In an interesting use of words, John says that his disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me" Jesus showed forth his zeal (John 2:17). And just what is zeal? Zeal is passion, it is love on fire. It is a consuming dedication to a purpose. Jesus was passionate about God. He was passionate about purity. He was passionate about the things of God. Jesus was certain of one thing and that was that God doesn't dwell in filth.
You will remember that earlier I spoke about our hearts being God's dwelling place. For years people have prayed over and over that Jesus would work in their lives. Sadly for too many people it seems that they just don't feel that presence in their lives. It is likely that there is a very good reason for this, and what Jesus did at the temple may be a good instruction to us all as to what we have to do to prepare our temple to receive him. We ourselves must be sure to clean out the things that would hinder Jesus from entering into our hearts. We need to get the junk out and make room for the Spirit.
Some of you need to cleanse the temple. You need to get busy and clear it out, drive out the cattle, upset the moneychangers, and shovel out the dirt and manure that is keeping Jesus from working effectively in your life.
Lent is a time when we can and should examine our lives to see if there is any unclean thing there. Far too many of us go through our day, our week, our months, our years, and our lives without examining ourselves and letting Jesus examine us through his word. Our heart is like a garden and sin is as quick to pop up as the weeds. If we stop examining our lives and asking God to search us out, we will quickly be overcome with unwanted weeds. The Spirit doesn't dwell in dirty temples. As Jesus absorbs the sin, the ecstasy of the Spirit explodes within us. There is no shortcut to being alive in God; it comes as you confess your sin in silence. You need to go off by yourself. You need to give Jesus time to open the door to your heart. Lent gently urges us to ask ourselves when was the last time we were free of the things of the world long enough to allow Jesus to purify and cleanse us?
You may believe in the forgiveness of sins, but belief alone will not be enough. You can believe in the forgiveness of sin, but the question is have you come to terms with the fact that sin has taken up residence in your life? Have you surrendered, have you allowed Jesus to come in and do some cleaning? Have you let Jesus penetrate into our heart? Once again, Lent allows us a unique opportunity to ask the one who knew no sin, to take your sin away! Jesus wasn't crying in Gethsemane because of the pain, he wasn't crying because of the agony. He was torn because he knew he would take on all our sin.
Don't dwell on the sin you have confessed. We are all guilty of doing something to separate us from God in the past and then allowing that same thing to sneak back into our lives, take up residence, and once again set us apart from that which we all need: the love of God. Sisters and brothers in Christ if you have nailed your sin to the cross, the word says that God casts it as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). That is a long way. That says to us that when the sin is absorbed that which hides sin from our lives is no longer there. That sin, that thing, whatever it is that keeps us from walking hand in hand with Jesus into the Lent and Easter journey is finally identified and removed. Jesus has cleared away all that keeps us from living in comfort with the Holy Spirit.
If our separation from God is smothering the Spirit, if sin is a wet rag on the Spirit, it holds us back. Today I urge you to reach out to Jesus and allow him to take your hand and bring you to that place where the Spirit dwells. Reach out to Jesus and help him help you fill the cluttered spaces of your life and permeate those spaces with new life and new hope. When you do, you will begin to understand maybe for the first time that it is through the cross of Christ that the Holy Spirit fills you with the same zeal that filled our Lord. Allow that wonderful passion to grow within you. When you do, you will be able to walk into your future knowing that the Spirit of God dwells within you and you are once and forever the temple of God! Amen.
What Paul is saying here is the more Christians know about Christ; the more amazed we are at Christ's love for us. When Jesus lives in our hearts, we discover a love that goes right down into the soil of God's loving revelation and creation.
By extension then, if we allow that love to grow and become secure, we then become a dwelling place of God. Quoting Paul again, "Or don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NLT).
The key to our gospel reading for this Third Sunday in Lent is the repetition of the idea concerning belief. It is so important in fact, that John uses the word "witness" no less than 27 times in his gospel. For John there is a single reason to witnessing and that is to force people to confront what they believe, or do not believe, and help them find the gospel that is Jesus Christ. That is always John's theme. In fact it is so important that he says in John 20:31 (NLT), "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life."
John was especially impressed with the wondrous deeds that he himself witnessed. John not only saw miraculous things take place, he also knew those miracles were not done to make Jesus look like a "rock star" but rather they were performed as signs to manifest the true nature of the Christ who worked them.
In John we see a man who believed, followed, and changed. John entered into a new and personal experience with Jesus. John became more than just a friend, he became a personal witness who was so filled with the love of Jesus and the hope offered through that love that he had to tell others about it. His heart became so full, it had to be emptied!
John discovered that the very idea that Jesus lives in us is enough to make us want to get on stage and tell anyone who will listen all about him. I guess you can say that I myself am doing that very thing, right now! You see, the fact that Jesus Christ the Son of God would be humble enough to be in me is almost more than I can comprehend. If I were to go into the hospital and have an MRI it will not show the outline of a person living in me. The Bible reminds us that God is Spirit. You cannot touch Spirit, you cannot see Spirit, but you feel that Spirit within your very soul! How cool is that? To think that the God that created the universe and all that is in it lives in me, is present in me, and wants to live in the hearts of all creation is overwhelming.
In discovering this indwelling of the Spirit of God I find that I want to share with you some of that which I have been lucky enough to experience myself. Lent is a good time for the pastor to do some personal witnessing. In point of fact, it is a good time for all of us to do some witnessing. And I say that knowing it is an uncomfortable subject for many. For most folks in the more "traditional" churches this idea of witnessing is a bit foreign.
When we begin to understand that God loves us so much more than we can ever know, we just may begin to see why it is so important to become that temple of the Holy Spirit that Paul spoke of to the church in Corinth. Everything God is, God is to the fullest: God's love is 100% loving; God's gentleness and peace is 100% gentleness and peace. God is all the peace we need and God is by definition holy. But we should also remember that as much as God loves us, God hates that which separates people from God. In other words, God hates sin! God absolutely hates anything that keeps us away from God's presence in our lives. In the story of creation it is instructive to remember what words were spoken. God did not tell Adam and Eve that God thought they had been a little unorganized and perhaps a bit messy. God did not tell Noah to do the backstroke or tread water for a few days. No, God makes it clear that there are and will be consequences to sin. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23 NLT).
I think it is important that we understand God's disdain for sin. It was why Jesus hung on the cross. God's feelings about sin are pretty evident throughout this chapter of John's gospel.
One of the things that John's gospel portrays so well is that Jesus is in a sense a local commodity. The people Jesus are with and those with whom he is speaking have an idea of who he is and where he comes from. Most of them probably thought of him as Joseph's son, the kid from Nazareth. Others may have known him as a carpenter in his own right. However, Jesus had crossed a line and he was messing around in much more disturbing territory. We know that Jesus had already been to visit John at the River Jordan. He had already accepted John the Baptist's claim that he was the Son of God and now he had stirred the city up by booting all the moneychangers and cattle dealers from the temple. Just consider what is going on here.
John records the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Remember the other three gospels all have Jesus at the temple toward the end of his public ministry. John may well have been aware of what the other gospels contained but believed it was important to place the story early on as a way of highlighting the fact that Jesus attended the temple and he knew what was going on there.
The buying and selling of animals in and around the temple was common practice. The activity was probably seen as a convenience for the pilgrims who came to the Holy City for Passover. But as is often the case with unsupervised business (Wall Street, banking), abuses developed, and the people who were the consumers became the consumed! With money to be made, worship would soon take a backseat.
It is likely that Jesus did not protest the use of the temple in this way as it did help the pilgrims to be able to make a proper sacrifice. He was angry with the way in which it was being accomplished. He protested that the entrepreneurs who were operating in the temple were more concerned with profit than with the reason they had been allowed to do business there in the first place. This was the temple of God and as such it deserved better attention and respect. For the better part of his life, Jesus had been to the temple and watched those people pollute the house of God in the name of the almighty dollar instead of the almighty God. He was furious at their disrespect and greed. He was disgusted that the temple floor was soiled with animal feces and the smell of urine burned his nostrils. This was the place where people came to worship God, it was for them and for Jesus, God's house. The sin of the cheating moneychangers and the greed of those men broke his heart. So Jesus decided it was time for someone to clean the place up, and he drove them back out into the streets.
In an interesting use of words, John says that his disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me" Jesus showed forth his zeal (John 2:17). And just what is zeal? Zeal is passion, it is love on fire. It is a consuming dedication to a purpose. Jesus was passionate about God. He was passionate about purity. He was passionate about the things of God. Jesus was certain of one thing and that was that God doesn't dwell in filth.
You will remember that earlier I spoke about our hearts being God's dwelling place. For years people have prayed over and over that Jesus would work in their lives. Sadly for too many people it seems that they just don't feel that presence in their lives. It is likely that there is a very good reason for this, and what Jesus did at the temple may be a good instruction to us all as to what we have to do to prepare our temple to receive him. We ourselves must be sure to clean out the things that would hinder Jesus from entering into our hearts. We need to get the junk out and make room for the Spirit.
Some of you need to cleanse the temple. You need to get busy and clear it out, drive out the cattle, upset the moneychangers, and shovel out the dirt and manure that is keeping Jesus from working effectively in your life.
Lent is a time when we can and should examine our lives to see if there is any unclean thing there. Far too many of us go through our day, our week, our months, our years, and our lives without examining ourselves and letting Jesus examine us through his word. Our heart is like a garden and sin is as quick to pop up as the weeds. If we stop examining our lives and asking God to search us out, we will quickly be overcome with unwanted weeds. The Spirit doesn't dwell in dirty temples. As Jesus absorbs the sin, the ecstasy of the Spirit explodes within us. There is no shortcut to being alive in God; it comes as you confess your sin in silence. You need to go off by yourself. You need to give Jesus time to open the door to your heart. Lent gently urges us to ask ourselves when was the last time we were free of the things of the world long enough to allow Jesus to purify and cleanse us?
You may believe in the forgiveness of sins, but belief alone will not be enough. You can believe in the forgiveness of sin, but the question is have you come to terms with the fact that sin has taken up residence in your life? Have you surrendered, have you allowed Jesus to come in and do some cleaning? Have you let Jesus penetrate into our heart? Once again, Lent allows us a unique opportunity to ask the one who knew no sin, to take your sin away! Jesus wasn't crying in Gethsemane because of the pain, he wasn't crying because of the agony. He was torn because he knew he would take on all our sin.
Don't dwell on the sin you have confessed. We are all guilty of doing something to separate us from God in the past and then allowing that same thing to sneak back into our lives, take up residence, and once again set us apart from that which we all need: the love of God. Sisters and brothers in Christ if you have nailed your sin to the cross, the word says that God casts it as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). That is a long way. That says to us that when the sin is absorbed that which hides sin from our lives is no longer there. That sin, that thing, whatever it is that keeps us from walking hand in hand with Jesus into the Lent and Easter journey is finally identified and removed. Jesus has cleared away all that keeps us from living in comfort with the Holy Spirit.
If our separation from God is smothering the Spirit, if sin is a wet rag on the Spirit, it holds us back. Today I urge you to reach out to Jesus and allow him to take your hand and bring you to that place where the Spirit dwells. Reach out to Jesus and help him help you fill the cluttered spaces of your life and permeate those spaces with new life and new hope. When you do, you will begin to understand maybe for the first time that it is through the cross of Christ that the Holy Spirit fills you with the same zeal that filled our Lord. Allow that wonderful passion to grow within you. When you do, you will be able to walk into your future knowing that the Spirit of God dwells within you and you are once and forever the temple of God! Amen.
