Lent III

This week we have -- in John's telling -- what is sometimes called 'the cleansing of the Temple' in Jerusalem, center of ritual life in Judea in the emerging Judaism of the first century CE. Jesus overturns the tables, drives out the animals for sale for sacrificial offering, and - in John's telling, uses a homemade whip to do so. Quite the image. John's telling has Jesus reply to his questioners (polite term - I'm sure they were all irate!) that this temple will be destroyed and built back up in three days. John makes sure that we understand, dear reader, that Jesus is talking about himself, but the others do not understand his image. (Who gets it and who does not, are constant themes in John.) He is talking about shameful death/seeming end (crucifixion) and resurrection, though they can not understand that.

This is a sign for them that they cannot read, neither the disciples nor those who control Temple economics.

The Gospel according to Mark has a characteristically briefer version. It shares with John what can be buried in John's symbolism -- Jesus simply chases all those out of the Temple who would stand between people and the divine. In Mark, Jesus quotes (Hebrew) scripture to them by saying, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations,' but tells them that they have made it into a 'den of thieves.'

We also read from Paul's first letter to the little assembly of believers in the wealthy city of Corinth. Paul says that all those asking for proof, and signs, and understanding that Jesus' way is actually worth it... will have their own desire for understanding confounded, again and again. God has chosen what seems foolish and weak to shame the seemingly powerful and arrogant. 'We preach Christ crucified.' Not exactly a resoundingly successful-seeming invitation to join...

Paul's words, too, are a sign, an image, a metaphor that is not easily understood. (He seems to like this, actually!). But, I find that it deeply engages us, and draws us further into the heart of God. Where am I weak, or foolish? God will use this, too. Where do I seek to extract meaning or wealth -- seeming wisdom, or purpose, or actual wealth -- in the predictable places only to find that the usual ways of the world - or of my heart - will not suffice, will not work. And, I must give myself over to the wisdom of God.

How is the way of crucifixion the way of wisdom? The violence of the world thinks that it controls access to God, and access to What Matters. In Christ, God says no to that.

The system of the Temple in Jesus' day was very logical -- very much the 'wisdom' of this world. Pay your money here, offer the dove or the bull for sacrifice, atone or purge, and become righteous again. For a time. Highly profitable for those in charge of the selling, or those eating the scraps.

God returns the people of God to their earlier relationship with God -- through foolish-seeming self-emptying and self-giving. Through humility. Through acts of angry, disruptive performance-art that reveal the creaking machinery behind the curtain and those profiting from it.

Offer yourself to God -- your foolishness and your wisdom. You will be rebuilt.