Scripture: When we listen to a reading of familiar scripture, we feel like we are meeting an old friend. Many of us memorized the Ten Commandments" as children. They provided us with direction for how we should behave. Hearing the Ten Commandments as adults, we still recognize their timeless wisdom as a collection of "oughts." I would ask that you listen to them in one additional way: hear how they remind us of who we are; hear how they sketch what it means to be truly human; consider how any failure in these areas not only sets us apart from God, but distances us from our true selves. I read from the 20th chapter of the book of Exodus, beginning with verse 1:

Then God spoke all these words: [2] I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; [3] you shall have no other gods before me. [4] You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. [5] You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, [6] but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

[7] You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. [8] Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. [9] Six days you shall labor and do all your work. [10] But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. [11] For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

[12] Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. [13] You shall not murder. [14] You shall not commit adultery. [15] You shall not steal. [16] You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. [17] You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

In the second chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus has yet to initiate his public ministry. He has turned water into enormous volumes of wine, but that was a private affair. Because it's Passover, like everyone else he's required to visit the Temple. Upon arrival, he cannot control himself. He is outraged. Forgetting the importance of first impressions, setting aside the effect an outburst might have on his future influence, Jesus becomes furious. John records it as follows [John 2: 13-22]:

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. [14] In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. [15] 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. [16] He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" [17] His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." [18] The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" [19] Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." [20] The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" [21] But he was speaking of the temple of his body. [22] 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.

SERMON:

Jesus, acting as the living reminder, entered the Temple to redirect the lives of any who desired to be faithful. They had become distracted, and were no longer focusing on the authentic business of the Temple. He arrived just before Passover, the holiday which marked the Jews' passage from slavery to freedom. One way they celebrated their freedom was in their adoration of their magnificent Temple, which had been under construction for 46 years. Such a building project requires devotion, and brings with it considerable funding requirements. The people expressed their devotion through animal sacrifice. They helped fund the construction of the Temple through an annual tax. But sadly, over time, the Temple became for them less and less a place where they drew near to God. Instead, it served as an object of adoration, and took on a life of its own.

Immediately upon arriving, Jesus becomes angry, but his anger is not with the unbelievers. He is angry with "the regulars" those who faithfully attend and support the Temple. His point is not that we don't need a place of worship. We do. And he has no issue with that place being a magnificent structure. His problem is with those who forget that the Temple exists so that people might create community and together, come close to God.

When our ritual becomes routine, our devotion is displaced. Instead of being devoted to God, we find ourselves devoted to the assurance we receive by continuing all that is familiar. In Jesus' time, the ritual that had become routine involved animal sacrifice and the exchange of money. His reaction to their unexamined habits is unforgettable, not only because he becomes enraged, but because he shows his anger in the Temple. And as if that's not enough, he vents his fury if you can imagine on Passover, the great celebration of the liberation of Israel from slavery.

On that great day the text suggests that the focus of the people was far from Passover. What was their problem? Was it adultery? Was it stealing? Was it covetousness? No. What infuriated Jesus was that the people who had come to the Temple on Passover to celebrate their liberation had chosen for themselves a different kind of slavery, a different kind of idolatry.

Later, he would light into the Pharisees for their legalism.(1) Later he would attack the scribes for their snobbishness. But as his first act of public ministry, he doesn't go after their moral behavior. He assails the religious, he assaults the righteous, even as they sit in the pews. Jesus' first public stance focuses on worship. Get this wrong, and no amount of moral purity or good-citizen awards will save you. Get this right, and the God whom we honor will save us, even from our sins.

This passage has a strange, contemporary ring to it. We are reminded that there is more to faithfulness, more to our being religious, more to being a disciple, than any amount of work we can undertake.

• By our effort, we can arrange a beautiful altar, but God is not in the altar.
  
  
• By our effort, we can appeal to each other in a Capital Campaign to make this house of worship more inviting, but God is not in the building.
  
  
• By our effort, our choir, our Director of Music, and all who sing hymns can create wonderful music, but God is not in the music.
  
  
• By our effort, we can make sure that our children attend not one, but TWO hours of church activity each Sunday, but God is not counting the hours.
  
  
• By our effort we can organize Adult Education opportunities that appeal to a wide range of people, and help people on their spiritual journeys, but God is not in the discussions or the books.
  
  

Churches succeed when they are populated by people who long to be remade. While they are willing to pour themselves out feeding the hungry, tutoring at Buckeye Woodland, hanging drywall at the Habitat for Humanity house on 85th Street, working on committees, leading adult education while they are willing to invest their time, talent and treasure in the enterprise of the church, they know that what matters most and what makes it all work is God's love for us, manifest in God's decision to be among us. Our salvation did not come in the form of a nice young man from the Near East who preached stately, erudite yet entertaining sermons, and had, by his side, a superb musical ensemble that in our hearing sounded heavenly indeed.

Our salvation begins when we set aside our idols. We have each developed elaborate systems and schemes in which we have invested huge personal stakes in things, or habits, or rituals which are not salvific. For us it is not animal sacrifice, but it may be our job; or our health, or a fiefdom over which we have long exercised control. We need to get the BIG PICTURE, and that begins when we understand what the first two commandments mean: that God is God, and we are to have no other Gods before God.

Each time I let go of something in which I have inappropriately invested power, I am left empty and afraid. What will fill the void? What will give meaning to that part of my self which drew from that focus? I feel like I've just been driven out of my church by a wild man with a whip, and sitting on the stairs outside I'm not quite sure what to do.

However invested we may be in some of these idols some may even have been under construction for 46 years we need to open ourselves to the saving power of God: a power which no force, no compulsion, can rival. In three days, God can raise up such saving power as to restore us from whatever pit we may have tumbled into whatever hell we may have created for ourselves. For most of us, this kind of talk is hard to hear. But as is obvious from both of today's passages, God is not in the business of telling us what we like to hear. "It is before God, and not before a mirror that the penitent stands."(2)

Standing before God, alongside us stands our brother Jesus, who acts as the living reminder. He offers us a bit of bread not enough to "do" anything for us. He offers us a taste of juice but not enough to slake our thirst. Most of all, he invites us into a relationship not one in which we discover a way to fulfill our desires, but a relationship in which we bend our lives to conform to God's desires. And for those of us willing to trust the invitation and relinquish our control, we are given new freedom the likes of which we can hardly imagine. Amen.

Footnotes:
1. These remaining lines in this paragraph are adapted from William Willimon's sermon "The Anger of Jesus" found in Pulpit Resource Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 36.
2. Craddock, Fred et. al. Preaching the Common Lectionary, Year B, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, p. 53.