[A sermon delivered to the Oxford Unitarians congregation on Sunday, 7th of March 2021]
(Readings: Exodus 20:1-17 and John 2:13-22)
Some of you might know that that religious attitudes that I encountered at my Church of England Primary School caused me to go through a distinct period of Atheism that lasted for many years. Indeed, at that time, I was probably the world’s youngest militant Dawkinsite Atheist. I have a now vague memory that those with power over myself and my fellow children at that school were very keen on us singing the Christmas carol ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ and were especially keen on emphasising the lines:
Christian children all should be Mild, obedient, good as he.
Even back then, I as a child, could not square this version of the example Jesus supposedly set us with the example of his ministry that we heard today. What is mild and obedient about turning over tables and brandishing a whip in a temple? Surely more theologically informed lyrics to that carol would be:
Christian children all should be. Wild, revolutionary, good as he.
However, I now have an appreciation this passage from John that we heard today does not make Jesus a rebel without a cause. His actions might have looked wild, and even may have been revolutionary. But these still demonstrate a love of people and obedience to God.
Before we get into this though, let me address an elephant in the room – this passage from John’s Gospel is one of those occasions were there is an obvious discrepancy among the four gospels. All the other three gospels describe Jesus’s act of cleansing the temple as happening at the end of his ministry. It is the disruption Jesus cased to the powerful though this action that finally cases various fractions in the ruling elite of society to unite in putting a stop to this troublesome Jesus fellow. John, in contrast, puts Jesus running around the temple with a whip right at the beginning of his gospel. Why would John do this, seemingly in contradiction of the other gospel writers and in contradiction of logic (if Jesus had tried doing this at the start of his ministry, I fear it would have been a rather short one)? The answer is probably that John is not writing with chronology in mind. John’s goal is not to produce a biography of Jesus, but instead to present the case for Jesus being the messiah that the prophets of old had talked about. One of the reasons John describes these events so early in his gospel is probably because he considered them to be important.
But why is upsetting a few tables (combined with some zealous livestock herding) such a big deal? What was it about people peacefully trading that made Jesus so angry?
Firstly, a note on the historical context. This was Passover – the greatest of all the feats of Judaism. This was not a quiet event. During the Second Temple period, every male Jew who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem had to attend Passover in the city. 15 Miles might not sound like a lot today but imagine for a moment if all the men from Bicester in the North, to Didcot and Wallingford in the South to Witney and Wantage in the West to Lewknor and Thame in the East all had to be in Oxford on a specific day! The city would be buzzing. Not only that but Passover in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus would have had a similar attraction to Muslim’s making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, in that the Jewish people and religion was, by the time of Jesus, truly international – all Jews, regardless of location, would have wanted to visit the temple in Jerusalem on Passover at least once in their lives. On average there could have been as many as 2,250,000 Jews from all over the world in the city to observe Passover.
This large number of people from many lands presented a problem in terms of currency. In practice, for secular purposes, coins from Rome, Greece, Egypt, Tyre, Sidon, and Palestine itself all would have been widely accepted. However, many of these foreign coins would have had the faces of emperors or pagan deities on them – hardly appropriate for an offering at the temple. If you were a Jewish pilgrim in Jerusalem you would need to pay Temple tax at the temple so you would have to exchange your Greek or Roman coins into currency accepted by the temple. The temple in Jesus’s day was made up of a series of courts and you could go to the first one to exchange your currency and buy animals to sacrifice. This sounds convenient but there were problems. The money-changers had a captive market and changed a hefty commission on all transactions, you might have to spend the equivalent of a day’s wages just in the commission you paid to convert your currency. Then, if you had come all that way, you might as well make an offering. Again though, those who traded in animals for sacrifice at the temple had a captive market. After you brought an animal, you had to pay to have it examined before it could be sacrificed. If you had brought a cheaper animal from outside the temple, it would likely fail the examination. Animals in the temple cost up to fifteen times those you could find outside! Of course, there is no problem if you were rich, indeed paying over the odds for a sacrificial cow and being able to do so in front of an international audience would have been great – what better way to boast of your wealth and piety!
This is what was engaging to Jesus. In a house of worship dedicated to God, the poor were being fleeced at the expanse of the rich – and all in the name of religion! Jesus’s actions disrupted the rich gaining money from the poor, just as the teaching of his followers that animal sacrifice was an irrelevance that had no impact on what God thought of you was a threat to their long-term income. Also, if a gentile, say the Samarian woman who Jesus ministered to, had been called by God to worship at the temple, then they would have only been aloud to enter into this first court and no further. They would have had to make their prayers alongside the hustle and bustle of traders and the livestock. Jesus’s action could also have been a protest against this apartheid in worship.
What can we learn from Jesus’s cleansing of the temple today? Let us start with ourselves for a moment. We might not, thankfully, be keen on animal sacrifice yet we still find ways of doing religion that would outrage Jesus. I am reminded of a certain mosaic in one Unitarian chapel that was hand made by a Venetian artist and transported to and assembled in the chapel at great expense. Was this venture commissioned out of genuine charity and a willingness to aid one’s fellow worshippers, or was it because the Anglican church down the road had just got one like it and the wealthy members of the congregation did not wish to be outdone by their commercial and religious rivals?
Also, while we do not formally segregate people out of our holiest spaces, why is it that despite our claims to welcome diversity, the class make up of most Unitarian congregations is fairly homogenous? Why is it that, despite advancement on this in recent years, I get the feeling that most Unitarian congregations are whiter than the general populations in the communities they serve?
But let us step briefly outside the church and turn our critical gaze outwards into the world. After all it is the world – not the admittedly spectacular Harris Manchester College Chapel – that is our temple. The ministry of Jesus helped our forebears to realise that the worship of God could not be restricted to one building or one priestly class. It was that same ministry that helps us realise that the whole world, the whole of creation, is a Temple of God. Yet still, it is the activities of the wealthy and the powerful that continue to desecrate our temple with injustice, pollution, and greed.
It is our religious duty to follow the example of Jesus and exorcise the world of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, climate injustice and, most importantly, the oppressive economic systems of class that these dark forces depend on.
Let us work together in love, prayer, and action to make it so.
Amen.
