John
2:13-22
We
assume that the Ten Commandments are very familiar to everyone, but I wonder
how much that is true today.
And,
yet, we almost don’t need to learn them at all. Much of what they say is
self-evident. The Ten Commandments are about how to be human, addressed
universally to all humanity. It’s striking how little religion there is in
them. True, the first three commandments relate to God, but there is nothing
about ritual or sacrifice, nothing about how to carry out acts of worship. The
only “religion” in the Commandments is about remembering that we are created,
and who created us.
Jewish
commentators often point to how a passage opens and closes as a key to understand
its meaning. The Ten Commandments open with “I am the Lord your God… you shall
have no other gods before me” and close with “you shall not covet… anything
that belongs to your neighbour”. Read in this way, we see that they are about
desire. Desire the Lord your God, and not other gods. Desire your neighbour’s
good, and not your neighbour’s things.
Follow
the ten commandments, and you will desire rightly. Which means that you will
live rightly. You will be offering God true worship and living truly as humanity
is meant to live. Because we are part of creation, worship and life are two
sides of the same coin.
The
desires that destroy bring us into rivalry. Desires for what other people have,
which lead to conflict and violence. Desires for other gods, because other gods
are not our creator and source of life. Other gods, if they exist at all, are
only things, such as forces of nature, parts of creation. To worship them is to
seek life where it cannot be found, for all things have their being only from
the one Creator, whom alone we must worship.
Really
the Ten Commandments are very simple. And yet they are such a challenge. Simply
to hear them read, we are reminded of all the ways in which humanity
collectively, and we ourselves, are constantly short-circuited by our wrongful
desires. We know this is how we should live, and yet we fail.
Except
for one human being. Jesus today enters the Temple in Jerusalem, and what he
does there is almost an interpretation, an enactment, of the Ten Commandments:
right worship, right living. The Temple was a physical embodiment of Israel’s
worship, a place for prayer and sacrifice. Moreover, it was meant for all
people. The inner part of the temple was reserved for Jews, and was where the
rituals specifically given to the Jewish people were observed.
But
the far larger outer part was the “Court of the Gentiles”, where anyone could
worship. This corresponds to the ten commandments addressed to all humanity. It
was a reminder that, for all people, right worship and right living went
together, and a reminder to Israel of its universal vocation, to bring
salvation to all people. It was to stand open in invitation to all.
But
what Jesus actually found there was very different: money changers, working on
a hefty commission, and licensed by the priests, because they would not allow
idolatrous Roman coins with the emperor’s image into the Temple treasury. And
sellers of animals for the sacrifices that were offered in the inner Temple –
sacrifices that were partly about breaking the commandments. Offerings for sin
and atonement showed in a figurative way the cost of putting right the harm
done by our disordered desires.
But
all this had taken over the space meant for the Gentiles. Jesus saw these
things as an obstacle to true worship. All nations should be coming to worship
their one true God. All nations should be living in harmony with creation and
one another, as set out in the Ten Commandments. The Temple should be a sign of
that. But instead it had become an obstacle to right worship and right living.
It was keeping people away from God.
His
driving out of the money changers and the animals for sacrifice was a prophetic
sign. Jesus himself is the one who will restore true worship and right living. As
the Eternal Son of the Father, the worship he offers in the Holy Trinity is
infinite, perfect, beyond anything we can comprehend. As a man, united with our
human nature, that worship becomes our worship, offered by Jesus as our priest
and representative.
‘Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ He said this of the temple
that was his body. The Temple built with stones is over. The new temple is
Jesus himself. He is where humanity meets God, with no obstacles in between.
And
in three days he will raise it up. The cleansing of the temple is a sign of his
forthcoming death and resurrection. The cross culminates the life of Jesus
which was one perfect act of worship in obedience to the Father. It is his
perfect sacrifice, freely offered as both priest and victim, that reconciles
all humanity with God.
This
is foolishness, according to the wisdom of the world, as St Paul says today.
But is it not the world that is mad? This perfect total love of God and of
humanity is the single most sane and completely human thing that has ever been
shown to us, and it was shown us by Jesus.
And
his resurrection enables all to live in the fullness of life with God and one
another that the Gospels call eternal life. Jesus lives the commandments,
fulfils the commandments, and opens to all who believe in him the true and
eternal life to which they point.
In
Jesus, there is no obstacle between humanity and God. He has opened the way to
all. Woe betide the Church, then, if we put any obstacles in his way. If we do
so we are no longer living as the Church. And yet that can happen. Our living
in Christ is a process of growth and transformation, as we are changed into his
image by grace. But the old untransformed humanity can still be evident. So the
Church must always be on the guard against the rigid legalism that tells people
they are not worthy, that they do not meet the standards of our rules. Against the
self-obsession that can obscure the Gospel. Against the laziness that says we
don’t need to witness and share our faith. Put nothing in the way of Jesus!
But
also in our own lives, in the temple of our hearts. What obstacles are there
that may prevent us from fully coming to Jesus? What disordered desires and
attachments have a hold on us, turning us away from desiring God alone as our
supreme good, and our neighbour’s good under God?
Lent
is a time of conversion, a season for self-examination and repentance. A time
for cleansing the temple of our hearts. For the true temple of our hearts is
Jesus himself, who desires to dwell in us by faith. The true worship of that
temple is his life, death and resurrection, the pattern of which he desires to
imprint on our lives as we are changed into him.
Let
nothing get in the way of Jesus, in the Church, in our hearts. Let all come to
him, for he desires to draw all people to himself, you, and me, and everybody, all
sorts and conditions, whatever life has been, whatever our burdens and sorrows
and sins. For he is zealous for the house of God that he desires to build in
our Church and in our hearts, and there is no-one he will turn away.
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