Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Today’s text

John 2:13-16

When the time of the Jewish Passover was near Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting there. Making a whip out of cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, sheep and cattle as well, scattered the money changers' coins, knocked their tables over and said to the dove sellers, 'Take all this out of here and stop using my Father's house as a market.'

Reflection

Today, we would send Jesus to an anger-management class. At least that would have been part of his sentence for disrupting trade.

The temple was, indeed, a place of trade. People bought and sold birds and animals intended for sacrifice in the temple precincts as those coming to the temple sought atonement with God for their sins.

The system of sacrifice had long since been established by divine decree. Jesus was interfering in holy work, or so it seemed to those in charge and, likely, many others.

We can imagine there was underhanded dealing and overcharging happening, and that is why Jesus flew off the handle. He was objecting to dishonesty and injustice, taking advantage of those who came to make sacrifice and find peace.

But something more appears is at work. He was about to affect a sweeping change in how people thought about worship … and God.

Worship required no sacrifice to change God’s mind or to give God something (a sacrifice) so that God will give us something (forgiveness, a blessing). God is no deal maker, and that’s what people do in markets, or at least in the temple marketplace: they make deals.

Something for something.

God gives the blessings of life to all and the grace of forgiven life, free and full, freely, for nothing, to any who seek and hunger for God’s gifts.

No sacrifice is required, no giving up of something to get something. God is not in the deal-making business.

God gives out of an infinite abundance of love and unending generosity. No deals necessary or wanted. The desire and attempt to make deals with God reveal that we don’t get it.

We don’t get God, who is as unlike our deal-making ways as night is from day.

No need to pay God off, for the Holy One is a deep river of generosity flowing from an ever-abundant source to the hearts of all who can simply receive.

Pr. David L. Miller