Daily Reading & Meditation
Monday (3/9): "Judge not; condemn not"
Gospel Reading: Luke 6:36-38
36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.37 "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back."
Old Testament Reading: Daniel 9:4-10
4 I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, "O Lord, the great and terrible God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 5 we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances; 9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness; because we have rebelled against him
Meditation: Do you pray for mercy and forgive those who wrong you? Daniel was ‘shamefaced’ before God because of the unfaithfulness of his people. He acknowklowledged the sins and failings of his own people, and he pleaded with God for compassion and pardon. When we are confronted with our sinful condition and failings we experience guilt and shame. This can often either lead us to cast off pride and make-belief or it can lead us to lose our inhibitions and fall into more shameless deeds! If we are utterly honest and humble before God, we will admit our sins and ask for his mercy and forgiveness. Do you know the joy and freedom of repentance, forgiveness, and a clean heart?
What makes Christians different and what makes Christianity distinct from any other religion? It is grace – treating others, not as they deserve, but as God wishes them to be treated – with loving-kindness and mercy. God is good to the unjust as well as the just. His love embraces saint and sinner alike. God seeks our highest good and teaches us to seek the greatest good of others, even those who hate and abuse us. Our love for others, even those who are ungrateful and selfish towards us, must be marked by the same kindness and mercy which God has shown to us. It is easier to show kindness and mercy when we can expect to benefit from doing so. How much harder when we can expect nothing in return. Our prayer for those who do us ill both breaks the power of revenge and releases the power of love to do good in the face of evil.
How can we possibly love those who cause us harm, ill-will, and grief? With God all things are possible. He gives power and grace to those who know his love and who ask for the gift and help of the Holy Spirit. Paul the Apostle reminds us that "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Romans 5:5) God's love conquers all, even our hurts, fears, prejudices and griefs. Only the cross of Jesus Christ and his victory over sin can free us from the tyranny of malice, hatred, revenge, and resentment, and give us the courage to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). Such love and grace has power to heal and to save from destruction. Do you know the power of Christ's redeeming love and mercy?
"Lord Jesus, your love brings freedom and pardon. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and set my heart free that nothing may make me lose my temper, ruffle my peace, take away my joy, nor make me bitter towards anyone."
Psalm 79:8-13
8 Do not remember against us the iniquities of our forefathers; let thy compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.
9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for thy name's sake!
10 Why should the nations say, "Where is their God?" Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of thy servants be known among the nations before our eyes!
11 Let the groans of the prisoners come before thee; according to thy great power preserve those doomed to die!
12 Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors the taunts with which they have taunted thee, O Lord!
13 Then we thy people, the flock of thy pasture, will give thanks to thee for ever; from generation to generation we will recount thy praise.
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(c) 2009 Don Schwager
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Jesus Unhinged; the Cleansing of the Temple
Third Sunday in Lent 2009
For Sunday March 15, 2009
Lectionary Readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B)
Exodus 20:1–17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18–25
John 2:13–22
Sallman's Jesus.
Think about your earliest memories and images of Jesus. If you are white, American, and Protestant, you might visualize a painting by Warner Sallman, The Head of Christ (1940) — Jesus with flowing blond hair and saccharine blue eyes. Sallman's Jesus, reproduced 500 million times according to one estimate, stares into space. He's clean, safe, passive, and effeminate, which is perhaps why Christians have plastered this image in many a child's Sunday school room. It's hard to fathom why such a harmless and respectable looking citizen would ever be arrested, beaten to a pulp, and crucified by establishment authorities; he wouldn't hurt a flea.
Sallman's painting illustrates how easily we domesticate the deity, creating Jesus in our own image so that we can then co-opt him for our own purposes. The reading this week from John's Gospel challenges all such self-serving projections. The "cleansing" of the temple, a delicate euphemism to describe the only violent act of Jesus, occurs in all four Gospels. It's an unnerving story that reminds us that there's no such thing as "business as usual" with Jesus, and that all who come to him must come on his terms, not ours.
Christ Cleansing the Temple, El Greco, c. 1570.
All three synoptic writers situate this story at the end of Jesus's ministry, sandwiching it between his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the parable of the tenants (Mark 11:15–18 = Matthew 21:12–17 = Luke 19:45–48). John places the story at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, in my Bible on the third page of his gospel, where except for the wedding at Cana it looms as Jesus's first public act. Maybe there was more than one temple cleansing, but given the radical nature of the act that seems improbable. The verbatim literary similarities in all four Gospel accounts, and the fact that John mentions three or even four distinct Passovers (2:13, 6:4, 11:55, and 5:1), signal that John cares more about theological confession than chronological precision.
As an observant Jew, Jesus joined the throngs of pilgrims who trekked to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover at the temple. According to the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities XV, 380 and XX, 219), construction on the temple began in 20 BC under Herod the Great, and was completed by Herod Agrippa around AD 63. A bustling nexus of commercial activity, crowds of worshippers, nationalist aspirations, political identity, historical memory, architectural splendor, and of religious affiliation, the temple constituted the essence of Jewish faith in both a literal and symbolic manner.
Cleansing of the Temple,
Giotto Bordone (1276–1336)
When Jesus entered the temple he encountered men selling cattle, sheep and doves to the pilgrims who needed them to make their obligatory sacrifices. They also needed to exchange their Roman currency into Jewish money in order to pay the temple tax in the coinage of the "sanctuary shekel" (see Exodus 30:11–16), and thus we read that Jesus also met the money changers. Then all hell broke loose. Incensed at the sacrilege of it all, Jesus improvised a whip, thrashed the animals from the temple, scattered the coffers of the money changers, and overturned their tables: "How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" Later his disciples remembered Psalm 69:9 and attached a sense of prophetic fulfillment to the event: "Zeal for your house will consume me."
It's not clear whether Jesus objected to any and all commercial activity in the temple out of principle, even honest transactions that were necessary for pilgrims to fulfill their religious obligations, or whether he excoriated the fraud, exploitation and avarice of the religious authorities who controlled the means of ritual purity and thus access to Yahweh. When asked to justify his violent actions with a sign, Jesus refused; instead of any interpretation, justification or explanation, he responded with an enigmatic saying: "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." Long after the event, his disciples interpreted Jesus's dark saying as a prediction of his death and resurrection.
Cleansing of the Temple
by Sadao Watanabe, 1974.
In his dramatic outburst Jesus joined a violent act with an enigmatic saying that has elicited several layers of interpretation. A few people see a prophetic prediction of the destruction of the temple that occurred in 70 AD. A simpler interpretation understands the story as a restoration or purification of the temple to its sacred purpose, as a place of prayer for all people, without manipulation or exploitation by the establishment gatekeepers. A third nuance suggests that in his own body, in his own impending death and resurrection that John mentions on the first pages of his gospel, Jesus fulfills all the functions of the temple building as the place to meet God. To be sure, in the words of the British New Testament scholar C.K. Barrett, here as in all of John's Gospel we are to understand that "in Jesus the eternal purposes of God find their fulfillment."
No doubt the disciples tossed and turned a long, sleepless night that evening; it must have been terribly disconcerting to witness Jesus unhinged, throwing furniture, screaming at the top of his lungs, and flinging money into the air. Perhaps they ran for cover with the crowd. I would have. Did they look him in the eyes the next morning, or shuffle their feet, stare at the ground, and make small talk? I liken their experience to the "crazy uncle" syndrome — who could predict the next outrageous act or violent outburst?
Jesus Cleansing the Temple, Jeffrey Weston.
I read the cleansing of the temple as a stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumption, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours. Church is more than a place to enjoy a night of bingo or to reinforce my many prejudices and illusions. Thank God, then, for the Psalm for this week which concludes with a prayer that is wonderfully appropriate this Lenten season: "Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant from willful sins; may they not rule over me. . . . May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer" (Psalm 19:12–14).
For further reflection:
* How and why have we "domesticated" Jesus into a meek-n-mild savior?
* To what extent did Jesus use violence in cleansing the temple?
* Consider how some of our deepest religious impulses and places (in this story the Temple) lead us astray.
* How might we avoid all forms of false religious security?
* Consider the ways we "sanitize" the Jesus story.
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Image credits: (1) The Cry of the Heart; (2) San Diego State University; (3) Robin Urton: dimensional paintings on glass; (4) The Hendriks Art Collection Ltd.; and (5) Jeffrey Weston.Sphere: Related Content
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