Jesus Cleansing the Temple of our Bodies

The Rev. Robert P. Travis

Lent 3 Sermon  – 7:45am, 9am and 11:15am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN

RCL year b 3/8/2015

Text: Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, John 2:13-22

Sermon Text:

The message about the cross is foolishness

To those who are perishing.

That is one of the most clear and shocking

Passages of scripture for those of us with modern ears

I mean, we know the gospel to be Good News.

So how can the cross we love so much

And even parade around, be a symbol of foolishness?

But if we think about it for just a moment,

We can see that the cross looks like utter failure,

In a world that values success more than anything else.

It’s not just the cross though, that is foolishness,

As a part of the gospel,

Jesus shows us in the gospel passage,

That an equally foolish notion to those who are perishing

And close to as powerful to those being saved,

Is the notion of the temple of God

Being in a human body, in the person of Jesus,

And through the power of the Holy Spirit,

The temple in our bodies as well.

See when Jesus went into the temple in Jerusalem,

The only temple for the Jews,

And was full of zeal, even anger

at the way it had become a market place,

Where people were taking advantage of the religious

Duties of the common people for personal profit,

He was expressing a love of the temple

That would have been common for any faithful jewish man.

The temple of the Lord was the very presence of God,

Among God’s people,

So of course it was offensive that it had become

Cheapened as a place to make a buck off of a neighbor.

But it had been allowed to become that,

By the very religious leaders who were supposed

To guard its holiness.

The market for sacrificial items and money,

Had become as much a part of the status quo,

As the building itself.

So of course when Jesus clears the temple,

And casts out the animals and the money changers,

The jewish leaders present demand to know,

By what authority Jesus is changing the status quo,

In the same way that Paul tells us they would,

They demand a sign (“Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom.”)

The sign that Jesus offers, or foretells,

Shows them utter foolishness.

He tells them “destroy this temple,

And in three days I will raise it up.”

And I wonder what his body language was like,

When he said that,

Was it (pointing outward) “destroy this temple.”

Or was it (pointing at own body) “destroy this temple.”

But even if he pointed to himself, they didn’t get it.

Even his disciples didn’t get it, until after

He was raised from the dead.

Jesus was pointing to a truth about himself,

That would become true for his followers,

That was radically different from the faith up to then.

That God’s presence is within him,

Alive in him,

And even when that temple is destroyed,

God’s life within him will not be destroyed,

But will cause him to be raised from death.

When we follow him, that same divine life

Is alive within us as well.

And likewise when our bodies are destroyed,

God’s life within us will not be destroyed,

But will cause us to be raised from death.

So if Jesus is the temple,

then we are the temple as well.

Today that begs the question from our gospel,

How do we allow our temple, our bodies, ourselves,

To become a marketplace?

To be bought and sold so that others can make a buck?

And how can we make it holy instead?

I imagine the answer to the first question is obvious.

Since my family is away,

I have been watching a lot more Television than I’m used to

So I have seen the constant ads for pleasures,

Products that promise to fulfill our desires,

or make us happy.

No matter what they’re selling,

The message seems to be

“serve yourself, serve your own desires.”

And of course that is the exact opposite of the gospel.

Unfortunately sometimes it gets confused,

Where those same people selling the “serve yourself”

Products, have caught on to the attractiveness

Of knowing that God lives within us,

So sometimes these products or services even seem

To create a transcendent experience.

But the message is still self-centered, and therefore wrong.

(So we engage in the season of Lent,

where it is in humility, rather than self-centeredness,

that we regard our bodies.

Look at how we began, just a couple of weeks ago,

By putting ashes on our bodies,

As a sign of their holiness, and service to God.)

The way to serve the temple of the Lord in our bodies,

Is to serve others.

Think about this beautiful worship space here,

And all the devotion and work it takes from so many of our members, to make it seem holy,

To give this space the feeling of a just-right place to worship.

(Some of the people I was talking to about this passage this week, were women from the altar guild,

And they shared how sometimes doing that work,

They can feel in their bodies a reassuring presence,

A tingle or some other confirmation,

That serving God this way is holy.

Other times they do not feel that way physically,

And it can seem like drudgery,

And they have to remind themselves,

Of the service this is to others,

And the way their work will lift others

Closer to an experience of God’s presence.

But whether they feel it in their bodies or not,

They are using their bodies for God’s service,

And this makes the temple of their bodies holy,

In the same way it makes this place holy.)

Today we are starting a new ministry,

Or rather adding a new structure to our existing ministries,

Because we regard every member of this church,

As an important temple of the Lord,

Who needs to be cared for as much as Jesus cared for

the temple of the Lord.

We are commissioning pastoral care shepherds,

Whose main task will be to keep track of each member

In the parish, and help make sure their pastoral care needs

Are met, either by the clergy,

or our many pastoral care lay ministries.

The program is named Ascension Cares,

And the mission is simply, “No one walks alone”

As we prayed in our collect,

“we have no power in ourselves, to help ourselves,”

From time to time we need the help of others,

In our congregation.

And these shepherds are willingly putting themselves,

Their temples, into this service,

To help find those people, those temples in our midst,

Who may not know how much Ascension Cares for them.

That program is a way that we intend to help regard

our temple as holy.

I hope you will support them in that effort.

As we continue to walk through this Lent together,

I ask you to consider deeply, the ways that you may

Have allowed your bodies, yourselves,

to become a marketplace,

How you may have sold-out God’s temple in you,

To those ever present forces in the world,

Who tell you it’s all about serving yourself

and your happiness.

(Those forces are the ones that tell you that you can party all the time, and that there is no time or place for penance,

or humility, and of course that is a lie,

that Lent is meant to help correct.)

Let this be a time when you invite Jesus to cleanse

Your temple as well, and make you holy once again.

So that when we walk with him to the cross,

Which those forces regard as foolish,

We may each find in the cross the power of God,

To bring us to resurrection and true life in Christ.

Amen