3rd Sunday of Lent
By Reverend Canon Barry Rose, Sunday 15th March, 2009
People sometimes unload their unwanted items on the church. Bibles, pictures even pianos all come our way. So when I received a telephone call from a lady wanting to give one of her deceased father’s pictures (he was an artist) to the church my heart sank. But she was persistent so I went to collect the painting. It was a very large copy of El Greco’s Jesus cleansing the Temple and the only place we could hang it was behind the font. I asked myself what parents, bringing their children to baptism, would think of a Jesus lashing a whip on people cowering from him. Hardly an image of Him I wanted them to see as I cradled their babies in my arms.
The truth is that we find it difficult to come to terms with the passionate human Jesus with real blood flowing through his veins. We prefer the safe gentle Jesus of smiles who never gets angry.
But if we find this Temple story of the passionate and angry Jesus difficult (and El Greco’s picture is pretty strong stuff) think of what the Jews of Jesus’ day must have made of it. Here was this unknown prophet, from all places Galilee, daring to make a furore at the beating heart of Judaism itself and for the Jews this sacred building had a long and cherished history.
King David in 1000BC gave the Jews a land and a capital city, Jerusalem but what was lacking was a place, a building where they could focus on God’s presence. Solomon, David’s son, solved that by building the Temple, which became a centre for national and religious life. The building itself changed over the centuries. The Babylonians knocked it down at the beginning of the 6th century BC; the Jews rebuilt it 100 years later and much later, about 20BC, the puppet King Herod was allowed by the Romans to restore this much loved religious building. This was the Temple Jesus knew, the one he was presented in as a baby, the one he visited when 12 years old and the one he cleansed.
To the Jews this Temple was a place of celebration and mourning, a representation of the cosmos, with its walls separating the Israelites from the Gentiles, men from women, priests from laity. The Temple was where God promised to live with His people and was where the people sought communion with Him. They did this like nearly all the religious societies of Jesus’ day by the sacrifice of animals. You could smell the Temple long before you could see it. So why did Jesus act as he did? Why was he so angry?
To answer this question some have focussed on the dubious money changers who exchanged the Roman and Greek coins, with their idolatrous heads stamped upon them, for ones which were acceptable to the priests. But all this fuss over a bit of dishonesty? Surely there is more to it than that. John writing his gospel certainly thought so.
Jesus came to Jerusalem at the time of Passover when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple and John, the gospel writer, has already reported that John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Something very important going on here for Jesus’ angry actions demonstrated his belief that the Temple, with all its animal sacrifices was not the way God, His father, wanted in the coming new age. Now because of His death on the cross as the sacrificial Lamb there was no need for animal sacrifices or for a physical building. To quote yet again the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book by Timothy Radcliffe’s Lent, “Jesus’ sacrifice upon the altar of the cross was not one more bloody example of sacred violence but its defeat. Jesus’ death was a massive rejection of a whole way of being religious”
So the Jewish Temple and all its ritual had to disappear and a new Temple, not made with hands, created from living stones would emerge. Later St Peter wrote “So come to Jesus and let yourselves be built, as living stones, into a spiritual Temple.”
In this astonishing act of cleansing the Temple Jesus is declaring in a startling way that a new age was dawning, a new understanding of the Passover was being imparted, and that in and through Him a new Temple was coming into being. John, writing his Gospel perhaps around 100AD was well aware that by then the Romans had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, that happened in 70AD, and now the Body of Christ, the Church, the new Temple was a reality in the wider world.
All this is a reminder that what is essential for us Christians is not buildings, although they have their place, but people, creating a community where God is found to be present, and where we look up to God in worship, outwards to the world in loving service and inwards to each other so creating a loving and authentic Christian fellowship.
Not a bad thought for a congregation in an interregnum. Of course you are longing for the new chaplain to arrive rather than have all these strange clergy turning up. Naturally you are looking for leadership and someone who will focus ministry for you. In the meantime you can continue to build up the Christian community which gathers here. You do this by regular worship, by praying for one another and by looking out for each other, especially the stranger hanging round the door who wants to be recognised and accepted. And I have begun to think, as I have been with you during this short time, that this is not so much a daunting task as an exciting one.
In Copenhagen the Anglican Christian community will always be a bit of a transit camp with people coming and going. No chance of being bored here. Yes, tough and exhausting on those who have been around for a long time and intend to stay and who want a quiet life, but, think how dull it would be to be part of a static congregation.
So keep up the good work and be heartened and don’t hang around just waiting for the next chaplain who is unlikely to be offered an unsuitable picture to hang on these hallowed walls. But, then, maybe I’m wrong. Oh yes – I should have told you – we hung that picture in the choir vestry hoping the choir master would not use it as an excuse with which to lash the choir.
