The Third Sunday of Lent

Sermon

The Third Sunday of Lent

3 March 2024

The Reverend Canon Richard Ames-Lewis

Exodus 20.1-7; 1 Corinthians 1.18-25; John 2.13-22.

Prospective candidates thinking of applying to be Vicar of St Bene’t’s will have noticed from the Parish Profile that our ancient and beautiful church building is said to be in good order and is well maintained, as, indeed, we see all around us. There are two reasons for this claim. One is the extraordinarily generous endowment which releases our congregation from any financial worry about how to pay for our building’s upkeep, or for our heating bills. But the other is more emotional. Our congregation has a love for this church. Here we meet together Sunday by Sunday; here we bring an offering of prayer to add to the centuries of prayer with which these walls are permeated; here following 1000 years of tradition we encounter the Lord Jesus in Word and Sacrament. Thanks to this precious building, we find little by little that our lives are turned round, our friendships are deepened and our attempts to live lovingly are renewed. For here we find the spirit of the living God focussed in the built symbolism of tower, nave, aisles, chancel and sanctuary, of font, pulpit, lectern and altar. Here, moreover, we find the strange symbiosis between people and building. The church is the people, the ecclesia, the gathered congregation, you and me; but the church is also the building in which together we meet with God. We don’t just go to church; the church is who we are.

Our emotional attachment to this building can perhaps give us some idea of the significance of the Temple for Jews of Jesus’s time. The Temple stood up on the temple mount in the heart of Jerusalem. Here was the abiding place of the Spirit of God. It was the place to which, in accordance with the Law, pilgrimage would be made and sacrifices offered. It was a holy place, having at its heart the holy of holies, that part of the building so holy that only the High Priest would enter, and only once a year, for here dwelt the Lord God in all his glory. It was in the Temple that Mary and Joseph, according to the Law of Moses, presented their child Jesus and offered the sacrifice of a pair of turtle doves.

But the Temple was not only the place of sacrifice where God’s glory was revealed, but also the place for learning, disputation, and argument At Passover time it was to the Temple that Mary and Joseph took the adolescent Jesus. He famously gave them the slip. They found him there three days later sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and he said to them “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Today’s Gospel reading takes us right into the Temple. It is John’s description of another visit made by Jesus there. This time Jesus enters the Temple not to make sacrifice, nor to argue or dispute, but for a different purpose: to drive out of the Temple the people selling cattle, sheep and doves for the sacrifice, and to pour out the coins of the money-changers and overturn their tables. Here we see a Jesus not at prayer nor at peace but in anger. We read that he even made a whip of cords. Not just angry but violent. This is our Jesus, our saviour, brother, friend, redeemer. But can we picture our Jesus demanding “Take these things out of here! Stop making my father’s house a market-place!”?

This incident, known as the “Cleansing of the Temple,” is recorded in all four gospels. The synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke place the story at the end of Jesus’s ministry, on Palm Sunday. But John’s version which we heard today places this story at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, just after his first sign – the miracle at Cana. The fact that all four evangelists mention it means that we can be pretty sure that this event actually happened. Jesus did cleanse the temple. Scholars think that probably the synoptics have it right: it was an event at the end of his ministry, rightly associated with Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Why then did John decide to place it up front?

Well, I can think of three reasons. Firstly, John is writing his gospel as theological history. He is drawing the events together in a theological pattern and encouraging us to do the same. So in this passage we have not just the cleansing of the temple but also reference to Passover, the future destruction of the temple, and Jesus’s death and resurrection. And this is all placed at the beginning of his gospel to set the scene for what is to follow.

Then the second reason is perhaps especially appropriate for Lent. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus’s baptism is followed by his temptations in the wilderness. But. in John, there are no temptations in the wilderness. Instead, his baptism is followed by the two signs, the Marriage at Cana and the Cleansing of the Temple. I wonder if perhaps these signs were John’s way of describing Jesus transforming the wilderness which his baptism had led him to – at Cana, empty water jars transformed to an abundance of new wine; in the Temple, a building stripped of sin transformed into a house of prayer. 

Then, thirdly, John wants to introduce us to a new way of thinking about the Temple. The Temple, so badly in need of cleansing, is not just a building of brick and stone, not just a huge edifice that has been under construction for forty-six years, but it is a metaphor. “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” As John says, “He was speaking of the Temple of his body.” 

Perhaps this explains the anger. If the Temple was metaphorically Jesus’ body, then it needed to be cleansed urgently, and for this he needed to take his whip of cords and in anger drive out the money changers. His body, crucified and risen, was to bring in a new covenant, the demands of the old law were to be done away with, and for this both building and people had to be prepared. 

The metaphor of Jesus’s body is, of course, applied not just to the Temple, but to our own church buildings, and I think this helps our reflection about this place. The cruciform design of Christian churches deliberately takes the shape of Jesus on the cross for the layout of the building. The nave is often referred to as “the body of the church”, the transepts as the arms, the chancel as the head - indeed some mediaeval chancels built at an angle are known as “weeping chancels”. This personification of our churches gives added symbolism to our use of the space in the liturgy, for example when we share the peace with the words “We are the body of Christ”, and when we leave our seats to come forward to receive communion and move from the body towards the head.

But if this is the case, then the cleansing of the temple must apply both to our church building and to ourselves. This is Lent, of course. Our Lenten journey is in fact a cleansing, a sweeping away of the sin which sticks so closely, our attachment to money, possessions, ambition, self-centeredness.

We have to allow ourselves to be cleansed, to have Jesus use this wilderness time in us by renewing us, filling our emptiness with the new wine of the Kingdom, reshaping our cluttered lives with the priority of prayer and sending us, armed with his sacrifice of love, out into our disordered world.