|
|
Jesus the Protestant
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, March 15, 2009
John 2:13-22
Before I get into the sermon this morning let me let you in on a little secret.
We have been using the lectionary now for more than ten months, and even if it
is still fairly new to you, you probably know by now that the lectionary is a
plan for reading through most of the Bible in public worship over a three year
period. You probably know that for each Sunday there is a reading: one from the
Old Testament, one from the Psalms, one from the Gospels and one from the
Epistles. But you may not know this: that the three year lectionary cycle is
divided up into year A, year B and year C and each year has its own gospel
emphasis. Year A, for example, is Matthew’s year. Year B, the one we’re in
now, belongs to Mark. Year C is devoted almost entirely to the Gospel of Luke.
Wait just a minute, you say. What about John? What about the beloved Gospel of
the beloved disciple? When do we get to hear that? Well, here’s the secret:
readings from the gospel of John, about seventy of them all together, are mixed
into those other three years like chocolate chips into a batch of cookie dough.
And today’s reading from John, Chapter two is one of those chocolate chips.
The
Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he
found people selling cattle, sheep and doves and the money changers seated at
their tables. I want you to let those words sink in just a little bit. I want
you to let them register on your brain. People were in the temple selling
cattle! People, in the temple, selling cattle!
Just
imagine what it would be like to come up the front steps of Richmond’s First
Baptist Church to push your way through those impressive doors and to find out
there in the Narthex sheep, cattle, doves and money changers all crowded into
that space. To hear the sounds of cattle lowing, sheep bleating, doves cooing,
coins clinking. To smell the smells that would be in the air, the warm breath
of cows, the wet wool of sheep, the unmistakable aroma of fresh manure. If you
were to push your way through that menagerie and pass those money changers and
come into a sanctuary where you had hoped to worship almighty God. If you have
been a member here for a while, and even if you hadn’t, you might feel your
sense of propriety offended. And if you were bold enough you might say, as
Jesus said, “Get those things out of here!”
I
don’t remember everything he said, but I do remember hearing my former pastor,
Paul Duke, preach on this passage. And the images that he used were
unforgettable. He said, “Think about the temple, that stone wall and those
heavy wooden doors suddenly thrown open and a money box sailing out end over end
until it exploded on those stone steps and coins went scattering everywhere.
Think about the sheep and cattle coming out through those same doors in a
frantic stampede, their eye balls rolling in their sockets wildly, doves beating
the air with their wings, flying away in every direction. And then the money
changers coming out, covering their heads with their arms and their hands as
Jesus comes behind them brandishing this whip of cords, this lunatic, this
maniac shouting after them, ‘Stop making my fathers house into a market
place.’”
Who
is this guy? What happened to the Jesus whose picture used to hang on the wall
of my Sunday school classroom, the one with the soft brown curls and the limped
blue eyes? Where is he? Who is this, shouting after the money changers? Why
is he so angry?
I’ll
tell you why. Because somebody had turned his father’s house into something it
was never meant to be.
It
reminds me of the story of Martin Luther, the man who started the Protestant
Reformation. When he was a boy he was terrified of hell. He had seen this
picture of Jesus, the judge, seated on a rainbow before all those people who had
been raised from the dead who were now standing before him. To some of them he
said, “Enter thou into the joy of the Lord.” But to others he said, “Depart from
me into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” Young Martin
Luther looked at that picture, saw the demons dragging the dead by the hair of
their head off to the fires of hell and always, he thought, “when judgment day
comes I will be one of those.”
Those
fears followed him all through is childhood and youth and one day on his way
back to the university in the middle of the summer of 1505 he got caught up in a
thunderstorm and a bolt of lighting knocked him to the ground. Terrified he
cried out, “Saint Anne help me, I will become a monk!” And he did. And for a
while it put his fears of hell to rest, but eventually they caught up with him
again and when he was asked to fast for one day, he fasted for three days,
thinking that would put him in good stead with the Savior. On cold winter
nights he would kick off his covers and lie shivering there on the bunk in his
monk’s cell mortifying his flesh for the sake of his faith. He would confess
every sin he could think of and on the way back to his bunk from the confession
booth think of one more and go running back. Finally, his mentor at the
monastery said, “Martin, Martin you are wearing me out with all this unnecessary
penance, get your doctorate, study the scriptures, maybe you can cure yourself
by teaching others.”
And
so this is what Martin Luther did. He began to study the Bible as he had never
studied it before. He learned that in the Greek language that word that had
been so terrifying to him, the word justice, could also mean to justify, to make
someone right in the sight of God -- not only a word about damning people to
hell but about saving people for heaven. That this was God’s intention from the
beginning, not that everyone should end up in eternal torment, but that they
should all end up with Him in paradise. Martin Luther said, “I felt myself to
have been reborn and gone through open doors. The whole of scripture took on
new meaning for me and whereas before the justice of God had filled me with
dread, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage
from Paul’s letter to the Romans had become for me a gate to heaven.”
Martin Luther released once and for all from his fear of hell, anticipating only
heaven, learned that the Roman Church was selling indulgences, these fancy
certificate with the Pope’s own seal on them which promised to release people
from their sins and to release their relatives from purgatory. The sellers of
indulgences would say, “When a coin in the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory
springs.” Some of Martin Luther’s own parishioners were emptying their pockets
to buy the release of their friends and family members and it made Martin Luther
furious. Because the Pope of the Roman Church could not forgive sins, only God
could forgive sins and Martin finally understood that.
And
so, on Halloween 1517 Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of the
Wittenberg Castle Church inviting debate on the sale of these indulgences. He
didn’t mean to do it, but with that action he started the Protestant
Reformation. He knew that something had to be done. He knew that the grace of
God was not for sale and so he protested against the abuses of the church in his
day.
When
Jesus said, “Stop making my Father’s house a market place,” he was protesting
against the abuses of the temple in his day. Jesus the protestant said, “enough
is enough.”
When
Martin Luther nailed those 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church he was
saying, “enough is enough here, God’s grace is not for sale.”
Phyllis Tickle claims that every five hundred years the church goes through some
kind of great revolution. In a new book, which she calls “The Great
Immergence,” she quotes an Episcopal priest named Mark Dier who says that just
about every five hundred years the church of Jesus Christ holds a gigantic
rummage sale, brings out onto the lawn all those holy things, all those
practices and beliefs and investigates them tot see if they are still worth
holding on to. Five hundred years ago it was the Protestant Reformation when
that sort of thing happened and people investigated all the practices of the
church, all the beliefs of the church. It was out of that movement that the
people we call Baptists were born, but five hundred years before that the church
of Jesus Christ split into two branches: the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman
Catholic. Five hundred years before that was the council of Calcedon, the fall
of Rome. Five hundred years before that was the death, burial and resurrection
of Jesus Christ and the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost. Religious
revolution takes place just about every five hundred years and not only in
Christian circles. Five hundred years before Jesus, was the Babylonian
captivity. Five hundred years before that, the reign of King David and the
subsequent division into Northern and Southern Kingdoms in Israel.
Phyllis Tickle says, if its really true, that every five hundred years religion
goes through some kind of enormous revolution, then we are right on the brink of
that now. It was almost exactly five hundred years ago that the Protestant
Reformation began. “Here we are,” she said, “when it seems that everything in
the Church is being called into question, when we wonder whether or not the
Church will survive, when Church-going in this country and around the world
seems to be falling off at a frightening rate, when some people wonder if the
Church will still be around in fifty years.”
“We
are on the brink of something big,” she says, “and we are the luck ones because
we get to experience it for ourselves.”
And
frankly it’s time for something like this because I wonder what Jesus would say
to the church in America today. Would he say, “Stop making my Church into an
ecclesiastical corporation run by a board of directors and a smiling CEO.”
Would he say, “Stop making my church into some form of religious entertainment
which measures it’s success by the Nielsen ratings or by how many people are in
the pews and how many dollars are in the plates.” He might say, ‘Stop making my
Church into a weapon of judgment and exclusion, using it against anyone who is
not exactly like you. Stop doing that.”
When
Jesus turned over those tables in the temple the people who were there, the
religious authorities, were threatened by his actions. It was the festival of
the Passover. Everybody was coming to Jerusalem to celebrate and everything had
been made ready, those sheep, cattle, doves, those money changers we all there
so that people could come in and offer their sacrifices to God so they could
turn their Roman coins into temple shekels and give their tithes and offerings.
Jesus made ruin of everything. And the religious authorities were upset. “Can
you show us a sign for doing this?” they said… which is only another way of
saying, “What gives you the right?” Jesus must have been threatened by these,
must have been like someone cornered by a street gang because he looks the
Jewish authorities in the eye and says to them, “You want a sign, I’ll give you
a sign. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” And they
said, “Are you mad? It has taken forty-six years to get the temple this far,
it’s been under construction all that time, how will you raise it up in three
days?” But the writer of John’s gospel leans in close and whispers, “He was
speaking of the temple of his body.” Later, after his resurrection, his
disciples remembered what he had said and believed.
Phyllis Tickle says we are on the brink of some great revolution in religious
life. I wonder, will it be another reformation where we question every existing
practice of the existing Church, or will it be something more like resurrection
where the old forms die and something new springs up in their place.
Jesus
said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” He was
speaking of the temple of his body. Sometimes we call the Church “The body of
Christ.” And these days it is under threat. It seems that all the forces in
the world are combining to destroy the Church. Jesus says, “Go ahead, do what
you will, destroy this body, the Church, and in three days I will raise it up
again. I will! Not the pastor, not the staff, not the Deacons, not the
congregation, not the denomination, I will raise it up.”
After
his resurrection his disciples remembered what he had said and they believed in
him.
|
