SERMON Violent Anger

Lent 3 (B): Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

There are numerous depictions of what we just heard. It's not often, though, that one actually makes a mainstream publication. The one that you see on the cover of this morning's bulletin -- a painting by El Greco -- has that distinction. Newsweek once used it to accompany a review of Gary Wills' book What Jesus Meant.

A use that leads to the question: What did Jesus mean? It's a good question. A good question because there is something that seems very wrong about El Greco's painting. Take a look at the woodblock on page 13 of the bulletin. It also illustrates this morning's gospel. And something seems very wrong about it as well.

Take a look at it, and take out an imaginary pencil. Recall what we just heard. Circle the things that are wrong. What does Jesus have in his right hand? He has a whip in his right hand, doesn't he? Circle the right hand and the whip? But what is Jesus doing with the whip? He's beating a man, isn't he? Circle the whip striking the man? And what is Jesus doing with his left hand? He's violently pushing the man’s chair, isn't he? So violently, that the table next to it is pushed over and money is falling off the table. Circle Jesus' left hand? The money falling off the toppling table? And what about the uncaged animals, the dove and sheep (I know -- it looks like a dog but it's supposed to a sheep)? They're not supposed to be loose. Circle them as well?

Question: Is this our picture of Jesus? A picture of true anger and real violence? Circle the whole picture?

The answer to "Circle the whole picture?" would seem to be "yes -- circle it all," This, after all, is the man who in Matthew’s gospel, teaches, "Blessed are the meek” and "Blessed are the peacemakers,” and who, later in John's gospel, tells the disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." Remember the old hymn, "O Jesu so meek, O Jesu so kind?" The man we hear about this morning is anything but meek. Anything but a peacemaker or peaceful. Anything but kind.

The man in this morning's gospel is not at all what we think of when we think of Jesus.

So do we circle the whole picture? Or just parts of it? Chalk it up the gospel writer's vivid imagination or anti-Temple feelings?

Well, one thing that we cannot do is chalk this up to John's imagination. The four gospels were never written as historical records. Each comes from a different tradition and was written for a unique purpose -- which is why the four do not always agree. One incident recounted in all four gospels is, however, the cleansing of the temple. John has more detail in his account. The whip, the sheep, and oxen are all unique to John. And John places it at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. The other gospel writers tell of it as preceding and resulting in Jesus' arrest.

I once went to a seminar on the historical Jesus where one of the speakers began by listing the few facts about Jesus that are truly historical. Among those facts were:

           (1) Jesus was a Jew from Galilee

           (2) who was baptized by John the Baptist

           (3)who was put to death about 30 CE by Pontius Pilate for insurrection because

           (4)he led a demonstration the Temple.

The demonstration happened. It probably did not take place at the beginning of Jesus' ministry as John has it -- for one thing, as an unknown, Jesus would not have had the clout or following to make it into the Temple precincts at the beginning of his ministry. John may be wrong about the date but he is not wrong about the demonstration itself. It is historical fact.

So do we circle the whole picture? We can't.

But what about the parts? The whip? The beating? The violence? Are they genuine?

Remember, the same man whom the old hymn describes as "meek” and “kind" also says, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." So an angry Jesus is not unthinkable and the Jesus in this gospel is an angry Jesus. A very angry Jesus. Is there something wrong with the anger? Do we circle it?

Not the easiest question to answer.

I have memories of being told as a child that Jesus was angry because he believed that the Temple cult and the sacrifice of animals were wrong -- that the Temple itself and blind adherence to ritual and the law were being attacked. The demonstration was framed in good old Lutheran terms of law and gospel.

The problem with this theory is that Jesus himself calls the Temple "his father's house" when he drives out the dove sellers. He was not attacking the priests or the worshipers which would have been the case if he were attempting to overthrow ritual sacrifice or Levitic law.

No Jesus' anger was directed at "[the] people [in the Temple] selling cattle, sheep, and doves." These were the merchants who supplied the animals to be sacrificed to pilgrims who were unable to supply or bring their own. Jesus' anger was also directed at “the money changers seated at their tables." These were brokers who exchanged Roman and Attic coins with pagan images on them for Tyrian coins without such images so pilgrims and worshipers could pay the modest temple tax. Theoretically, their commissions were modest.

So why the anger at merchants and brokers who were serving needed functions?

A clue to why the anger was directed at the sellers of cattle, sheep, and doves is found in their location. They were "in the temple." Animals that were not actually being sacrificed were not allowed in the temple precincts for fear they would escape into the sanctuary and violate it.

So what were the merchants and their animals doing there?

It appears that the animals were there because of a political struggle that would do justice to any council war we might hear about in Chicago. The marketplace where the animals were sold was in the Kidron Valley near the Mount of Olives, not the temple precincts. In the year 30, the chief priest Caiaphas and his governing body the Sanhedrin -- Caiaphas' City Council -- had a falling out. The merchants of the marketplace offered the Sanhedrin a meeting place, and the Sanhedrin began meeting apart from Caiaphas and away from the Temple on the Mount of Olives. Hostility mounted, and Caiaphas allowed non-union, rival animal merchants to sell sacrificial animals in the temple precincts in retaliation for the Sanhedrin's having been offered the hospitality of the marketplace merchants.

Jesus' anger is directed both at the potentially defiling presence of the animals so near the sanctuary and at the corruption responsible for the animals' being there.

But what about the money changers? There is presumably no problem with their location. There is no suggestion that the entrance fee is unwarranted or too large. Was there perhaps some sort of first century license for bribe scheme going on for getting into the temple? Chances are there was. We just don't know for sure.

But what we do know is that Jesus' act in driving the merchants and money changers from the Temple was a political act of the first order. It was a political act motivated by religious belief. It was not dispassionate. Anything but. Its effect was immediate and swift. And it cost him his life.

And what's wrong with that picture?

There are people these days who would say, "There's a great deal wrong with political action motivated by religious belief." Religion, they would argue, has no place in the public sphere. Religion and politics don't mix.

But that's not what Jesus' actions are saying this morning. And rightly so. Religion and politics may not be the best topics for dinner table conversation, but unless churches in this country had cared about, and been willing to act on, issues of social justice, there would have been no abolitionist movement in the XIXth century or a civil rights movement in the XXth. We'd still have slavery and segregation.

This morning, Jesus has identified and targeted abuse and corruption. But he does more than identify and target the abuse and corruption, he confronts it.

For several years before and after I came here in 1999, I was on a committee of lawyers with an old friend who is a very successful plaintiff's lawyer. His name is Joe Power. He represented Scott and Janet Willis who had lost six children in a terrible car-truck crash. Joe found he was having difficulty getting responsive papers from the state. I remember his telling us at the time that he sensed something was not right and he was going to investigate.

Joe didn't have to, but he did. And, as he did, we on the committee learned about what we all now know was a licenses for bribes scandal. It was an uphill battle every step of the way for Joe. The Tribune impugned his motives and accused him of lying. He persisted. And because of that persistence and his conviction and his passion in confronting the abuse and corruption that he discovered, our highways are safer. And, finally, twelve years after the initial discovery in the Willis case, the appeals of a convicted ex-governor were finally exhausted when President Bush refused to grant clemency,

What Joe did as an individual is what Jesus in today's gospel is calling us to do as a church. To identify and confront corruption and abuse. To take positions on issues of social justice like the issue of the 1,800,000 uninsured residents of Illinois for whom health care is rationed or unavailable. To understand, as William Sloane Coffin writes in his book, A Passion for the Possible, that "biblical justice asks not only that we alleviate the effects of injustice, but that we eradicate the causes of it." Jesus meant to be angry and was. He asks us to be angry about injustice and its causes. To be passionate about change. Here in this community. Here in this City and this state. As God's people. As the Body of Christ in the world. By God's grace in faith.

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Amen 

March 15, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago, Illinois