Psalm 19 | John 2:13-22
Jeremy Richards
This past Monday, I met David and Tim at Laurelhurst Park. It was a beautiful day if you remember. The sun was out and so, naturally, were lots of people and their dogs. We sat at a picnic table to the west of the pond, in the off-leash dog park. It was just so nice to be outside, to be with people in person, to see other people around. It almost felt normal. Except, of course, I was still sitting on the opposite end of the picnic table from David and Tim and we were all wearing masks.
Well, as we were talking, out of nowhere, this guy starting shouting very loudly. At first, I thought he was calling his dog, which had maybe run away. We were in the off-leash dog park, after all. But he kept yelling and kept repeating the same 2 words over and over. Finally I caught what he was saying.
“Sheeple! Brainwashed!” he was yelling. I looked up from where I was sitting and could just barely see him through some tree branches. He was sitting on a bench above the pond, to the south, looking out over the water and the open green patch where people love to sit out. At one point he said a little bit more, something about how we drive around in our cars and go to our jobs, but he pretty quickly returned to his 2 condemning descriptors for all of us brainwashed sheeple out enjoying the sunshine.
This man’s shouting was…disruptive. We were all going about our day, basking not only in the good weather but also the rare opportunity made possible by the good weather, the opportunity to be around other human beings, something we no longer take for granted, when this man started making his loud, blanket accusations.
I have to admit that as unwarranted as his name-calling was, it did give me some internal pause. In fact, there was probably a time when I was in college and was reading Kerouac that I would’ve agreed with this man. If I look at my life, I’m working something very close to a 9-5, working for institutionalized religion, no less. I’m married with a kid, we bought a house, and now my few spare hours in the evening are spent either doing house projects, cleaning, or turning on the TV to zone out after a long day. Am I a sheep? Have I been brainwashed? Maybe.
Of course, the pause this mans’ shouting gave me only lasted a few seconds. I didn’t lose any sleep that night over it. I would imagine the same is true for all the other people at Laurelhurst Park that afternoon. I doubt a single person’s life was changed that day by an unknown man shouting at them from across a pond. He was simply a brief disruption in the midst of a day that was, otherwise, going rather smoothly, and, in the end, continued to go pretty smoothly.
I wonder how people reacted to Jesus’ disruption in the temple in our reading from John. Granted, his outburst was harder to ignore. The man at Laurelhurst stayed where he was, sitting on a bench. Only his voice disrupted us. There was no whip of cords. He didn’t drive the dogs out of the park, or chase us away from our picnic table. Also, he didn’t quite backup his accusations as well as Jesus. Jesus did quote scripture, after all.
Still, I’m sure most people thought Jesus was mentally-ill, or maybe “demon-possessed” to use the language of the day. (He does, after all, get accused of being possessed later in his ministry). And he does sound delusional. He ends his outburst by saying that he can rebuild the temple in 3 days, which sounds like utter nonsense. “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” the people ask.
We get the inside scoop, that Jesus is talking about “the temple of his body” but the people present that day didn’t get that information. They just heard the first part, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus’ disruption was more inconvenient for than the man shouting in Laurelhurst Park was, but I’d guess most people ultimately reacted the same. They set their tables back up, rounded up their livestock, bickered over whose money lay on the ground in this spot and whose lay on the ground in that spot, but eventually resumed business as usual. The only thing they took with them was a story to tell, the same way that man yelling at us became just that for me: a story to tell.
Most of the time, for most people, this is the case for all disruptions. To whatever extent we can, we try to simply get over them and get on with the life we were living prior to the disruption. This is the case with most protests (after all, Jesus’ action in the temple is certainly a protest). It’s funny how often people complain about how inconvenient protests are, apparently oblivious to the fact that the point of protests and demonstrations is to be disruptive to some degree or another. People will say things like, “It’s fine if they want to have a protest, but don’t do…this or that.” Which basically means, don’t let it actually be a protest. Don’t let it bother me or any other respectable people when you do it. I remember when I was still in Divinity School, the #BLM movement was in full swing, and at one point a large group of protestors blocked the main interstate running through Durham. That Sunday, in the little Sunday School class I led for elderly folks in rural North Carolina, the members did not approve. “But people need to get to where they’re going! People have places to be!” they said.
But that’s the point of protests and demonstrations: to disrupt business as usual. To say that the way things are is unacceptable. Often, the goal is to get those members of society who don’t experience injustice or inequalities to pay attention. It’s an attempt to wake up those for whom the system is working, to let them know that the system isn’t working for everyone. But those for whom the system is working rarely want to hear that. Because why would they? Its working for them.
For about 10 months, 3 days a week, from 10-11 am, Stacey Tipp and other members of the Grant Park neighborhood stand out on the corner of 33rd and Knott, holding signs calling for racial justice. I know Janis joins them on Wednesdays, and recently I’ve committed to joining every Monday. The purpose of this protest, like all protests, is to cause a certain kind of disruption, even though it’s very mild compared to many others, certainly compared to Jesus’. The point is: don’t forget that this is still a problem. Racism still exists. Don’t get complacent.
A lot of people who drive by appreciate this. They honk and wave and give us a thumbs up. But, of course, there are always the few who don’t. There are almost always a few middle fingers thrown our way. I haven’t suffered the abuse nearly as much as Stacey and her neighbors have (and they do have some stories), but I have been struck by how intentionally these people who flip me off try to look me in the eyes as they drive by. They are angry.
This small but consistent demonstration on the corner of 33rd and Knott, of which I’m so proud of Stacey for coordinating and attending so regularly, disrupts people. They are going about their day, it’s been almost a year since George Floyd was killed, all the things that fill their lives with busyness, worry, and occasionally even joy have crept back in, and then they drive down 33rd on a Friday at 10:30 and get reminded of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and Tamir Rice and Jacob Blake and it’s just so dang inconvenient. They have enough to worry about!
Disruptions are so dang inconvenient. And yet, of course, they’re necessary. They are the catalyst for any kind of change. Change, by definition, requires a shift from what was to what will be, from the old to the new. Change requires disruption.
Sometimes disruptions are welcome. Maybe, pre-Covid, you were planning on eating a TV dinner alone in your apartment like you did the 2 previous nights, but then the attractive coworker you’ve always had a crush on asks you on a date! That’s a welcome disruption. Maybe you’re sick of the job you’ve been in for years, and suddenly a friend forwards you a job application that seems to be the perfect fit. You apply and get it and its everything you dreamed it would be. Thank God for that disruption!
Of course there are also bad disruptions. An unexpected text about an illness or death, a breakup, a firing. Just this last week, we got a text one morning that my mom had been in a car accident, but fortunately no one was hurt.
Then there are the disruptions like Jesus’, like Stacey’s neighborhoods’, like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who gathered weekly in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 1977 to 2006 to draw attention to the 10s of 1,000s of Argentinians who had been “disappeared” by the corrupt government. These disruptions draw our eyes to what has gone wrong. They tell us to wake up. But they also embody a hope for a different future. They are disruptions meant to create change. They say, “My child has been disappeared, but if we hold the government accountable, others won’t have to experience what I have experienced, and our children will be safe.” They say, “Racism is real and ugly, but it doesn’t have to be real forever. We dream of racial justice. We’ll work for racial justice.” They say,
In Jesus’ case, he was saying more than simply, “The temple has become a place of profit and cheap religion, but it can again be the house of God.” His disruption and the hope he pointed to, the hope he embodied, was even more radical. By describing his body as the temple, Jesus is saying that God no longer dwells in brick and mortar but in flesh and blood, specifically his flesh and blood. Prior to this, the temple was thought to be the place where God’s presence dwelled, but Jesus says that he has become the dwelling place for God’s Spirit. This is a key theme in John’s Gospel – Jesus is the embodiment of God’s very presence. Jesus is God enfleshed. In 17:21, Jesus says “you, Father, are in me and I am in you.” “If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father,” he tells Philip in chapter 14.
In chapter 4, when Jesus is speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well, she brings up the fact that the Samaritans and the Jews disagree on where to worship God, and Jesus responds, “the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.” In other words, God is not confined to a place, but is a spirit who can be found anywhere. In a sense this has always been true, but Jesus says there’s something unique about the “hour” that is “now here.” In him, God’s presence is available in a new way.
In our reading this morning, when Jesus says, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” he’s making a reference to Zachariah 14, which isn’t about everyday temple rules. Zachariah 14 isn’t concerned with whether, on any given day, people are buying and selling in the temple. In fact, some buying and selling was necessary, though Jesus does seem to take issue with how prominent the business side of things has become, and may also be upset that the buying and selling is happening in the Temple and not outside its walls. But Zachariah 14 isn’t about all that. Zachariah 14 is about a specific day – the apocalyptic Day of the Lord. The culmination of history, when most importantly, the God of Israel, Yahweh, returns to Jerusalem to pass judgment on the nations, to bring the current age to an close, and to usher in the new age, the reign of God. When Jesus walks in, quotes Zachariah 14, makes a judgment on the current Temple system, and finishes it up by calling his body the Temple, he’s really saying the Day of the Lord has come. In him, the presence of God has come in its fullness. But, of course, people don’t understand any of that. He’s just “demon-possessed.” He’s just “crazy.” He’s simply a disruption to be overcome, so business can get back to usual.
But there are those who do pay attention to Jesus’ words: the disciples. They don’t totally get what he’s talking about (honestly, they rarely do), but they come to the temple with him, they stand beside him as he goes on a rampage, they listen to his words, they continue to follow him, and they continue to ponder what they’ve heard. Not just in the moment, not just over the course of his ministry, but long after, for the rest of their lives. Did Jesus explicitly tell the author(s) of the Gospel of John that he meant his body when he spoke of the temple? Or did the author(s) meditate on those words, and over time draw the connection to his 3 days in the tomb, and with the help of the Holy Spirit come to understand later that Jesus was referring to the “temple of his body”?
That seems to be the case, because the last verse from our reading says, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” The answer wasn’t readily given by Jesus. His disciples had to meditate on his words.
There was a word that kept coming up in the commentaries I read this week about our passage from John. The word was enigmatic. Enigmatic means “difficult to interpret or understand. Mysterious.” As these commentaries rightly pointed out, this is hardly Jesus’ only enigmatic teaching. He says a lot of things that are difficult to comprehend. They seem paradoxical or even nonsensical. At the very least they’re mysterious.
They are…disruptive. We want a nice, easy teaching that we can take in stride as we go about our day. But Jesus’ words are something more like a protest, a sign calling into question all our assumptions about life as we know it, and life as we’re currently living it. They are a man yelling across the pond, “Sheeple! Brainwashed!”
If we’re like most people, we’ll think, “That’s weird,” then we’ll go about our day. But if we are disciples, which is what we all claim to be, that is what our baptism represents, a commitment to follow Jesus into a new kind of life, then we stick with Jesus, we hang on to these enigmatic words, even when we don’t understand them.
If I can return – just for a minute – to my emphasis on prayer and spiritual practices, this is what we try to do when we “spend time with Jesus” whatever that may mean to each of us, however we may do that as individuals. Through scripture, we enter some scene with him, we hear his teachings and watch his movements. Often, they’re anything but comforting. They mortify us. They confuse us. They even offend us sometimes. But we stick with him. We follow him out of the room, and down the road. We ponder his words.
There’s another scene in the Gospel of John, when Jesus has said some really weird, upsetting stuff, about eating his body and drinking his blood (stuff that, incidentally makes perfect sense to us now, especially today on Communion Sunday). This teaching drives “many of his disciples” away. Jesus turns to the 12 – in despair, in exasperation, in frustration – and says, “Do you wish to also go away?” And Peter, in one of those moments of brilliance that he has from time to time, says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Isn’t this also why we stick with Jesus, despite all the disruptions, despite the inconvenience? Somewhere along the way, the words of Jesus, enigmatic as they are, became to us words of eternal life. And somewhere along the way, as we walked with Jesus, we came to see that he is the Holy One of God, the presence of God in flesh and blood given to us, the Temple that was destroyed and three days later was raised.
He is the place that is everywhere and nowhere in particular, the always open door to Spirit and Truth, the embodied house of God become the spiritual home of mortals.
Where else can we go?