Lent 3 - Renovation: John 2:13-22
Over summer we found ourselves watching “The Block”, a DIY show where teams compete to do up houses and sell them off for auction at the end.
On the most recent season of the Australian series the teams were given houses from different decades.
They had houses from 1910, from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Their task was to take these places which were super run down and give them a new lease of life.
“The Block” is one of those shows that I pretend not to like, and to be honest a lot of the drama seems a little pre-scripted and tedious to me. But the one part I really enjoy every week, is on the Sunday night after a weeks’ worth of renovations there is the episode they call “the room reveal.”
Each week the teams work on one room of the house and on room reveal the judges all walk through and comment on the renovation. I just love to see the transformation – the before and after shots.
That is the joy of renovations – a lick of paint, a piece of art, or furniture can really lift a boring space into something beautiful, or a worn-out space into something usable.
As I read the Gospel passage for today’s reading, this word “renovation” was bumping around in my brain.
For me it captures the essence of what Jesus was up to in John chapter 2. So, let’s take a look…
John 2:13-17
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
So, what are our first impressions when we hear this passage?
Often when we read this, we are surprised. No meek and mild Jesus here.
Jesus is presented to us as zealous, angry even. He wields a handmade whip.
He is moved to action by what he sees going on in the temple and he will not stand by passively.
So, what was the problem? What moved Jesus to go into the temple and cause such a scene.
To delve into this, it’s helpful for us to consider first of all what the temple was all about, and secondly what Jesus discovered when he came to the temple itself.
The temple
The Temple in Jerusalem was the central hub for the worshipping life of the Jewish people. It was planned by David and built by his son Solomon as place for Israel to come and worship God.
It went through lots of turmoil, being destroyed by Babylon in 587 bc, rebuilt by the exiles 70 years later. Then in 164 bc it was desecrated by a Greek king, and then by the time of Jesus, King Herod had started a building project on it to beautify it once more.
The temple was deeply important to the Jewish people because it was understood as a place where God’s presence dwelt in a special and particular way. It was understood to be the place where heaven and earth met, and a place where people would flock during certain seasons to pray, to be together, and to offer sacrifices as an act of worship.
Tom Wright captures it, saying:
“The Temple was the beating heart of Judaism. It wasn’t just, as it were, a church on a street corner. It was the centre of worship and music, of politics and society, of national celebration and mourning. It was also the place where you would find more animals (alive and dead) than anywhere else. But, towering above all these, it was of course the place where Israel’s God, YHWH, had promised to live in the midst of his people. It was the focal point of the nation, and of the national way of life.”[1]
That was the idea…
But here in John chapter 2 we get a glimpse of what Jesus actually found when he came to the temple in Jerusalem.
What he found made him angry.
“In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.”
The targets of Jesus anger are the people selling animals and the money changers.
Animals would be sold on site at the Jerusalem temple for people to offer in sacrificial worship. This would be handy for people travelling from afar. The moneychangers also provided a service for visitors coming to Jerusalem so they could pay the temple tax with the required currency.
So, why is Jesus angry with this?
There are different ideas about this, but probably the main reasons are twofold:
1) Jesus finds fault with the merchants because they are disrupting worship for non-Jews. They were selling their goods in the only place that was open to non-Jewish people.
2) The temple establishment was exploiting the poor in order to build up wealth to beautify the temple.
The core issue is the very presence of these merchants in the temple itself. They were acting as a barrier for people in coming to God in worship.
We see in the Gospels time and time again Jesus’ heart to bring people into relationship with God, and his biggest critique levelled at the religious leaders and establishment getting in the way.
Jesus zealously steps into the temple and removes any barriers that get in the way of true and genuine worship of God.
However, his entry into the temple is more than just a critique. It is a prophetic action which has a lot of symbolic power too. More is going on here than what first meets the eye.
In the next section of today’s reading, we see Jesus interpret what he is up to and explain his actions some more…
John 2:18-22
18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore 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.
Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple and then raising it up in three days.
The people are confused because it has taken years to get the temple up to scratch and work is still being done.
But here the temple that Jesus is talking about is himself.
Jesus is speaking of his own body as the new temple. He will be crucified; his body will be destroyed and then God will raise it up on the third day.
As we read John, there are clues before chapter two about his theological point.
At the beginning of John’s Gospel we hear these words referring to Jesus…
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
God comes to dwell with his people in Jesus.
Or as the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the Colossians:
“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. “(Col 1:19-20)
Jesus is the new temple.
The one through whom we come to God and are reconciled.
Jesus makes this claim clearly.
The final line of today’s reading really brings home the authority of Jesus and the fact that he is God revealed in the flesh: “When therefore 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.”
Jesus’ words are held next to Scripture, as the Word of God.
Not only are the temple moneychangers and animal sellers getting in the way of people worshipping God, in light of Jesus’ coming they are no longer necessary.
Jesus stands at the centre of the story of God’s people and John makes this abundantly clear for us to see.
As I read this passage again this week, what really struck me afresh was this image of renovation. (s)
The challenging words and actions of Jesus in this passage are not only directed to a temple system that had gone astray and to the moneychangers and animal sellers. They are directed at us!
We too, are in need of renovation.
Our lives are an ongoing project.
Martin Luther had a wonderful image of renovation he used to describe the life of the Christian.
He said this:
“Suppose that a house which has fallen into disrepair is in the process of reconstruction, is then its construction and present condition one thing and its state of disrepair something else? It is one and the same thing. It can be said of the same house that because of its being under construction it is a house and that it is in the process of becoming a house, but because of its incompleteness it can at the same time be said that it is not yet a house and that it lacks what is proper to a house.”[2]
Luther makes the point that we are at the same time sinners and saints, we are an ongoing construction project as we seek to follow Jesus and experience his grace in our lives.
There are two aspects of this that I want to draw out a little today.
1) The communal (renovation of the church)
Ever since Jesus came announcing the good news of God’s kingdom breaking in his life, death, and resurrection. We, the church have needed reminding of what is most important. We have needed reminding that Jesus is at the centre of our faith.
The church has gone off track in lots of different ways throughout history.
One of the most well-known eras of this is the reformation period in the 16th century. There is a Latin phrase made popular by some reformers that captures the heartbeat of the reformation spirit.
Ecclesia semper reformanda est” – “the church reformed, always reforming.
The notion is that the church is to examine itself to inquire it if is truly faithful.
This notion of reforming is easily misused. It shouldn’t be used to justify the idea that we simply change constantly to follow the spirit of the age, but rather we are consistently reformed by having the Lord Jesus at the centre of our worship and adhering to the Bible as our firm foundation.
With this in mind, as we read today’s passage of Scripture we might rightly ask:
“What tables would Jesus turn over in our churches today? What would he see that would cause him to pull out his whip?”
2) The individual (renovation of our hearts)
The second aspect of renovation I want us to consider is the individual.
Dallas Willard says- “The greatest need you and I have-the greatest need of collective humanity-is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed. Indeed, the only hope of humanity lies in the fact that, as our spiritual dimension has been formed, so it also can be transformed.”
I like the image that Willard uses – a renovation of our hearts.
This image speaks of healing and wholeness, of a new life.
The theological term used for this is regeneration.
Regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit that births a new life in us as we trust and follow Jesus.
There are some passages of Scripture that capture the heart of what this is about.
Two images really capture the idea – the image of new birth and the image of new hearts.
New birth:
John 3:5 “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
1 John 5:1 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.”
New hearts:
The Prophets looked forward to the day when God would give his people new hearts:
Jeremiah 31:33 – “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Ezekiel 36:24-27 – “I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
When Lydia believed in Jesus, we hear in Acts that “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14)
In these images of a new birth and new heart we see the work of regeneration – the Holy Spirit making our lives new.
Lent, the season we are in now as we anticipate Easter, is in so many ways a season of renovation. It is a time of God bringing newness in our lives.
We are invited today to respond.
What does it mean for us to be open to the work of renovation individually and together?
By Joshua Taylor
[1] Tom Wright, John for Everyone.
[2] Martin Luther quoted in Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 53.