Homewrecker

Jesus drives out the cattle and sheep and then He empties out the coin jars. Those jars of coins belong to the moneychangers. They were men who worked for the temple, taking two Roman denarii and exchanging it for the Jewish half-shekel that the people needed to pay the temple tax. And the money changers took a fee for their transaction, like the currency exchange in a foreign airport. But they weren’t just changing dollars to euros or sterling pounds to pesos, they were exchanging the currency of the occupying government for the Jewish money in order to pay for access to the temple.  They took the money of an occupied people in exchange for access to God. They are complicit with the structures of power that keep the economic oppression in place, like mortgage-lenders taking bail-out funds while evicting people.  Jesus pours out their coins. First Jesus overturns our misplaced belief that we can buy our access to God, then He upends our confidence that we can find God in one particular place like the Temple. Instead of that sacred building, he was speaking of the temple of his body.

But we want stability, we want a building where we feel that God is dependable and present, we want a home. A few years ago, I moved into an apartment in a less than great neighborhood. The first night I was there, someone tried to break in. When the landlord wouldn’t repair the locks, I repacked up my belongings, put everything in storage, lost my first, last, and security deposit and stayed for weeks on a friend’s couch.  It was embarrassing and expensive. And I was ungrounded. Sure, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, and the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” but I had to get to work in the morning and couldn’t remember if the box with my winter coat was in storage. Though I had just met her, in an enormous act of Christian charity and hospitality, Pastor Angela offered me a room at the parsonage here. I lived here with you in Malden at a time when I was without a steady place to live. I am deeply grateful. I craved the security of a home. My church has lived this instability too- we’ve worshiped in Roslindale at a school, Jamaica Plain at a church, Roslindale at a different church, and back to Jamaica Plain at that same church. We were nomads, and let me tell you it stunk. Packing up our hymnals and chalice. Putting away the chairs. We want the dependable economy of a church where we walk in the door at 9:45 and God shows up at 9:46. Like a cosmic vending machine, we want the dependable economy of putting in our time and getting spiritual renewal. For one hour. On Sunday. But despite all that very real desire for stability, desire for God to be dependable, predictable and present in one place, it’s a false promise. Church buildings are not God. Church buildings are not the presence of God. They are important.  There are real concerns about mortgages and boilers and wheelchair accessible ramps, gardens and altars and parking lots. But let us not mistake the structure for the truth. Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Does it not feel to you like we are in the destruction? In a time of great change and chaos in our world and in our Churches? Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Our denominations, our ecumenical bodies, our churches, our neighborhoods, in a time of great change. Raise your hand, how many of you were formed by a religious community other than this church? Even each of our churches is no longer all Lutheran, all Methodist, all Roman Catholic. This is part of the reason why the Massachusetts Council of Churches exists, to help us heal those divisions across tradition is real in our families and in our churches. But all this flux between denomination is hard and complex.  It can feel like our temples are being destroyed. The church historian Phyllis Tickle is working with the idea of the Great Emergence– that about every 500 years, the Western Church has something akin to a giant yard sale where we take out all our junk from the basement and archives from the attic and put it on the front lawn. It’s a time to rediscover what we forgot we had and get rid of what no longer serves us. If that’s the time we are in, that is the sense of the destruction of the House- a tearing up, chaotic and confusing, unclear what we are going to keep and what will be destroyed. What we are learning from Jesus in the temple is this: we cannot treat our relationship with God like a spiritual vending machine where we put in an hour and get out assurance. God wants more for us, a love that starts on but transcends Sunday, a hope that pervades our whole lives. God is not just to be found in the temple, but in the body of Christ, beyond our local church and our control.

(I took the very wise Rev. Kate Haynes Murphy’s advice- which came via a Saturday afternoon Facebook exchange- don’t write the conclusion,  preach resurrection. So I’m not entirely sure what all I said, but I know I preached that we too are Christ’s body. To be resurrected  and changed.) AMEN.