Palm Sunday –March 16, 2008
“The Most Startling Thing Jesus Did"
Mark11:15-18; 14:58
Dr. Dan Ivins, preaching

Palm Sunday is special this year because a bunch of us just got back from Jerusalem. One of the highlights was visiting the Western Wall, the holiest site on earth for orthodox Judaism. But it’s apparent how in a place where church and state are combined, heritage gets blurred into religion. The remains of the 2^nd temple wall is so holy, devout Jews back away from it, so as not to disrespect their sacred site. They keep the women separated from the men. Prayers are placed in the crevices of the hallowed edifice and heads bob with extreme unction. The wall has taken on godlike status. Which only underlines the most startling thing Jesus did, when he shifted the emphasis of religion from ritual to relationship. And in the process, was executed for assailing the 3 major icons of the Jewish faith.

In the place of inherited religion, Jesus championed faith. “Tossing out the money-changers,” and their cash, he signed his death-warrant by shifting the rationale of religion away from its ancestral cornerstone. Because faith stands on its own bottom regardless of our forebears. God has no grand-children, only children.

Jesus got clobbered because he stood against the bedrock of the religious life of his people by disengaging religion from external rituals and exclusive religious institutions to matters of the heart. Because he initiated something new, an inclusive approach to God which divorced religion from any special national lineage or edifice.

That’s why Jesus commended a Roman centurion. Measured by the rite of temple worship, the gentile officer was an outsider. But measured by faith, Jesus put every person on equal footing before God. And was amazed that he’d never found "such strong faith in all Israel" (Mt. 10:8).

Totally indifferent to hand-me-down religion, he was equally unmoved by the "God and country crowd." The Zealot’s nationalistic fervor advocated violent force in defeating the Roman occupation. Jesus would’ve been a natural to join the patriots. Because he grew up in Galilee, which spawned the Maccabean uprising. After he fed 5000 people on 5 loaves and 2 fish, they tried to "take him by force to make him king" (Jn. 6:15). But “his kingdom is not of this world.”

So Jesus sidestepped this frenzied draft and opposed every form of militaristic nationalism in the name of the God of all nations. He believed, "All who take up the sword shall perish by it." And he died with the point of a sword in his side, but never took the handle of the blade in his hand.

Equally sweeping was his assault on the 3rd great bastion of Jewish exclusivism, the cherished temple in Jerusalem. Near the climax of his brief ministry, Jesus “went up to Jerusalem” to test the readiness of the temple to transcend its heredity, nationality, and traditions. But the temple wasn't ready for that. No temple ever is. Hoping to see it function as a universal center of faith for everybody, when Jesus entered into the Court of the Gentiles. Instead he encountered only dealers in unblemished animals to be bought and sold for sacrifices, and moneychangers who converted pagan Roman currency into appropriate temple taxes, for a fee of course.

And what got Jesus' goat more than anything else, was people making a profit off of religious enterprise. His response was unyielding and unmistakable--repudiating the temple, which was intended to be "a house of prayer for all people." But they made it into “a den of thieves." Well he shouldn't have done that because according to John, it was this frontal attack on the temple that led directly to his death. The only charge his opponents could make stick was the accusation that Jesus was "trying to destroy their temple" (Mark 14:58). He said “All that temple stuff could go, but God would still be around.” And it shook the foundations of everything that gave their lives meaning. Jesus spent a lot of time trying to do away with what we spend a lot of time doing--temple building. O yeah, we love our temples! Common sense says merge several of the struggling congregations into one solid Church. Great idea! Until somebody’s invited to leave their building. Then fuggetaboutit!

Temples have been erected to the glory of God all over the world. Some of the most beautiful are in England. Great cathedrals and modern church structures are named for the temple: City Temple in London, Baptist Temple in Boston, Temple United Methodist in Chicago. In Philadelphia is Temple University.
But rather than idolize the temple, Jesus came to decontaminate it. Choosing instead to exorcise the concrete demons that damn men’s souls, Jesus was dead set against the temple. He thought everybody would be better off if the infernal thing was gone. “Not one stone will be left on top of the other." Jesus believed “even the Palestinian rocks” could do more to proclaim the love of God than any temple ever could. Because to him, the temple was a citadel for evil. In our text Mark calls it "the cleansing of the temple." Because temple religion utterly failed to do what God intended.

Mark precedes the story of the temple purge with the parable of the "cursing of the fig tree," underlining his point that Israel was barren and never became “A light to the nations.” Instead the temple doused all the other nations lights! Instead of bringing people to God, it kept people out! Instead of a "house of prayer for everybody," the bottom line was about some money. When that happens, it takes radical surgery, not just a band-aid. Sometimes it’s better not to be, than to be and be bad. Jesus’ harshest words were aimed at the religious, who gave him fits. “Hypocrites, you make people worse the children of hell than yourselves!” Whew!

In Mark 13, Jesus exults at the prospects of the temple's destruction. He and the disciples had just arrived in Jerusalem, and the Galileans were in awe of the magnificent structure before them. "What noble stones!" And Jesus? He could take it or leave it because God knows the provisional nature of all human enterprises. Eventually all our “Babel towers” will come tumbling down. Then what?

Jesus didn’t like that place because of what it did to people. Taking a whip to the profiteers inside the temple courts was one thing; but he went beyond anyone’s imagination, declaring that God’s gonna waste this desecrated structure. That's strong talk, folks. Spoken at great risk to anyone with the guts to say it. Before long false witnesses stood before the Sanhedrin giving testimony against him. But they could only tell the truth: Jesus said he’d "destroy the temple and build it back in 3 days."

You can't miss Mark's message: Religion centered in the temporal temple will be replaced with something far better: faith focused upon the eternal resurrection of Christ. His detractors didn't miss it. Nor did the priests who preside in holy places. Because the minute Jesus died, something unusual happened of all places, over at the temple: “the curtain was torn in two!” Ripped apart from top to bottom. God was trying to tell them something that nobody wanted to hear. So they just put up a new one the next day and went on with it. For Mark, it was the symbolic conclusion of Jesus' battle against building-oriented religion. And for Baptists, it laid the foundation for the doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers.”

"A house of prayer for all people." The common people were no longer to be kept from God's presence. The bottom line is, God preferred to speak through curtains and stones than a corrupt, formal religious system, micro-managed by hundreds of petty legalisms. Ah People love their temples! It’s where they circumcize, baptize, and theologize. And folks don't take kindly to somebody molesting their sacred places. There’s a price to pay.

Jesus tore into the temple because it had become a mislocation of faith. Its stones could do nothing to save anybody. Originally built to honor God, our temples have a way of replacing God. The temple was so much a part of daily existence, they thought the world would come to an end if the temple fell. The temples of our lives fall all the time and we go on. 9/11? A lifetime mate dies? Life went on then and it will now. And we may even come out the better for it.

I’m glad Jesus was right about the temple, because it reminds us of the foolishness of worshiping a place. And how we must keep even our revered Meeting House in perspective. And that God doesn’t live in "houses made with human hands." We do, but God doesn’t. When the temple fell it taught them Christ is Lord, not any facility. So there stands only Jesus against the historic, majestic temple, "It’s coming down! But 3 days from now, another one’s going up that’s not made with human hands." Universal, relational, eternal -- what God had in mind in the first place.

In Carlyle Marney’s book Priests to Each Other, he said: “Given our genius and the essence of faith in a material universe, where the risk is always that the spirit will drown in stuff, we need to take a good look at how we keep distorting the real thing.” To protect a great idea, we build a bucket to hold it and keep it safe. Once it’s institutionalized, then we turn our energies to preserving the bucket at the cost of the idea--the contents of the vessel are ignored.

And Christians too keep turning gospel wine back into water, so we can keep our "wineskins" safe! The gospel is not just about what the Word has done to the world, but what the world has done to the Word. Because until we’re ready to admit that any part of our world can come to an end at any moment, we’re like the noble stones crowd, admiring a wineskin! Spilling the wine; wailing at a wall. God needs no noble stones to redeem us. The Word is the mortar that holds the world together. But our tendency for temple-worship makes us turn the mortar into mud.

And the most startling thing Jesus ever did, was to turn the mud back into mortar! He came for one purpose: To relocate the focus of faith in God and not in our idols. Yeah he paid for it with his life, but in the process, he made possible for all of us ... eternal life.

Pastoral Prayer:
Merciful Father, as we approach the hallowed ground of Gethsemane and Golgotha, we confess a sense of unworthiness. Our deprivations are few, our scars so small, our courage seldom summoned, our passions wasted on ourselves, Father forgive us, for we know not what we do. Loosen the hosannas that stick in our throats. Overrule the pride that makes us too tight to enjoy a good parade. Let the child in each of us come alive within us in this worship.

We face a biblical text that warns us of the evils you deplore and alerts us to the virtues you uphold. You warn us not to think more highly of ourselves and the creation of our hands and we keep putting our structures before human need. Sadder but wiser we gather in worship to pray for another chance to get it right. May this hour provide for us the occasion to take seriously your warnings and heed your appeals.
Teach us to use our buildings and to be free of them, to your glory. Wherever your church meets, may its members always accept one another in mutual love and offer service to all in need. And wherever you call your church to bear witness, may the opportunity be seen and gladly taken.

We pray for those whose actions and decisions make them targets of our criticism rather than the subject of our prayers. Illumine the way for those who are confused. Quiet the troubled hearts. Companion the bereaved and comfort the dying. Grant this congregation a faith that lifts people, a hope that builds community, and a religion that places its faith where it ought to be, in Christ our Lord. Amen.