Henrietta United Church of Christ
Mark Dibelka March
7, 2010
ARock
the Casbah”
15On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the
temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He
overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling
doves, 16and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the
temple courts. 17And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not
written: " 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all people'? But
you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" -
Perhaps we have
become complacent as to the values we place on objects. How many of us enjoy going to any of the
places where the sales staff is on commission?
In the western world, we walk into a store and see a price that the
retailer has placed on the item. If we
consider the price acceptable, we pay it without question. More than once, I’ve simply walked away from
a product because I feel the price to be too high. But all that seems to change when we walk
into a world foreign to us – the showroom.
When we enter a showroom, all the rules that the
common person understands go flying out the window. If there is a price marked on something, it
doesn’t mean it’s the real price – it means it’s a suggested starting place for
the haggling. I don’t know about you,
but I’m not a fan of dickering over the value of something. I find it tiring and a waste of my time, not
to mention the fact that I always feel cheated –
regardless of what the final price might be.
When
I travel, I have to remind myself that there is no such thing as retail
marketing in most places on the face of this earth. I’ve heard the call throughout South and
Central America, as well as Asia:
“Roll on up -- for my price
is down
Come on in -- for the best in town
Take your pick of the finest wine
Lay your bets on this bird of mine.”
I
describe these words as what I’ve heard on my travels, and I’m pretty sure that
any of us who have gone outside North America recognize a version of this
patter as something heard on any street walked.
However, these particular words may be particularly familiar. These are the words of the merchants gathered
on the porch of the temple. They tell us
God is a finicky god, and requires regular sacrifice. The merchants tell us to come to his stall
and buy the wine that God likes. At that
stall over there, we can find the unblemished birds that are pleasing in God’s
sight.
What
we are told is that God provides eternal grace, available to the highest
bidder. From a cultural stand point, it
was the practice of the worshipers to bring their sacrifices to the temple and
have them inspected. During the
inspection, invariably there was something wrong with the offering, but the
worshiper could go to the merchants and trade the problematic offering,
together with a few coins, to receive a perfect offering. Strangely enough, the merchants never seemed
to run out of sacrificial items – regardless of their starting inventory – as
the trades became the perfect sacrifice for somebody else.
It
seems those involved with the temple had become less involved with the things
of God, and become completely wrapped up in the things of economics. I think we all can understand the frustration
that was building amongst those who had a true desire to worship. The idea of God at any price, paid by those
who are vulnerable, is painful to those who believe that God’s love is
unconditional – we don’t need to kill something, or empty our lives’ savings,
to obtain that gift.
“Name your price I got everything
Come and buy it's all going fast
Borrow cash on the finest terms
Hurry now while stocks still last.”
In
today’s reading, we hear about a Jesus who is upset. The skirts of the temple were blocked by the
“stuff” of earthly wealth. What should have
been the path to personal, spiritual growth instead became a simple plastering
of selfish greed at the expense of those who thought they were doing the right
thing. Of course, there were also those
who had perverted what was the right thing.
The
temple of God is supposed to be spotless.
By turning it into a banking house, the powers that be had allowed a
cancer to grow. The temple was defiled
by the things that were on the outside.
Worse, the infectious agents – the greed, the demand for sacrifice, and
such – had been ingested. The sickness
grew and grew until the temple ceased to be able to carry out God’s work. Illness overcame the body and allowed for the
body to function with a mind that had been turned off; a classic example of the
separation of mind and body – the idea that one can function without the other.
I
have previously shared with you my understanding that the mind and body are not
separate. Rather, I say that the
physical and the spiritual are one. A
disease of one affects the other.
Neither can function at top efficiency alone. Jesus became the anti-biotic. He disrupted the disease and helped to clear
the heads of those who came to worship.
In the simple action of ejecting the merchants, Jesus set about healing
a body that was showing the signs of having been abused.
“My temple should be a house of prayer
But you have made it a den of thieves
Get up, get out!”
It
has been said that our bodies are temples (if you’ve paid attention, one might
think that my temple makes me a Buddhist).
If we follow the idea that the physical and the spiritual are separate,
then it makes perfect sense that we should be able to lead a spiritual life
here, when we are together. Physically,
we might light a candle or sing a song and we show that we practice our
faith. When we leave this place, we keep
our mind with God and our body runs around in the physical world. There is no problem with what our body does,
because the spiritual relationship with God is what matters, right? Or perhaps, the mind has checked out but the
body is here accepting communion and passing the peace because the physical
display of religion is enough to ensure that we are in right relations with
God, right?
Regardless
of where we are or what we are doing, we must “walk the talk.” In this manner, we signal our value to the
world. There cannot be a disconnect between what we say and what we do, or we have
lost all credibility. As a people of
faith, we must accept that our body and soul are inseparable. Our spirituality must be reflected in our
lives, and our lives will strengthen our spirit.
Within
each of us, there is something that stops us from being whole. Sometimes there are many things that keep us
from realizing that we are essentially spiritual beings. I like to think of each of these things as
the merchants in our temples – the things that haggle over our true value. In a story that could be seen as an
embarrassment by the church – after all, Jesus loses his temper – we find a
solution to spiritual stagnation. Jesus
was not afraid to examine the temple and remove the problems. While I’m not saying it is a comfortable
thing to do, isn’t it time we were to examine our temples: our bodies and our
souls? Will we like what we find? Don’t be embarrassed to approach those things
that are making you less of a person, lowering your value, and turn those
tables over – it is time for us to send our inner merchants from our temples
and declare to the world that we won’t bargain away our gifts.
(Song
lyrics are from “The Temple” – Jesus Christ Superstar)