When Worship Substitutes for Justice

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 14, 2009; 3 Lent, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 2:13-22) – The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 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.
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In 63 bce, a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabean family not only ousted the foreign Syrian rulers, but also removed the role of high priest from the ancient family of Levi. Scholars believe that some followers of what they regarded as the more legitimate high-priestly family withdrew to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found starting in 1947.

During Jesus' life, there were four major families who competed with one another for appointment as high priest. The Roman governor appointed the office. During that century, the term of most high priests lasted only about four years. But Caiaphas was the high priest for eighteen years, including the entire ten-year term when Pontius Pilate was governor. Obviously they got along very well, the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, and the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

Imagine the ambiguity that the people felt when the priest who represented them before God on the Day of Atonement was the same person who represented them before Rome the rest of the year. (Much of the historical material for this sermon comes from chapter 2 of Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan's book The Last Week.)

Despite their ambivalent feelings toward the high priests, Jews loved their Temple. In 40 ce, when the emperor Caligula planned to install in the Temple a statue of himself as Zeus, tens of thousands of unarmed men, women and children confronted two Roman legions; they were willing to be martyred to protect the holiness of their temple. They loved the Temple.

They also remembered the days of Jeremiah when the prophet accused the rulers of Judah of injustice, saying in the name of God, "If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place... Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?" (Jeremiah 7) For Jeremiah, the Temple had become a refuge for robbers, a safe house for injustice. He joined the tradition of the prophets Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah in demanding justice from God's worshipers. Over and over, through the prophets, God declared to the people, "I reject your worship because of your lack of justice." Jeremiah went so far as to say that God would destroy the Temple because it had become a haven for perpetrators of injustice and a den for robbers. For prophesying against the city and Temple, Jeremiah was arrested and nearly executed.

The Gospels remember the day when Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem and performed an action in the tradition of Jeremiah and Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah. Jesus shut down the Temple. He drove out those who sold the sacrificial animals, he overturned the tables of the money changers. "Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" he cried. And in Mark's version, he recalled Jeremiah's accusations, telling the people they had again made the Temple "a den of robbers." In the Temple that day, Jesus challenged both the Roman imperial power and the Jewish high-priestly collaboration with that power. Jesus fulfilled Jeremiah's threat. He shut down the Temple and its works of injustice. Jesus fulfilled the message of so many prophets, when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God's Temple, or for us, God's church.

It was a symbolic action. The next day the markets were reopened. It was a pivotal action. From that moment the authorities determined to do away with Jesus. It was a prophetic action. Jesus announced God's judgment, and he acted out God's judgment in a dramatic symbol.

These kinds of dramatic, symbolic actions happen frequently. They happen in the cause of justice, and they happen in the cause of injustice.

I remember during the Vietnam War when protesters broke into draft officees and overturned drawers of file cards, sometimes pouring blood on them. A friend of mine who was outspoken in the Civil Rights movement had a cross burned in her yard. A group of young men hijacked two planes and crashed them into the symbols of international capitalism, the World Trade Center in New York. At Fayetteville High School straight students will voluntarily refuse to speak for a day in solidarity with their gay classmates, some of whom have to live in "the closet." A group of regional politicians recently tried to live a week spending no more than $25 on their food, the customary food stamp allowance. Whenever there is a state execution in Arkansas, a group holds a candlelight vigil in front of the Washington County Courthouse. When American colonists resented an unjust tax on tea, they emptied a ship's cargo into the Boston harbor. Iraq just sentenced a journalist to three years in jail for throwing his shoes at President Bush.

We are all familiar with dramatic symbolic actions.

It seems to me that two questions challenge us in the face of today's story about Jesus' action, when he shut down the Temple. First, how do we know when a symbolic action is in the cause of justice and right, and when is that act unjust and wrong? We have to apply the values of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets to our judgment. The prophets insisted that God seeks to uphold the poor and vulnerable, the orphan and widow and alien. Jesus acted consistently out of a motivation of love and compassion, especially on behalf of the outcast and broken. With whom do we side when we hear about symbolic actions?

But the other question that challenges us is the same one that challenged the Temple on that day. Are we zealous in the cause of justice? The prophets tell us that comfortable worship which is detached from justice is unacceptable to God. Amos spoke the word of the Lord: "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ...Take away from me the noise of your songs; ...But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5) And Hosea: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) And Micah: With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? ...Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? ...He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6) And Isaiah: "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; ...I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. ...I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; ...cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1)

It is a good thing to pray and to worship. It is a good thing to come to church, and to make our communion. But if we are not engaged actively in the pursuit of justice, we run the risk of our prayers being unacceptable to God. And if we fail to rescue the oppressed, help the alien, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow; if we neglect to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, we risk the charge of merely being a refuge, a den of robbers.

The lesson of Biblical history is that when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God's Temple. That's not what we want for this congregation. Let this be a place of authentic and healing worship as well as a center for justice and advocacy on behalf of God's purposes. Let us pray well, let us serve well, and let us work well, in the name of Christ.
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