Would We Extinguish Our Own Fire?

Did your mind go where mine went after hearing that gospel reading? It’s just the perfect content made for TikTok or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever else is out there to document for posterity life’s unfortunate moments of super-cringe and outrage. Whenever I imagine we could jazz up the gospel with perfectly timed flashmobs like at the feeding of the five thousand on a hillside by the Sea of Galilee or at the cleansing of the ten lepers in a remote Samaritan village or when Jesus called Zacchaeus down from a tree in Jericho, we get a moment like today with Jesus flipping tables in the temple in Jerusalem to make me grateful social media was nowhere as advanced then as it is today. Besides, no one remotely like Beyonce or Katy Perry or Justin Timberlake was around to lip sync or provide an iconic soundtrack. And if you didn’t follow anything I said just now, you haven’t missed anything. You can also be grateful you’re not on social media. However, you may not be out of the woods yet for as long as DNA mapping is available and inexpensive and getting more and more accurate.

And then there’s that reading from Exodus of Moses coming down Mt. Sinai with the ten commandments on two stone tablets to the people of Israel. The story is epic enough for us to imagine on its own. But with the genius of Cecil B. DeMille, I guess there was much more irresistible material to convince Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner and a cast of thousands to run around Egypt and the Sinai desert for several weeks in 1956. I imagine someday some version of the story will land on Broadway.

But whenever Hollywood or social media gets hold of a really good story, it ends up being less about the brilliant lesson and more about the portrayal of some role that then generates buzz for the next awards ceremony. If we mined scripture just for these moments of cringe or outrage or Oscar gold, then it’s just entertainment. And by itself entertainment isn’t capable of bringing about a real transformation in its consumers. As with any commodity no matter the value, consumers will just move on to the next opportunity to consume new content. But sacred scripture means to touch the deepest recesses of our spirit to remind us that God is present and doing wonderful things.

The text we read from Exodus is a familiar list of commandments, the heart and foundation of the Law of Moses. We know there were 10 original commandments, their proper numbering ultimately determined by the interpretation of legitimate church authority. But since Moses’ time, the list has expanded to oversee most every aspect of Israel’s life, from what was permissible to serve at meals, to how worship in the temple was to be properly conducted. Today there are some 613 commandments considered sacred tradition imparted from one generation to the next. Now since about the year 70 CE with the destruction of the Second Temple, a number of these commandments are no longer observable. According to one standard opinion, only 271 of these laws can still be observed today, while 26 apply only in the land of Israel. Still, they are part of Israel’s heritage, and the value is in their religious significance.[1]

Today’s account of Jesus cleansing the temple comes from John, where the event is situated after Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, his temptation in the desert, and his first sign at the wedding at Cana. In this account Jesus is clearly at the start of his public ministry—young-ish, untested, very much an unknown. In contrast, the other gospels place this same event just before Jesus’ passion and death, directly connecting it with his enemies’ plot to have him arrested and put to death.

It was exactly his passion and rage and zeal that got the attention of his disciples. “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace,” he said as he drove out the vendors, spilling the coins of the money changers, overturning their tables, scattering the sheep and oxen and doves, disrupting the peace. His opponents were most upset probably because they had gotten comfortable with the status quo. The system in use governing the offering of temple sacrifices allowed out-of-towners to purchase their choice of animal offering right there at the temple, a welcome convenience. And with strict rules about the use of proper coins, money changers provided a necessary and vital service. But with time came abuses to the system, unjust commercial practices, bribes and kickbacks, preferential treatment, the kinds of behavior that pop up wherever profit and influence mix. And those with much to lose were not amused, while some who were often easy victims were perhaps quietly and secretly cheering him on.

Then the gospel account quickly turns to a prediction of his passion. “’Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.’ But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. And when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.”[2]

Lest we overlook the reason for Jesus’ outburst, St. Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Corinthians, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”[3] In the judgment and commercial experience of well-established no-nonsense businesspeople involved in the expediting of temple sacrifices, Jesus’ behavior was just foolish and reckless and childish. Was he just railing against temple sacrifices, or was he against all religious practice altogether? Was he against the current religious leadership, or was he against all order and civility entirely? Was he an attention-grabbing egomaniac with anti-establishment tendencies, or just another case of untreated mental illness? What his opponents readily interpreted as malice and ill-will was perhaps a stinging rebuke of what their worship of God had become. And Jesus was forcing them to reexamine their ways and return to what God intended from the start. Now imagine getting that lesson from a viral TikTok. Not.

As we enter this third week of Lent, the church invites us to dig deeper into how we live the faith we profess, not just because it’s Lent and we’re taken on a few personal penances. We need to examine what it means to live our Christian faith all year long. Are we missing the point of Lent altogether if we can just as easily return to what we’ve always done come Easter, back to gossiping and holding grudges, back to careless swearing and casual dishonesty, back to wallowing in our bad habits and indulging our excesses? It would seem foolish to keep fighting if we know we’re just going to give up anyway. But we stop trying only when we’ve finally attained the perfection Jesus wants us to achieve, or we finally admit it’s a lost cause and we’re just not going to change.

Each Lent, we witness an uptick in religious fervor and the pursuit of personal holiness that fuels the drive to keep alive our Christian faith and help bring about the Kingdom of God in our midst. We are not done struggling to be true disciples of Jesus and pass on our love for God to those who come after us. How would Christianity survive if Christians like ourselves stray from Jesus, lose our passion and enthusiasm for the gospel way of life, and without care extinguish our own fire?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments

[2] John 2: 19-22

[3] 1 Corinthians 1: 25