Year B

John 2:13-22

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Foolish or Wise Love?

John Milton, in his masterpiece, Paradise Lost, a poem about Adam and Eve’s disobedience, said the main task in his writing is to “justify the ways of God to men.” That may be an ongoing task for a fallen humanity who continues to question, challenge, and disobey the parent. So there is a continual need for the ways of God to be explained and justified to us. All the texts today, give us a fascinating glimpse of the extent of the ways that God is at work in our lives and in our world. As we move from the giving of the Ten Commandments to Paul’s discourse on wisdom and foolishness to John’s account of the cleansing of the temple, we see the breadth and variety of the ways of God’s grace. God’s love has an infinite number of channels at its disposal.

In the Exodus passage, we are reminded of God’s Saving activity: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And that deliverance is followed by the giving of the law in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, was and is the source of ethical standards and it set a framework for community building among a group of liberated slaves. The law represents God’s covenant relationship with God’s people, and it also tells us God’s will for human life and civilization. The Ten Commandments are intended to make the road of life smoother, the journey less complicated, and the destination more certain. No set of laws has been more beloved through the centuries yet more frequently broken.

Somehow we have become convinced that God imposed these laws on us in order to keep up from enjoying life. Yet, in fact they are like deep channels through which the love of God flows, establishing the boundaries or limits that make possible our worship of God and our love for one another. Remember Mr. Rogers?  Who doesn’t love Mr. Rogers? He was welcomed into my house many days when my daughter was growing up. Although it was “only” a television program, he created a world where children and possibly some adults, were loved, valued, and taught what it means to be a neighbor. It was so simple and yet such a stark contrast to other messages that bombarded our children. The pressure to succeed and all the stuff you were supposed to buy as a with-it guy or gal in the 1980’s….not much has changed.

I later learned that the Rev. Fred Rogers was not only an educator but a pastor. His ministry exemplified what it means to love God and to love neighbor as myself. That intimate connection between our love of neighbor and love of God is what undergirds the commandments God speaks on Mount Sinai. Like a blueprint, they show us God’s love plan for creation. We hear Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians today boldly declare this love plan of God in the foolishness of the cross. The crucified and risen Christ is God’s waterfall of grace under which we stand, and by which we are absolutely filled with love. To those who seek outward signs and strive after human wisdom, this idea will not make sense. The cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. “But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved.” The cross, the power of God, defines our relationships with one another and with our Lord as in the Ten Commandments. The cross defines who we are, not whether we are Jews or Greeks or wise or unlearned.  It is not through the world’s wisdom that we come to know God.

We come to know our Lord God through the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The wisdom of the world, when faced with the wisdom of God, does not have power. For when we cling to the values of the world, the cross becomes a stumbling block for not only our faith but for others as well. This is not to say that wisdom and education are not important and do not have a place in our faith. But if we cling to knowledge as what defines our identity, we miss the point of the gospel. And we have to be careful to not let the values of this world define us or the life the church.

When we cling to the cross with faith, when we put our full trust in the Lord, we begin to define true wisdom and true value. We find the strength and hope we need to receive God’s true peace and we discover that the Lord who brings life out of death has turned this world as we know it upside down. And this is exactly what Jesus did in the temple that day. He enters the great Temple in Jerusalem at the busiest time of the year, Passover, and causes quite a commotion. The moneychangers and Temple authorities no doubt considered his action bad for business. Yet, in God’s eyes it was a necessary cleansing.     

The savior of the world was in their midst, and they did not realize it. A love far greater than any they could imagine was now being channeled into the whole world. A wisdom far superior to any other was now available to the humblest of people. But the Temple authorities continued to operate their elaborate sacrificial system rather than inviting worshipers to receive clean hearts and new and right spirits within them. The Temple was an outward show of piety. The outer court of the Gentiles was certainly no place for prayer and praise. Money was changing hands rather than hearts being touched. Jesus felt the house and worship of God were being compromised and insulted. For John, this is the moment when a new understanding of the Temple is born.

The religious leaders ask Jesus, “By what authority are you doing these things?” “What sign can you show us for doing this?” They want something, anything to make sense of who this guy is and what just happened. Jesus responds by pointing them to a completely different Temple: his own body, the very dwelling place of God: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I’ll raise it up.” Those who ought to be in the best position to recognize the Presence of God will nail Jesus to an executioner’s cross. But as in the temple, the tables will be turned: Jesus will be raised from death to reveal the surprising truth that the rejected One is no less the divine Son who gives life eternal.

God’s self-revelation in Jesus is scandal to the world. Is this a God to believe in? Values are reversed. The apparently defeated one is the Lord of God’s new creation, and filled with God’s spirit, the weak of the world are strong, the strong made vulnerable. The cross becomes a corrective lens to help us see who God truly is and to help us see our lives and the stuff of our lives rightly. These texts challenge us, in this Lenten season, to think again what it means to say that the cross stands at the center of all true religion, at the center of what it means to be people of faith.

In the cross, God who enters into foolishness with us does not replace foolishness with wisdom. Rather, in the cross, God takes on foolishness and makes it wise. Through it all, the Lord God patiently works in our world. Whether by power or by sacrifice, whether with gentleness or severity, God works to save, to deliver, to cleanse, and to set free. And whether it is plagues or pillars, wisdom or foolishness, tablets or stone or turned-over tables, it is always love and it is always grace which flows into our lives. Thanks be to God!