Sunday's Message - A Church without Walls

Here's the message I offered during the celebration services in the First United Presbyterian Church of Mingo Junction, Ohio on Sunday, March 7, 2020.

John 2:13-22 [Contemporary English Version]

Not long before the Jewish festival of Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. There he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.

Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, “Get those doves out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace.”

The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, “My love for your house burns in me like a fire.”

The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, “What miracle will you work to show us why you have done this?”

“Destroy this temple,” Jesus answered, “and in three days I will build it again!”

The leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days?”

But Jesus was talking about his body as a temple. And when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered what he had told them. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words of Jesus.

A Church without Walls

Now, let me tell you right up front how great it is to see y’all in worship this morning. And even though saying something like that is always appropriate, I think it’s even more so given everything that we’ve gone through over the last twelve months. I mean, as I’m sure y’all remember, it was about one year ago that COVID-19 hit us like a ton of bricks, and all of a sudden, everything changed. And even advertisers realized that.

All of a sudden, we were facing a new normal. And as y’all also remember, to slow the spread of the virus, governors all over the country started closing things down, including churches. And even when things started to open up a little bit, a lot of folks, especially those who were most vulnerable, decided that it was safer to stay home. Now that’s what we’ve been facing over these last twelve months.

And to deal with this new normal, well, our church has had to adapt, hasn’t it? For example, we’ve been pushed to use some technology that we’d never used before, you know, like live streaming our services and then posting what was recorded on Facebook and YouTube. And we did it so we could connect with folks who were suddenly homebound on Sunday morning. They could, at the very least, be involved in worship, sort of. But even though this was less than ideal for folks who loved to sit in their pew surrounded by their friends, these streamed and posted services started to reach people who would never be able to come to our building on Sunday morning. You see, over the last year, we really changed in a pretty profound way. Man, folks have been able to connect with us online, and I’ll tell you, I think that’s exciting. In a real way, we’ve been forced to become a church without walls, one that touched people all over the world. 

And you know, I believe making this kind of change is reflected in the passage we read this morning, one of the few stories about Jesus that’s found in all four gospels. You see, when we consider what happened when he cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem, I think Jesus was pointing to a change that was coming in the kind of Temple-centered worship that the Jews followed. And so, for the next ten minutes or so, we’re going look at what Jesus did and what he said. And then we’re going to apply these words and actions to our own situation and see how they might shape what we do as the Body of Christ both now and into the future. Now that’s going to be our focus this morning.

Of course, I think we’d all agree that what Jesus actually did, man, that was pretty dramatic, wasn’t it? I mean, just imagine someone coming in here and overturning the pews and tossing the hymnals out the door. But isn’t that pretty much what Jesus did in the Temple. The Evangelist John wrote:

Not long before the Jewish festival of Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. There he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.

Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, “Get those doves out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace.”

The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, “My love for your house burns in me like a fire.” [John 2:13-17, CEV]

Now you tell me that something like that wouldn’t have cause a problem if it happened later in our service today. 

But even though it was all very dramatic, I’m telling you, the significance of what Jesus did was extremely important. You see, when he chased out the sheep and the cattle and the doves and when he overturned the tables of moneychangers, Jesus was literally overturning Jewish Temple worship. Let me explain. There was really only one reason for a person to go to the Temple in Jerusalem, and trust me, it wasn’t to sing hymns or to pray prayers or to hear a sermon. You did that kind of stuff in a synagogue. No, the Temple was the place where you made animal sacrifices to God, and that’s why you had an altar and whole bunch of priests. And that’s also why there were all these animals wandering around. You see, since you couldn’t sacrifice a bull or a sheep or even a dove with a blemish, it just made sense to have priest-approved animals available for worshipers to buy. And since most of the coins floating around Palestine had the head of some king stamped on it, for the priests, that meant the coin bore a “graven image,” something that violated God’s law. And because of that, this money couldn’t be used to buy an animal to sacrifice. But I’ve got to tell you, the priests, man, they were really on the ball. You see, to address this problem, they set-up these guys who’d change the money carried by the people for special Temple coins that didn’t have someone’s head on one side.  Slick, right?And now, the worshipers could then use approved, non-graven money to buy approved, non-blemished animals, something that was essential for worship. And so, when you got right down to it, without the animals and the moneychangers, sacrifices couldn’t be made. And that’s what made Jesus’s actions so radical. You see, when Jesus did his thing with his whip and their tables, in a very real way, he was ending Jewish worship as they knew it. I guess you could say, by his actions, he was creating a new normal.

And why did he do it? Why did he drive out the animals and scatter the coins? I mean, why he did put an end to Temple worship? Well, I think he explains that by what he said. Again, listen to John:

The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, “What miracle will you work to show us why you have done this?”

“Destroy this temple,” Jesus answered, “and in three days I will build it again!”

The leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days?” 

But Jesus was talking about his body as a temple. And when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered what he had told them. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words of Jesus. [John 2:18-22, CEV]

Now that’s what he said.

And just think about how that relates to what he did. I mean, no longer would the people need to go to the Temple and offer sacrifices to feel close to God. Instead, since the light was in the world and the Word had become flesh, there was a new place to encounter the divine and that would be in the one who would be destroyed on the cross and rebuild three days later, something the disciples would remember after Jesus was raised from death. You see, soon, a 46-year-old building and whole bunch of sacrifices would no longer be necessary. Why? Because their world was about to change.

And I’ll tell you, I think this is really important for us to remember. You see, we’re living on the other side of the cross and the empty tomb; therefore, for us, the Temple, all temples have been replaced, because now in and through Jesus Christ we can meet and worship God. In other words, where Jesus is, so is God. And you know, throughout his time on earth, Jesus made this point over and over again. For example, he taught about his relationship with the Father when he said to the Apostle Philip, “Philip, I have been with you for a long time. Don’t you know who I am? If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. How can you ask me to show you the Father? Don’t you believe that I am one with the Father and that the Father is one with me? What I say isn’t said on my own. The Father who lives in me does these things. Have faith in me when I say that the Father is one with me and that I am one with the Father.” [John 14:9b-11a, CEV] And he told the disciples what they could expect when he was no longer around. He said, “I have much more to say to you, but right now it would be more than you could understand. The Spirit shows what is true and will come and guide you into the full truth. The Spirit doesn’t speak on his own. He will tell you only what he has heard from me, and he will let you know what is going to happen. The Spirit will bring glory to me by taking my message and telling it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine. That is why I have said that the Spirit takes my message and tells it to you.” [John 16:12-15, CEV] And Jesus challenged them to show their dedication through the lives they lived. He said, “If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life. If you serve me, you must go with me. My servants will be with me wherever I am. If you serve me, my Father will honor you.” [John 12:25-26, CEV] Now this was what Jesus told his disciples, and I’ll tell you, that’s the exact same message he says to us. In short, we sure don’t need a building to encounter God. Why? Because we can still meet the creator of the universe through Jesus Christ. In him, we can feel close to God, and that’s something we need to remember.

And because of that, I think we also need to remember that all the sacrifices and all the rituals and all the structures that were crucial to the kind of worship which was done before, well, they’re still not necessary. You see, we don’t need to approach God with a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep or a dole of doves. And we don’t need to obsess over kind of hymns we sing or prayers we pray or structure we follow. And we sure don’t need to rebuild a rigid system of rules and laws and procedures that says to the world, “Unless you learn our way, you’re not welcome here.” Man, we don’t need to do that anymore. Instead, God’s calling us to come with humility and dedication and faith. And you know, I think the Apostle Paul described this new kind of approach really well, when he wrote this to the Romans:

Dear friends, God is good. So I beg you to offer your bodies to him as a living sacrifice, pure and pleasing. That’s the most sensible way to serve God. Don’t be like the people of this world, but let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to him.

I realize how kind God has been to me, and so I tell each of you not to think you are better than you really are. Use good sense and measure yourself by the amount of faith that God has given you. A body is made up of many parts, and each of them has its own use. That’s how it is with us. There are many of us, but we each are part of the body of Christ, as well as part of one another. [Romans 12:1-5, CEV]

You see, since we can be close to God through Christ, we don’t need to worry about the other stuff. Instead, let’s decide to approach him with what he wants us to be rather than with what we want him to have. And that’s something else I believe we need to remember.

Now, as it comes to COVID-19, I really think we’ve not only turned the corner, but we’re heading down the homestretch. Thanks to our willingness to be socially distant and to wear masks and now to get the vaccine, I believe most things will pretty much go back to the way they were. But even though that’s probably going to happen as we move out of the pandemic, we can never go back to that time before Jesus cleansed the Temple. I mean, based on what he did and what he said, the place people encounter and the way they approach God has changed forever. It did for them, and it has for us. 

You see, we can relate to God through Jesus and we can respond by following his word rather than our wants. I guess you could say that’s the new normal. And because that’s the way it is, as the Body of Christ, maybe there’s one thing that happened during the last twelve months that we should carry into the future. I mean, given who Jesus is and what he’s called us to be, maybe we should continue to use the technology he’s given to us and to reach beyond some of those things we used to think were important. In other words, as we look to the example of Jesus Christ himself and become for our community what he became for the world, you know, maybe we can be the place where people can encounter God without a lot of stuff that we consider important getting in the way. In other words, maybe we can truly become a church without walls.