Go in Peace, God has Left the Building!

Third Sunday in Lent

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19

I Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

Imagine that it is Easter Sunday. This is pre-COVID, so the building is packed and the Sanctuary is breathtaking. Everyone is dressed in their fanciest attire- snappy suits, cute dresses, and a little bit of glitzy jewelry for good measure. You arrive a bit early so you can hear the kids outside giggling as they begin the annual Easter egg hunt. Extra candelabras adorn the aisle. The altar is almost completely covered in full, lucious Easter lilies. You close your eyes, a smile stretches across your mouth, and you breathe deeply of the lily scent perfuming the sanctuary. Suddenly, you hear a shout. “You have made my father’s house a marketplace! I will tear down everything in this sanctuary and raise it up in three days.” The stranger grabs the candelabras one by one and rips them from the holdings and throws them on the floor. People start screaming and rush for the exit. The stranger calmly walks straight to the altar and in one motion, sweeps the lilies off to the ground. The containers shatter and the chancel of our beloved church is covered in soil. 

This is what it would have felt like for those worshipers at the Temple when Jesus fashioned his whip and chased out the animals and money changers on that Passover week long ago. Jesus ruined everything in that holy place on that holy day. Why? What was Jesus’ point in this demonstration? To explain that we need to hear a story about a house, a very special house… God’s house.

Once upon a time, God had no home. No one ever traveled to go visit God, because God was the one who traveled to you. God appeared in strange and mysterious ways in those days. You never knew where or when God would show up. To Abraham in a dream. To Moses in a burning bush. To Jacob as a wrestling angel. Then came the first Passover- the same holiday Jesus travels to Jerusalem to celebrate in our Gospel reading. God freed the people and led them out of slavery and into the wilderness by a cloud by day and a great fire by night. Then, the people built God a tent. It was ornate and big, but it was still a tent and not a permanent building. The people would travel by day and when they stopped at night, they would pitch the tent of God called the Tabernacle. God had a mobile home in those days. God traveled with the people. And when day came and the people were ready to continue their journey, the Tabernacle was packed up and God’s home traveled with the people.

The people finally entered the promised land and settled down. The people thought God should settle down with the people too. King David wanted to build God a home, but God would not let him because he had too much blood on his hands. His son, Solomon, ended up building God a home that we call the Temple of God. That immovable stone Temple became the center of worship and sacrifice for God’s people. Now, the people traveled to God instead of the other way around. When you gave birth to a new child, you went to the Temple to make a thanksgiving offering to God. When you celebrated a major holiday like the Passover, you went to the Temple to worship and sacrifice. When you brought in your first harvest from the field, you traveled to the Temple to offer a tithe of that bounty as a sign of trust in God. When you needed forgiveness from sin, you travelled to the Temple to make a sacrifice to show your regret and repentance. 

The Temple was destroyed in a great war. Hundreds of years later, the people returned and rebuilt the Temple. In the time of Jesus, the land was still occupied by a mighty foreign invader, but the Temple was renovated, expanded, and beautified by the oppressors in exchange for the people’s obedience. This expansion, renovation, and beautification was a long, gradual project that was in its 46th year by the time Jesus entered the Temple in our Gospel reading.

One Passover week, in about the year 30CE, Jesus of Nazareth, entered the Temple of God. He fashioned a crude whip and chased out all the animals, the facilitators of the sacrifices, and ticked off every religious authority. It was like Jesus stomped on our Easter eggs and kicked over our lilies in the middle of Easter worship. How dare Jesus interrupt the long-established religious space? I have heard the argument that the moneychangers were ripping off the people who came to make sacrifices, but the text offers no evidence of this. Jesus would have said something about that if that was his concern in this case. In fact, he doesn’t hold back his criticism of the powerful ripping off the poor elsewhere in Scripture, so why would he now?

No, Jesus’ objection to the activity in the house of God is much more fundamental than that. Jesus’ objection to the activity in the house of God is much more radical than that. Jesus is saying that God is not bound to this place. Jesus is saying that God is not stuck inside this building. Jesus is saying that God is on the move and if you limit yourself to only looking for God in this building, you will miss God. Jesus is saying, “The Temple is my body and it will be destroyed and then raised in three days.” 

Jesus is saying that for a time God had a stationary home, but now God is in a tent and that tent is the Christ who is among you today. 

This is an odd and difficult passage to read on any day, but especially today. Here at Saint John’s, this is our first weekend back in our building in a very long time. And on this first day back, we read a story in which Jesus chases the people out of their well-loved worship space. As hard as it is to hear, Jesus has said that God does not have a permanent home- not the Temple in Jerusalem and not Saint John’s in Philadelphia.

This building is not God’s home… at least not in any kind of permanent sense. This building can be a place where God sets up camp while we are gathered, while we receive the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, while we hear God’s word, while we serve our neighbor, while we discern how God is calling us to truly welcome God’s people who are oppressed and hurting, while we hear a convicting call to repentance, or when we hear a comforting word of hope. But when the people leave, God leaves with them. God’s home is as much outside those doors as God’s home is within these doors. God is in the person of Jesus Christ who when he was crucified, was also raised and ascended to God’s right hand to be all and in all. God is everywhere and we are deluding ourselves to think that God is especially in the Temple in Jerusalem or Saint John’s Lutheran in Philadelphia.

Think of our church not simply as God’s house, but maybe as God’s tent or as God’s equipping room or as God’s launch pad. We gather together to receive the grace of God, to hear the promises of God, and to discern how God is calling us to live into the faith and spread the Good News of Jesus with our words and our bodies. Then, like the ancient Israelites wandering in the wilderness, we are led by God to the next place God sets up camp. That next place may be your school, your home, your place of work, another service or justice organization… quite literally God-knows-where else!

After Elvis Presley would finish a concert, an announcer would often get on the loudspeaker and announce, “Elvis has left the building.” Maybe that should be how we dismiss our worship services. After we finish praising God and encountering Christ in Word and Sacrament, we should be reminded that God is no longer here, but is out there. God is out of the building to comfort, strengthen, and challenge us in our lives outside this building. God is out of the building to meet us in the people and places beyond these four walls. Christ is with us. God is here and God is there. Go in peace, God has left the building!