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May 14, 2006
Keeping God’s House Pure
Psalm 118: 19-29 / I Kings 8: 14-21
John 2: 12-25
May 14th, 2006
Today is Mother’s Day. A little over a week ago a kindly older pastor from Omaha asked me what I was going to preach about on Mother’s Day. I told him I was preaching through the Gospel of John and would come to the passage we just read together a few moments ago. He said, “Oh.”
I loved my mother. I honor you who are mothers. And I hope this is evident to you day after day throughout the year, though I hope this is a special day for all you mothers.
As many of you are aware, Stephanie has been sending out by email the gist of each coming Lord’s Day sermon. A few of those who got the message this past week took special interest in the second point I proposed because next month our General Assembly will be considering the Peace, Unity, and Purity Task Force’s report that has far-reaching implications for our denomination. I have received some advice as to what I should say this morning, applying light from the story from the Gospel of John we just read. I hope that we may have the mind of Christ on this matter as on other aspects of life—and be wise to follow it.
There are three matters I hope you will think with me about this morning, not just one. First, I hope you will understand what was going on when Jesus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem. Second, in light of what Jesus did then we need to reflect on challenges to the purity of our life together. But there is a third issue involved in this that we do not think about quite as much. You and I are called to purity of life as Christians. What is it to live as Temples of the Holy Spirit—which Paul tells us we are?
But first things first. What was going on when Jesus cleansed the Temple? Maybe you’ve noticed that the Gospel of John reports this event differently from the other Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke put this event almost at the end of Jesus’ ministry right after Palm Sunday, while John puts it at the beginning. Luke shows us Jesus weeping over Jerusalem before clearing out the Temple. Soon after Jesus’ prophetic act of driving out the merchants and moneychangers His enemies got serious about bringing Him to trial. In between this and Jesus’ passion Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell many of Jesus’ most important teachings.
But here in John it is a few days after changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee that Jesus goes to Jerusalem and discovers the Temple being desecrated.
Apparently this took place in the year 30, when Caiaphas was the high priest. He was in conflict with the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court that met in the Temple. The Sanhedrin in rejection of Caiaphas moved its court to the market place that was usually in the Kidron Valley or on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. To get even with the merchants for welcoming his enemies, the Sanhedrin, into their market area, Caiaphas invited rival merchants into the Temple, perhaps into the Women’s Court.
So the Temple, rather than being a place where the most sacred life of the Jewish people found its focus, became a center of strife and commerce. Buying and selling sacrificial victims and changing coins with the image of Caesar on them for coins with no graven image on them was supposed to happen outside the Temple. At this dramatic moment of conflict between the High Priest and the Jewish court Jesus came along and saw this sacrilege. He made a whip of small pieces of rope and cleaned house. “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade,” Jesus must have shouted.
In Matthew we read that Jesus also quoted the prophet Isaiah, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people; but you make it a den of robbers.”
Christians have thought about this moment and recognized that a number of things were going on. First, Jesus was acting like the prophets of the Old Testament who pulled no punches when they found Israel desecrating holy things. Second, when He predicted the destruction of the Temple He pointed to a new “Temple,” yet to come.
Jeremiah, you may remember lashed out 700 years before this: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings and let me dwell with in this place.” The prophets would say strange things about God despising the very sacrifices He commanded them to offer because God desired obedience rather than sacrifices. And people must have been puzzled and hurt as they listened to the prophets.
Because it was with ancient Israel and with the people of Jesus’ day as with us, that impurity of life and worship always comes creeping in gradually. It does not explode on one day, but comes gradually. People in Jeremiah and Jesus’ day probably were not aware how they had become offensive to God.
We are used to the change of clothing fashions, music, and of 78 RPM records to CD’s. We have seen worship change in remarkable ways—the reason why some of you are here rather than elsewhere. A lot of change does not matter, indeed is justified. But there is some change that is inappropriate. In Jesus’ day as in ancient Israel, people domesticated God; they forgot that God is a holy God. This kind of change of outlook is disastrous.
People forgot what it is to feel awe in the presence of God. When Jesus cleansed the Temple it no doubt seemed an outrageous act, because people had forgotten that the Temple was more than a national shrine; that it was the shrine of Almighty God. They might have remembered that the first Temple built by Solomon was destroyed after years of desecration that came gradually. They didn’t realize the same consequence would come to their own present desecration of the Temple.
There were other Jews in Jesus’ day who realized how the Temple had been changed into a place of casual religion. The Essenes, those purist reformers who isolated themselves from the rest of their fellow Jews saw the High Priest as an enemy of God. Indeed, the rival sects of the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Zealots lived in tension over the Temple. Four decades later that Temple was destroyed.
Before this happened, the Apostle Paul taught Christians that they were the Temple of God. Back when King David wanted to build a Temple for God in Jerusalem the prophet Nathan told him that God could not be contained in a Temple built by human hands. The prophets said that God was pleased to dwell in humble and contrite hearts. It is with this background that Paul said, “Don’t you know that you are God’s Temple, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you all?”
Shortly after Paul tells us that our bodies are members of Christ. The Church is the gathering together of humble and contrite hearts in which God lives.
A lot of time has passed since Jesus began to form that nucleus of believers who would be the Temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And with the passing of time there has come much change.
For centuries it was unthinkable that there would be disunity in the Church. Jesus agonized in prayer before the Father that we might be one as He and the Father were one. But the East broke with the West in the 11th century, and now there were two bodies that said, “We are the real Church of God.” Five hundred years later the Western Church broke up, and soon the Church in the West would shatter into smithereens. In 1984 the IVCF Encyclopedia of Religion in America reported that there were 20,800 different Protestant bodies. Every one of these broke off for reasons that seemed sufficient for it. Sometimes major issues were the reason for splitting off; sometimes the issues were very small.
This summer the General Assembly of our denomination will be asked to vote on accepting the proposal of the Task Force of Peace, Unity, and Purity, created at the last General Assembly. This report proposes that authoritative interpretation of the ordination standards of our denomination be left to the bodies in which the ordination takes place. Each governing body, it is proposed, will have the duty to determine “whether a candidate being examined for ordination and/or installation as elder, deacon, or minister of Word and Sacrament has departed from scriptural and constitutional standards for fitness for office.”
This is really nothing new. Except for the fact that it over-rides a very important principle spelled out in the Book of Order that we exercise our freedom of conscience within certain bounds. When this is not possible candidates for the ministry should peaceably withdraw without creating a split within the church.
The focus of what is at issue now is the standards of ordination of deacons, elders, and pastors—and in particular, pastors who will not abide by the so-called “Fidelity and Chastity Amendment.” This amendment makes clear that we pastors, deacons, and elders are either to live faithfully with our wives or husbands, or chaste if we are not married. It makes clear that marriage is between a man and a woman.
So if the recommendation is adopted by our General Assembly without the possible endorsement of all the presbyteries, it will effectively take away the intent of the Fidelity and Chastity Amendment. Congregations will decide for themselves whether candidates for deacon or elder meet with their approval, and presbyteries will decide for themselves whether pastor candidates meet with their approval. If this report passes we will effectively not have a common standard of ordination in the PCUSA. And this is a cause of great concern.
Before drawing a conclusion from the story of Jesus’ cleansing the Temple and from the present distress in our denomination, let me briefly remind you of a third arena in which we are called to live pure and holy lives.
The Apostle Paul teaches us the great and wonderful corollary to the Old Testament’s teaching that God is pleased to live in the hearts of those who are humble and contrite. “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.” The word “your” here is plural. It means that all of us together make up the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
You have heard the old saying, “A chain is as strong as its weakest link.” The principle is the same for the Church, that it is as pure as its building parts are pure. This means that you and I are called to live holy lives. Holy means “separated for God.”
A holy life includes many characteristics. In our day it seems that holiness has often been thought of mainly in terms of orthodox theology and sexual behavior. In sexual behavior we have followed the lead of our culture pretty much. Our relationships to each other as men and women are important. Indeed, on a positive note that might be pertinent to mother’s day is that we husbands and wives ought to live together far more exuberantly than we do—for our joy and as an example to our children—of where the man-woman bond ought to be celebrated gloriously in marriage.
But a holy life is far more than this. It has to do with how Christians do their business, how they speak to each other, how they mingle in their neighborhoods and work places, how they respond to offenses they feel others inflict on them. Holiness of life has to do with every thought being brought into captivity to the obedience to Christ. It has to do with a humble spirit. It has to do with asking continually, “what is the mind of Christ?” All this while knowing we are saved only by God’s grace, and not by any amount of good that we might do.
In Jesus’ day I notice that He did not begin a new sect of Jews when He saw the desecration of the Temple. Instead, he cleaned house, and in doing so He pointed to what God would soon do in changing the whole direction of His people, which included taking in the Gentiles, that is, people like you and me, into His family. When the Temple was destroyed forty years later many Jews and Gentiles who trusted in Jesus recognized that God was building another kind of Temple—like the one Nathan described to King David, a Temple not made with human hands. You and I are parts of this Temple of God.
And the PCUSA is part of that Temple. And it needs some house cleaning right now that God will accomplish in His own way. I see that the membership loss and the financial difficulties that result from this are a wake-up call to our denomination. This crumbling of a spiritual body that has noble roots is a reminder that God will not bless us if we do not live holy lives. God expects us to be fit blocks in His Temple walls.
I am deeply concerned that in the ranks of those who hold to theological orthodoxy there is great evidence of unholy living. And if I read things correctly, what you and I need to do is to examine with great care our place in the Temple of God. The temptation overtakes us in difficult times to scrutinize other people, particularly those with whom we disagree. You and I are tempted to do the very thing Jesus reproved when He saw a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the Temple.
The Pharisee prayed, “I thank you that I am not like other people are.” And the tax collector prayed, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” I wonder what purifying effect we would see in our denomination that would have sweeping effects beyond us, if you and I were to pray, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”
I feel very sorry when I see some of the lingering tensions in our congregation. Some of us cling to attitudes Jesus would not bless. If we will take care of that sector of the Kingdom of God in which we find ourselves, and other Presbyterians will do likewise, with humble and contrite hearts, I wonder what blessing God will bring to us.
And we must be careful about taking things into our own hands in a political way. All God’s works happen deeply and gradually. I hope this congregation will let the present distress move us to greater contrition before God personally, to greater love of one another, to greater faithfulness in our participation together in this place. And then let us see what the Holy Spirit may do, using us in the greater arena of our denomination.
I pray that you and I in this congregation will use the present distress as a goad to examine our own hearts before God, and to examine our life together to see if we are well pleasing to Him. Let us persist in trying to lend such good influence as we can, with a humble and loving spirit—as Paul urges us, “lest we too be overtaken in a fault.”
Let us pray: O Lord, our God, in whom we live, move, and have our being, be pleased to make of us what you will, and to use us for your glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at May 14, 2006 09:30 AM