The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?”

But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

John 2:13-22

When I'm at a social gathering, and people find out I'm a pastor, they often say, "I don't believe in organized religion." I throw them off by answering. "I don't believe in organized religion either. There are too many meetings, rules, and adherence to traditions we no longer understand. The United Church of Christ was the most disorganized religion I could find. There are no bishops or creeds, and we can talk forever before making decisions. I think you might like it.

Is it really the organized part that causes people to object to religion? They look like people who live well-organized and ordered lives. They must make lists and calendars, stop at red lights, and not try to sneak 20 items into the 12 or fewer grocery lines. Most of these folks don't look like anarchists. So, what is the real issue?

When I scratch below the surface and listen, these are the answers I hear.

• I went through a divorce, and my church shunned me and said I should stay with my spouse.
• I was a Deacon in the church, but controversy over a church building campaign became so toxic I left.
• My son said he was gay, and my pastor said he could pray it away.
• I tried to find a church but sat alone, and no one greeted me.
• Covering up all the clergy who sexually assaulted people was the last straw.

This small sample of comments points to the numerous stories of pain and rejection from people driven out of church. No one has said to me, I don't believe in organized religion because Jesus was just wrong. It's ridiculous to love your neighbor.   Jesus does not have an image problem; but the church does. When any institution becomes about self-preservation and protecting its turf in the status quo, the original purpose and vitality are lost.    The phrase organized religion is code for being dogmatic, judgmental, and morally hypocritical.   

In today’s text, Jesus has some issues with organized religion too.  Something about Jesus wielding a whip is deeply unsettling. There is a reason the "He Gets Us" campaign didn't go for this image below. Sure, he washes feet, but sometimes we tick off Jesus.

In the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they point to corruption and greed as the problem. Each uses the phrase, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers." This phrase is a direct quote from Jeremiah 7:11. Jeremiah's issue was that people were acting unjustly, oppressing and ignoring poor people, living immoral lives, and then coming into the Temple and pretending to be moral exemplars. They were using religion to look good rather than trying to live faithfully. In Jeremiah's lifetime, the Temple was destroyed in 587 BCE. When Jesus quotes Jeremiah, he warns about the most severe crisis in Jewish history.     

John's Gospel has some distinctive features to this story. This Gospel is the last written around 110 CE. The Second Temple from Jesus’ day was destroyed in 70 CE. John's audience was the first generation that never saw the Temple. They had no idea of its true grandeur, that it was larger than Gillette Stadium in Foxboro and a wonder of the ancient world.   This generation is done with the Temple, charting a course without institutional trappings. Two great temples destroyed is enough. Now the church will be a living organism among the disciples, the living body of Christ.

John adds three things to the story to make his point. First, notice that we are in chapter two. The other three Gospels place the cleansing of the Temple near the end, at Holy Week on Palm Sunday.  John puts the story during Passover, at a prior year.  Taking a whip to the sellers is his first act of ministry, announcing who he is.

The second detail is that only John mentions a whip.  In the other Gospels, Jesus turns over the tables. A whip is more violent and aggressive. It is associated with discipline and even oppression, the tool of the Egyptian taskmasters who enslaved them in the time of Moses. I'm glad Christian iconography has not emphasized whips. Imagine wearing lashes on a necklace. That might attract a particular crowd. Maybe John added the whip for shock value. Think of the irony of whipping Jewish people at the Passover, which celebrates the liberation from slavery in Egypt. Passover is about breaking the power of the lash and chains, and Jesus should be using a scourge against the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, the new Egypt. Is the message, don't you dare celebrate liberation on Passover while you practice oppression of the poor right here in the Temple?

I'm most fascinated by the ending. The religious leaders ask for a sign of Jesus' authority to do this prophetic act. He says, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days." Jesus does not say he is going to destroy the Temple. Others will desecrate the Temple, but Jesus is not the destroyer; he will be the builder. The disciples later figure out he is speaking in metaphor and referring to his death and resurrection, but at the moment, everyone is stuck on the literal Temple. How can anyone tear down something we have been building for 46 years? The stones of this building are the most permanent thing they can imagine. Won't they stand till the end of the world? They can't imagine anything would destroy this Temple, not a flood, earthquake, or invasion.

But by John's Gospel, no one remembers what it looked like.  Our grandest institutions are impermanent. Think of our grief at the fire at Notre Dame in Paris.  None of the churches founded by the Apostle Paul still exist. You can't visit the original churches of Corinth, Galatia or Ephesus.

How do we hear this today in our situation? Much like the Christian community John is writing to, I think we live in an era of the post-collapse of the Temple. We don't have one great Temple like Jerusalem, nor can we point to one catastrophic moment, but to a generation of decline. But remember, Jesus overturned tables in the Temple in 33 CE, and it didn't fall till 70 CE. The institutional weakness was already apparent.

Here is a metaphor to contemplate. COVID has functioned like Jesus running through the Temple with a whip. We were driven out of our churches, and our faith in God had to survive without the visible and communal attachments of going to church. This outbreak was the death blow for thousands of churches in America, as we lose about 5000 churches a year since COVID. Any organizational and spiritual weakness was exposed and multiplied.  The cracks in organized religion were exposed.  Millions of people decided never to come back for whatever reason.

So those of us who have survived the destruction of the Temple feel the diminishment.

Since we are human, we are going through all the grief processes that Kubler-Ross researched. We are probably past the denial cycle, believing everything will return to normal. There is plenty of blame and fault finding. It's secular humanists, it's the Fundamentalists, the pastors, or a failure to innovate. The truth is every kind of church is suffering the blow in some way. Anger is in the mix. Why doesn't everyone just come back? Depression follows when we feel out of control and have a deep sense of loss of what once was.

I'm wondering what acceptance looks like. Acceptance isn't giving up. It is finally reckoning with reality and deciding to live in changed circumstances. Kubler Ross's research partner, David Kessler, recently wrote a marvelous book on a necessary sixth part of the grief cycle-finding meaning. Perhaps that is what we are moving towards now. We are looking back at our story, searching for meaning, and we mull the words of Jesus, "Destroy this Temple, and after three days, I will raise it." We are living somewhere in this cycle of death and resurrection. Death and resurrection aren't simple historical events that happen at a fixed time. Paul wrote in Romans 6 that we die to the old self, which was living in bondage, and we are raised with Christ to a new self, to be part of his living body.

"In three days, I will raise it." We might argue it will take a church three years or three decades. But what I hear Jesus saying is that the Temple is not merely a wonder made of human hands. It is the gift of the grace of God. The church is not just brick and mortar, but is created by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We don't have to spend years in hard labor building the next Temple. Faith is a state of being as God draws near to us and is available as we open our lives to the living Christ.

Jesus saying, “Destroy this Temple, after three days I will raise it,” gives me great hope.  It means our future is not determined just by trends, demographics and cultural shifts.  Beyond our organized religion we live anticipating resurrection and the promise of new life.  Together we live as the living, mystical body of Christ.