Lent 3 Sunday 15 March 2009 St Cuthbert’s, Benfieldside

Exod 20: 1-17; 1 Cor 1:18-25 John 2:13-22

What are churches (the buildings) for?

Jerusalem’s Temple was the main place of Jewish worship. It was believed to be God’s
exclusive dwelling place on earth. On the Day of Atonement the High Priest entered the Holy
of Holies and there sprinkled the blood from unblemished animals which had been sacrificed.
Two goats were involved. One was sacrificed. The other, with the sins of the people
transferred to it, was driven into the wilderness – the scapegoat. By this yearly ritual Jews
cleansed the Temple and man was reconciled with God. We learn from Moses that sacrifice
was, ‘so that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.’ (Lev 9:6-7) Note this reads ‘may
appear’. God cannot be pressurised. God is a free agent. ‘I Am Who I Am.’ (Exod 3:14) is
what Moses was told to tell anyone who asked God’s name.

Now imagine the scene in today’s Gospel. The Temple courtyard is crowded. The noise is
deafening. Money changers are fleecing worshipers as they exchange Roman money for
Temple money. Birds are caged; animals are everywhere. The Temple was intended to
glorify God. Market traders, keen to profit from sales are making a mockery of it. Into this
chaotic scene comes an angry Jesus. Freeze as he shouts, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop
making my Father’s house a marketplace!’ Observe Jesus turn the tables of the traders.
Watch him make a whip of cords, possibly from the ropes used to restrict the animals. Shock
and awe! Jesus chases out the animals with a whip. ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it up’ rings in your ears.

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest cleansed the Temple by sprinkling blood seven
times with a whip-like action. And it was with a whip, that Jesus drove sheep and cattle out of
the Temple, only for the tables to be later turned on him, by which I mean this. Before he was
crucified, the whip, the instrument Jesus used to cleanse the Temple, cruelly cut into his
unblemished flesh.

Early Christians took Jesus’ death to mean that his blood was poured out for the forgiveness
of our sins. ‘For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer,
sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the
blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify
our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! (Heb 9:11-14).

One thousand years before Jesus, when Jerusalem’s First Temple was finished, God appeared
to King Solomon, ‘I have consecrated this house that you have built, and put my name there
forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time.’ Babylon destroyed the First Temple
400 years later. In Jesus’ time, the Second Temple had been in course of reconstruction for
forty six years. The Romans destroyed it in AD 70.

‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’. Then in today’s reading Jesus compares his
body with the Temple, but witnesses hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. The ‘aha’
moment came later. When Jesus rose from the dead after three days the penny dropped for
the disciples. Aha, that’s what Jesus meant! Jesus didn’t mean that he could construct a
prestige building in three days. He meant he himself was to replace the Temple!

Paul Heatherington
After Jesus’ death on the cross, the two Marys and Salome were told ‘...You are looking for
Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the
place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples ... he is going ahead of you ...’ (Mk 16:5-8).
Jesus’ place is an empty tomb. The Book of Acts tells us that before he was martyred
Stephen told the High Priest ‘...the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human
hands’ (Ac 7:48).

Jesus has replaced the Temple.

Paul explains the Temple another way. Believers are stones in a building, with Jesus as the
cornerstone (Eph 2:19-20). ’In Jesus the whole structure is joined together and grows into a
holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together in the spirit into a dwelling place
for God. (Eph 2: 21-222).

Think about the implications of today’s Gospel for how we now do church. Two weeks ago,
Mark’s Gospel reminded us that Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ The model
for the church is to be like Jesus and do as he would wish us to. The church (that is the
people) must carry out God’s mission as God’s agent with Jesus at the centre. That mission is
to show God’s love for people. In 1996, the General Synod, adopted this list as marks of
mission: to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom; to teach, baptise and nurture new
believers; to respond to human need by loving service; to seek to transform unjust structures
of society; and to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of
the earth. The list does not mention worship directly, but it’s of course what we Anglicans do,
though worship is not the be-all and end- all. Worship makes mission possible as these words
remind us: ‘Through (the body and blood of Jesus) we offer you our souls and bodies to be a
living sacrifice. Send us out in the power of the Spirit to live and work to your praise and
glory.’

Almost two thousand years after Jesus replaced Jerusalem’s Temple, within a short walk,
form here there are one Baptist, two Methodist, two Roman Catholic and one United
Reformed Church. A short drive takes us to yet more churches at Consett, Castleside,
Medomsley and Shotley Field. ‘For as in one body we have many members, and not all the
members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
individually we are members one of another.’ (Rom 12:4, 5). Jesus is the true temple. Hardly
any church buildings were built during the first three centuries of Christian history. So what
are churches (the buildings) for? Some churches have stunning architecture. Some have
beautiful art. But churches are not just monuments of architecture nor art galleries nor
museums. Two years ago National Treasures the BBC radio series anguished over financial
choices between ‘national treasures’. Which had the most cultural value: the Thames Estuary
or Stonehenge? Religious paintings or the largest surviving Victorian coalmine? Canterbury
Cathedral or a diamond-encrusted skull?

Arguably, all churches are sacred spaces, though before church halls arrived, a church nave
was un-consecrated and was used for secular activities. When Christians decide on competing
financial claims, complex questions must be faced. So how ought decisions to be made?
Cultural issues are secondary to mission. Worldly concerns are not the church’s. Does a
building glory in man’s achievements more than glorify God? Maintenance and mission are
not the same. ‘The ‘church’ – the people, not the building, is true, only if it operates in
Paul Heatherington
obedience to Jesus, the head of the body, the church (Eph 1:22). Building or maintaining a
church that helps to deliver God’s mission is mission, but how is this measured? Is it an
exaggeration to suggest that most money raised by churches and the majority of the energies
Christians expend is for the preservation and maintenance of under-used buildings, many of
which are the product of rival denominations’ 19th Century church building programmes?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus was angered when he saw what worship in the Temple had become.
What are churches* for?

We shall shortly meet the risen, ascended and glorified Jesus in bread and wine. What is
Jesus saying to us today?

*the buildings

Paul Heatherington