March 11, 2012  Third Sunday in Lent

John 2:13-22

¹³ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

   ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

   ²⁰ They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” ²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

“Remembered...and Believed.”

I memorized the 10 commandments and meanings by the 5th grade.  I knew them better then, than I know them now.  Yet I know them better now than I ever could have then.  For I have gotten them wrong enough times to begin to know what they might mean and are all about.  

The people in the temple where getting it all wrong.  That is why Jesus drove them out.  They were mixing greed with worship, and all but destroying worship.  

We get it wrong often.  We start to get it right when we have something to remember...

that I am loved with a relentless love

that I can be defeated but now destroyed

that I can blow it, but not lose it.

A key word in finally getting it right is  “remember”.

The disciples understood this experience after the resurrection and they remembered.  Then they got it right.

It is the same for us.  We get it right finally, when we remember the grace and forgiving love of a God who never gives up on us and never forsakes us.  A God who’s love never dies, and who’s dazzling grace always is.

“Jesus, the Intruder”

Jesus had two faces.  He was “meek and lowly in heart”;  and  “he looked at them with anger”.  (Mk 5:5)  He was gentle but not anemic,  as when he called Herod a “fool” or told Peter “Get behind me, Satan!”

Nor was He anemic when he cleansed the temple.  He was a violent intruder, disrupting their comfortable little set up.  It must have been a wild scene!  The disciples must have been stunned, even embarrassed.  The people likewise.  

Jesus was not always an easy person to be with.  For example, when he said:

   “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; for as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."  Lk. 9:60

   “No own who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”   Lk. 9:62 

   “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or                     

            daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”    Mt. 10:37, 38

This may sound harsh and in some ways it is.  It is also an expression of God’s awesome love which will not let us off easy, but expresses itself even in punishment for sin.  It is as Luther prayed, “Ah, God, punish us, we pray Thee...but be not silent...toward us.”

Jesus, would be an Intruder in our lives, harsh though it may seen, to awaken in us our need for a Savior, and then Jesus would be the Savior we need.