What does the word “spirituality” mean to you? What comes to mind when someone says that they’re
spiritual, but not religious? This morning we’re looking at the signpost of
spirituality through this story about Jesus throwing the people who were making
the temple a place of business instead of worship. At its most basic meaning,
spirituality is about being led by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. We will
not be looking at the various types of spirituality rooted in various
non-Christian faiths or philosophies. There are many that are very popular;
however, these spiritualities lead us mostly into a self-help, self-growth
direction with the goal of discovering ourselves; a broken signpost.
Jesus is entering his time of ministry, having just performed his first miracle at a wedding
in Cana in Galilee at the request of his mother. Jesus then heads to Capernaum
with his family and disciples before heading to Jerusalem for the Passover. The
Passover feast is often featured in the Gospel of John. It’s the biggest
festival for the Jews, though the Day of Atonement where the sins of the people
are forgiven is right behind it. The Passover reminds the Jews of who their God
is, a God who saved them out of slavery as their Saviour and Lord, and who claimed
them as his people.
In the Old Testament, God came to his people in dreams
and visions, but he especially leads his
people through his laws where he reveals to the people who he is, what his
character is like, and how they can be more like God and live wisely with him,
each other, and who he’s calling them to be as his children. God was present in
the tabernacle, and then later in the temple in Jerusalem. This is why the
stories of God filling the tabernacle, and then the temple, with his Spirit are
so important and powerful to the people; this is why, when the Spirit of God
left the temple to follow the people into exile in Babylon to be with them
rather than remain tied to a destroyed and ruined building, it revealed to the
Jews that God will not abandon or forget them, that they’re still his people and
he’s their God and goes where his people are. God leads his people through the
feasts and festivals he gives them; feasts and festivals that point to God as
their Saviour and Lord, festivals that call them to repentance and point them to
what forgiveness and the removal of their sin looks like through symbols such
as the scapegoat where the priest symbolically places the sins of the people on
the goat and then casts it out of the camp into the wilderness; taking their
sins far away; pointing ahead to what Jesus does for us on the cross. God gives
them festivals to remind them to give thanks to God for what they’ve received
from him.
Many Jews travelled each year to Jerusalem to
celebrate the Passover at the temple
with sacrifices and ceremony as the temple was the center of the Jewish faith and
the presence of God. Jesus heads into the temple and looses it when he sees
what’s happening; he’s furious! “In the temple
courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at
tables exchanging money. 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. To those who sold doves he said, “Get
these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples
remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Why
is Jesus so furious? The Jesuit John Foly writes, “Vendors were allowed
only in the courtyard of the temple, not inside where they now had positioned
themselves. And the dishonest practices of outdoor market-places had stolen
their way into the temple. The thumb on the scale, the inflated prices, all of
that. There is another, internal reason which is much more important. Jesus
knew with blessed certainty what human beings were created to be. We are made
to be filled with God’s presence, to be beloved by God and to love God in
return. We are most ourselves when we are not entrapped by riches honor and
pride. We are designed to “let go and let God.” Jesus was overwhelmed when he
saw sellers winking at these Godly values, preferring cold cash, and cheating
for it—at the dead center of sacred space. Everything had been turned upside
down.”
The reaction of the Jews to Jesus’ actions is
basically, “Who do you think you
are?” Jesus goes deep with his answer, even though they have no clue as
to what he’s getting at, “Destroy this temple, and I
will raise it again in three days.” This sounds downright crazy to the
Jews. Herod build this magnificent temple that rivaled even Solomons amazingly
beautiful temple. Herod built it to get the Jewish leaders to support him even
though he wasn’t from the line of King David and was appointed to be king of
the Jews by their foreign oppressors with the mandate to keep the Jews calm and
peaceful. It’s crazy talk to say that someone could tear down a temple that
took 46 years to build and then rebuild it again in 3 days. What’s Jesus
talking about?
Gilberto Ruiz writes, “He, Jesus, appears
in Jerusalem
making a bold statement not so much “against” anything as much as “for” his
authority to represent and reveal the God of the temple, whom he knows
intimately as his Father. Moreover, rather than denigrate the economic activity
of the temple, John’s Gospel uses it to develop its Christology of Jesus as
God’s authoritative Son.” Sadly, many of the people had forgotten what the
temple’s basically about, that it’s the presence of God among his people, the
place to come to be guided by God and his priests. Instead, they’ve made an
idol of the temple, making it a national identity thing, a brick-and-mortar
thing. The people come there to worship God and do the sacrifices, but it’s
mixed up with so much more than God now. It’s so easy to make even good things
into idols, even blessings given to us by God. Many followers of Jesus, whose
deepest desire is to be led by the Spirit of Jesus rather than the spirits of
our time, come to places like Bethel searching for the presence of God, seeking
the presence of Jesus and his Spirit in their lives. Christian spirituality
keeps us focused on who God, who Jesus is, through the presence of the Holy
Spirit in us who keeps leading us back to Jesus.
If the temple points to the presence of God among the
people, God has now become present in an intensely more
personal way now through his son Jesus. John, at Jesus’ baptism, testifies, “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain
on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with
water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the
one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this
is God’s Chosen One.” John recognizes that the presence of God is now
found in the person of Jesus. There is nothing mystical or weird about
spirituality, even though many Christians today are uncomfortable with the term
and some of the spiritual practices found in different Christian traditions.
Jesus is furious about how the temple isn’t pointing
the people to God’s presence among them. The leaders of the
temple should know better. Later, when Jesus is talking to the Pharisee
Nicodemus and telling him that he needs to be born again, Nicodemus is
confused, Jesus tells him, “Very truly I tell you, no
one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should
not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows
wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes
from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Jesus tells Nicodemus that he should know this stuff and wonders if Nicodemus
can even understand heavenly, or spiritual things, pointing to his coming
sacrifice, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the
wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who
believes may have eternal life in him.” Jesus
is pointing to himself as the Son of Man, the promised Messiah who has come
down from heaven and is among the people, but pointing to his death to save the
people.
Spirituality points us straight to God and to Jesus
through the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells the Samaritan
woman at the well that it’s not so important about where you worship, but that
“we will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for
that is the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.” If your faith
practices are not pointing you to Jesus and God the Father, then it’s not from
the Holy Spirit. Spirituality is the practice of being open to the presence and
guidance of the Holy in the way of Jesus; guiding us back to Jesus each day
away from the paths we want to walk.
John writes in his opening to his gospel, “the law was given through
Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus the Messiah.” As N.T Wright
encourages us, “That is the recipe for a genuine, transformative,
Jesus-focused spirituality, which will upstage the self-serving and often
narcissistic parodies on offer in many quarters today.” After Jesus dies on
the cross to reconcile us with God the Father, when he’s raised after 3 days as
a sign the Father accepts his sacrifice on our behalf, Jesus returns to heaven
and sends us his Spirit to live with us and in us; the presence of God. Jesus
and the Holy Spirit point us to the wonder that God’s powerful, rescuing,
healing and transforming love is renewing the entire world, and ourselves with
it. As we read through John’s gospel, this good news points us to the kingdom
of heaven and what John’s view of a spirituality centered on Jesus and the Holy
Spirit truly is.
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