Cleansing of the Temple... er Church?

John 2.13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making 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. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ (NRSV)

There is an old saying about love, a saying that forms the refrain of the Social Distortion song “Writing on the Wall.”  “They say if you love someone you gotta let them go….”   Whether or not you are completely convinced by this saying or not, I think it is fair to say there is some truth to it.  The truth of this saying goes beyond just human relationships, it can apply to anything that we love or like. While there is truth in the idea of letting go it is not easy to let go, as the writer of the song acknowledges with the line “but I can’t let go.”  But as hard as it is to let go that is often times exactly what we need to do.  As much for the person or thing we love as for ourselves.

It is not uncommon for us to want the people whom we fall in love with to remain the same as when we fell in love with them.  How many times has one spouse said to the other “You are a dork…you weren’t a dork when I married you” (please feel free change the wording to match your own context).  We fall in love with the person we were dating or engaged to, and that is the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with.  That is the person we want to hold onto. 

But by holding on and not letting go, we hold back the person’s ability to grow, change and become the person God is calling them to be.  Make no mistake it is not easy to let go and there is always risk involved.  It is conceivable that people may grow apart, but in some sense love insists on letting go, allowing the person we love to become something more than our own desire for that person. 

I think it is fair to say the same goes for the church.  There are a great many of us who have come to love the church, or at least the congregation to which we belong.  At some point in the past we came to love the church, and just like in human relationships, that is how we want the church to remain.  We want it to continue to exist as it did in the past.  We may even come to believe that this past vision is what is best for the church, we want others to experience the same church we fell in love with. 

Unfortunately by not letting go, by only wanting the church to remain the same, we make it nearly impossible for new people to come to love the church.  Their experiences are not ours.  They, as much as we do, want to find a church that is relevant for them and their lives.  We “gotta…let go” so that church can grow, change, become relevant again, and become something more than just our desire for it.  

It is easy to see Jesus’ purging of the temple in terms of his dislike for the temple, the Jews and their religion.  But the Gospel according to John is not meant to be denunciation of the Jewish faith or Jews in general.  The whip, the overturning of the tables, and the shouting weren’t the products of his dislike of the temple, but were the product of his love for his own people and his own faith.  Jesus knew just how hard it is to let go, and tried to force the issue.  Unfortunately, this prophetic action didn’t really change anything and instead helped to seal his fate on the cross.  At some point in time, the temple had become the ‘property’ of a select few, who used it to their own benefit and were unwilling to allow it to change, to become relevant for the majority of the people in Jesus’ day. 

Let’s face it we have done a similar thing in our congregations and churches.  We have turned them into temples that serve our own desire.  No amount of cleansing even if it includes a whip, overturned tables, and shouting will change this reality, until we are willing to let go.  There is still a place for the church in the world, but it is a place that has to be more than just our own desires.  I am firmly convinced that God still is calling the church so that it can become what it is meant to be, a blessing to all the people of the world.  “They say if you love something you gotta let it go.”