This is Year B, the Year of Mark's Gospel. But the original evangelist doesn't always give us enough meat on the bones of the Jesus story. And so, this week (and next) we will have stories from the Gospel of John. And John's Gospel puts Jesus in Jerusalem right away...in Chapter Two...and he's already geared up and ready to challenge the system of Empire that has permeated everything...including religion.
And--oh my--what a difficult text to have on the same weekend that an important commemoration was happening on the Georgia coast to remember the largest slave auction in the 19th century!
This was a moment of "Come Holy Spirit" as I wrestled with how to say things that need saying in a way that they might be heard...understood...and taken in with the hope it might make at least a few people do some self-evaluation and make a turn toward a way of striving for equality and equity.
That is my prayer.
See what you think.
Text: John 2: 13-22
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Most of the Episcopal Churches I’ve been to in my lifetime have
something we don’t have here:
a plethora of stained-glass windows.
The sunlight streams through them creating beautiful and
mesmerizing patterns of golds…blues and reds on the floors and the walls.
Often times…the scenes depicted in the stained-glass feature one of
the Gospel stories about Jesus.
Sometimes….he’s the surprisingly Northern European white Jesus with
blonde hair and blue eyes.
Other artists have captured him with darker hair and a darker
complexion more reminiscent of people from the Middle East.
Frequently…Jesus is shown lovingly cradling a lamb in his arms.
Or he’s washing Peter’s feet.
Or talking with the Samaritan woman at the well.
In more majestic imagery…he’s either ascending into heaven…or we
see him in his dazzling brightness of the Transfiguration through his bleached white
robe.
Those are all great.
But once…just once… I would love to see a Jesus in a stained-glass
window…his nostrils flaring…his muscles flexing as he’s flipping tables…sending
money flying everywhere and chasing people and animals with a whip of cords!
I want to see the human Jesus…the one who knows what it means to
get angry and be fed up.
I think a lot of people would be able to maybe see themselves in
such an image of Jesus.
I think it’s important for us to understand why Jesus has this
massive hissy fit in the Temple that seems so un-Jesus-like.
One of the shortcomings of the church…at least in this priest’s
opinion…is that we’ve allowed our Sunday schools…especially for children…to
cast this scene as “Jesus cleanses the Temple.” We’ve stopped the lesson at a
simple, “Jesus was angry about the House of Prayer being a marketplace.”
That’s really only half right.
And that half-truth has fed into some of the anti-Semitism that we
see raise its ugly head… especially in this time of year…and is becoming
prevalent in this country and around the world.
It’s that whole ugly idea that Jews only care about money and controlling
commerce.
So what’s “the more” going on here in the Gospel?
To understand Jesus’ anger…we need to look at both the where and when
that this happens.
This Second Temple…built by Herod the Great over the course of 46
years…was an enormous structure….the size of five football fields…. a massive
stone building taking up several city blocks…with many entry gates.
It was the center of everything in Jerusalem.
There was an area for prayer happening in the Jewish section of the
Temple…and there was also something like a shopping mall.
Along the Temple’s outer courtyard was the place reserved for
Gentiles.
This is where the money changers would have worked…taking in Roman
coins with the image of Caesar…in exchange for the Jewish currency which had no
graven image.
Think about those Ten Commandments we recited in the Decalogue and
heard in our first reading.
The Roman Empire treated Caesar as a God.
Jews would never attempt to make an image of God…so the money used
to pay the Temple tax had no face on it.
The time that this scene takes place is just before Passover.
Lots of Jews would have come from all over the countryside into
Jerusalem to commemorate the festival of their deliverance from Egyptian
slavery…and liberation from oppression.
They would be needing to come into the temple to get their lambs
for sacrifice…or doves if they didn’t have money.
Doves were reserved for the poor.
Even Mary and Joseph had to buy a pair of doves for their sacrificial
offering.
Doves were also used by lepers and menstruating women.
So all the activities going on in this part of the Temple were normal.
Sacrifices and getting the right coinage were part of the religious
practice.
That’s not what was sticking in Jesus’ craw.
What infuriated him…and it was the thing that sent John the
Baptizer out to the Jordan River in protest… was that the Roman Empire…and its
religious cronies…had so profaned the religion within this structure that the
poor were especially exploited and oppressed by the system.
This is why in the Gospel accounts…we hear that Jesus particularly
targeted the tables of money changers and dove sellers.
And…since this is the Gospel of John…Jesus is making it explicit
that his body…his own flesh and blood… is replacing this temple
of massive stones.
That the religion of justice is in him and not the
ginormous edifice with demands of taxes and sacrifices by the poor.
What Jesus could not abide by was this conflation of religion with
the privilege and wealth…and how it oppressed the poor.
His protest was against an unjust system.
Such systems still exist.
In fact…it’s something that has haunted the Episcopal Church.
At the founding of our United States…a number of the most powerful
men who crafted and signed the Declaration of Independence and created our U.S.
Constitution were affiliated with the Episcopal Church.
One of those men was General Pierce Butler…a South Carolina Senator
and veteran of the Revolutionary War.
General Butler was farmer and landowner.
He held property in several states…including much of St. Simon’s
Island.
His Butler Plantation in Darien, Georgia, was left to his grandson
Pierce Mease Butler.
The Butlers owned the land in Darien are where St. Andrew’s and St.
Cyprian’s Episcopal Churches stand today.
Owning so much land had made the Butler family quite wealthy….
growing sea island cotton and rice.
But with that generational wealth comes the truth about how they
were able to become one of the richest families in the country during the 18th
and 19th centuries.
The Butlers owned slaves.
Hundreds of them.
When Pierce Mease Butler’s English wife…the actress Fanny
Kemble…came to the States and stayed on one of the Butler plantations…she was
horrified by the treatment of the slaves.
She couldn’t accept the arguments her husband and others made to
justify the institution.
She became an abolitionist.
As you might imagine…the marriage fell apart and she went back to
England.
Maybe she threw over a table or two.
One of the saddest moments in the history of Georgia and the young
country…happened on this date in 18-59.
Pierce Butler…having squandered 700-thousand dollars of his
wealth…sold 436 African men…women and children at a racetrack outside of
Savannah.
It was the single largest slave auction in the nation’s history.
It took two days…and it poured down rain from the start to the
finish.
They call it The Weeping Time.
The thought was that the heavens wept… watching families being sold
like cattle.
There are commemorations and vigils of this travesty happening on
the Georgia coast in Darien this weekend.
Pierce Butler regained some of his wealth…about 300-thousand dollars’
worth.
But at what cost and pain inflicted on others?
To benefit from a system that dehumanizes people?
And at what further cost to us?
Because sadly…we’ve been handed this legacy…wealth gained on the
backs and bodies of other people.
This is the heritage we have…all of us…as a people.
Fortunately…the Episcopal Church is doing the work this weekend by
participating in the vigil in Darien to own its part of that heritage.
This is how we begin the work of repairing the breach of history.
We can’t change what has happened in the past.
But we can acknowledge that it happened.
And then we can metaphorically work toward flipping over the tables
of systems that have benefitted some… at the great expense of others.
One small but helpful step is to pay attention to where and how we
spend our money.
Maybe instead of eating at a chain restaurant…perhaps we go to a
local one owned and operated by a black or brown family.
That’s one simple and yet conscious way to make a difference.
Our Gospel is giving us permission to see inequality…and to get
angry about it.
Our God calls us to not just get angry…but to flip the script and
to take actions to address injustices in the system.
Perhaps one day…I’ll finally see a stained-glass window in an
Episcopal Church of a blonde blue-eyed Jesus turning over tables in the temple.
That’ll be a church ready to live into our Baptismal Covenant:
resisting evil, striving for peace and justice, and respecting the dignity of
every human being.
In the name of God…F/S/HS.
