Have you ever heard of the Ten Commandments? Probably a stupid question. Without looking it up, how many can you name?
I am the only God – worth-ship accordingly.
Don’t worship man-made things as if they were gods.
Treat me and my name reverently.
Keep the Sabbath holy: take a day to truly reset with God.
Honor your father and mother.
You must not murder.
You must not commit adultery.
You must not steal.
You must not testify falsely against your neighbor.
You must not covet. - Exodus 20:1-17 (NLT)
Sounds doable. Should these still comprise the Top Ten Commandments?
One problem with simply looking at the list and tracking our progress in keeping it is that it can often lead us in an unhealthy direction of transactional thinking. This orientation implies that if we do “X”, God will give us “Y” in return. If we don’t, God won’t. Transaction. This is how the world operates in many areas, so it is understandable that we would very naturally apply it to our faith. Many of us came to faith motivated by transactional thinking. “Keep up on confession, keep coming to Mass, take communion, and God will be with you now and reward you later.” Or “accept Jesus into your heart (a way of saying ‘believe’) and God will forgive you of your sins and welcome you into heaven.” No matter how many “faith sprinkles” you douse it with, it’s still a transactional cupcake in the end.
This isn’t really good news, and it certainly isn’t the Good News Jesus went around proclaiming. If he had, nobody would have followed him because it wasn’t only not good, it wasn’t new, either. Due to corruption in Jewish leadership, many believed that the Jewish faith was ultimately transactional. Add a little greed into the equation on the part of the Temple leaders, and such a theology blended with abusive power led to the following scene from Jesus’ early days in his ministry:
It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; he also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money. Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables. Then, going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!” – John 2:13-16 (NLT)
Jesus was furious because the most vulnerable people – the poor – were being forced to spend what little they had on sacrifices to stay in God’s good graces. This transaction was in direct opposition to Jesus’ teaching and witness to the love of God for everyone without condition. Jesus’ teaching was mostly about what he called The Kingdom of God – what life would be like if we allowed The Way of God to be fully expressed in our individual lives and world. This was the salvation he offered – saving lives and the world. This vision was rooted in a robust Hebrew word we know as shalom. As Mark Feldmeir notes:
The Hebrew word shalom means peace. But peace is an inadequate translation. We think of peace as the absence of conflict. But shalom is far more than the absence of conflict because we can be conflict-free and still lack a sense of peace. We might still be unsettled. We might still feel as if something is missing in our lives. Shalom means to make something whole. Shalom is an experience of fullness, completeness, contentment. Perhaps the closest word to shalom in the English language is something like well-being. But even that’s inadequate, because well-being doesn’t come close to capturing the radical and counterintuitive nature of shalom. In the Hebraic way of thinking, this fullness, completeness, contentment, well-being called shalom is the result of the joining together of opposites or ostensibly opposing forces (Life After God, 74-75).
Isaiah points to this as he speaks to Israel:
In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together;
the leopard will lie down with the baby goat.
The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion,
and a little child will lead them all.
The cow will graze near the bear.
The cub and the calf will lie down together.
The lion will eat hay like a cow.
The baby will play safely near the hole of a cobra.
Yes, a little child will put its hand in a nest of deadly snakes without harm. - Isaiah 11:1-8 (NLT)
This vision of shalom means that all that is not aligned with God’s love is brought back in place. Justice is served for one and all. Feldmeir continues: “The moral arc of the universe bends toward this ultimate purpose. But it does not bend on its own. God gives to each of us the task of bending it. Shalom begins with us. But before it begins with us, it must happen in us” (76).
What does this mean and how do we help it happen in us? One uncomfortable part of shalom for me – and I think maybe one or two other people, too – is how shalom deals with our suffering. I was hoping for a magic wand type of thing. After I say the right kind of magic prayer words, God would waive the wand and simply erase all the stupid things I’ve done that weren’t aligned with shalom that definitely caused me some problems and often hurt others as well. I thought that’s what forgiveness was all about – cast those sins to the depths of the ocean and forget they ever happen. But that’s not shalom.
Don’t get me wrong, forgiveness of sin is a real thing. God’s grace is unending and unconditional. You are forgiven before you ask for it. It’s in the Bible. Look it up (see John 8 where Jesus proclaims forgiveness for a “sinful” woman before she asks for it). Shalom doesn’t cause us to forget our past pain caused by others or wounds self-inflicted. It does something much better. It helps us meaningfully integrate it into our lives, taking much of the sting away while providing deep peace. It could be that you’ve settled only for forgiveness, which doesn’t necessarily bring peace and well-being. Shalom offers more because it deals with the past instead of just trying to forget it ever happened, because, as William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Shalom joins opposites of pain and joy, good and evil, and somehow brings them together without the destruction it once caused. Feldmeir notes:
The late preacher and civil rights activist John Claypool once said, “One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is what to do with the past. Will it be one thing, or everything?” Our past is never dead. But our past does not have to be everything or all-determining. And if true shalom can only happen when we join opposites, we can only find true wholeness when our imperfect past meets the new, future possibilities God is offering us in the here and now. Shalom is refusing to get mired too deeply in the past and refusing to live too far into the future. The nineteenth-century Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once noted that a great source of our unhappiness in life is our reluctance to let go of our less-than-ideal past and our unwillingness to hope for anything less than an ideal or perfect future for ourselves. Unhappy people, he suggested, are those who have their ideal—that is, the essence of their being—in some manner outside of themselves and thus remain absent from themselves in the present moment...
To be truly happy and fully present to ourselves in the here and now, argued Kierkegaard, we must look not to the remembered or the anticipated ideal but to a past that was real and a future that can be grounded in the real. Shalom, wholeness, well-being happens when we join our imperfect, less-than-ideal past with the more hopeful and real possibilities of the future and choose to live most fully in the real and present moment, deciding today who we will be, how we will live, whether we will pursue the aim or intention God has set before us. God gives us a choice in the matter of how our futures will unfold. The paint on the canvas of our lives is never quite dry...
There are always three powers at work in the creation of our future. The first is the power of our past, the second is the power of God in every present moment, and the third power is ourselves. We decide what we will do, how we will live, who we will become. We are responsible for joining the actual past received from the world and the possible future received from God (80-82).
As much as I would like to be forgiven and forget, well-being just doesn’t work that way. So long as I don’t deal with my past, my past will continue to deal with me, restricting my capacity to be whole and well and enjoy deep peace. So long as families don’t deal with their past, the past will deal with them, keeping them dysfunctional and probably abusive in some way. So long as countries don’t deal with their past, their past will haunt them in continued strife and suffering. Being honest with myself allows the Spirit of God to work on me, in me, and with me is humbling, but it leads to strength and healing. Same for families. Same for countries. We have the power to choose, and we have a greater power to help us move forward toward shalom, with shalom, for shalom. This process takes courage and will likely require the help of others whom God will use toward our healing and becoming. We may need professional help like a therapist or spiritual director or a pastor. Yet the possibility is before us, all grounded in the truth that love is the genesis of life, we are loved, we are empowered by love, we are wooed by love, we are held in love, and one day we will be fully at home and rest in love.
Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes are from Mark Feldmeir’s book, Life after God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
Commentary from SALT: Lent 3 (Year B): John 2:13-22 and Exodus 20:1-17
Big Picture:
1) Mark has been our main guide this year, and we’ll come back to Mark on Palm Sunday — but as we follow the lectionary over the next three weeks, we’ll explore stories from the Gospel of John. The Season of Lent is a time of mysteries and shadows, and John’s perspective is another lantern to help light the way.
2) John organizes his Gospel around six miraculous “signs” Jesus performs over the course of his public ministry. These function like signposts along the path, pointing toward primary themes John wants to emphasize about who Jesus is and what his mission is all about. The first of these signs is when Jesus, encouraged by his mother, surreptitiously turns water into wine during a wedding in Galilee. Today’s passage comes immediately on the heels of that wedding story, as if John is saying: Look, something new and wondrous has come into the world, a new day is dawning — and now, to get a sense of what's really at stake, listen to this story of Jesus and the Temple in Jerusalem.
3) Near the end of their respective gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke also include a story of Jesus angrily clearing out the temple, condemning the corruption of the traders’ activity (“you have made it a den of robbers” (e.g., Mark 11:17; cf. Jeremiah 7:11)). John’s version puts the story in a somewhat different light, not only because it happens at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry rather than at its end, but also because Jesus calls the place not a “den of robbers” but simply “a marketplace.” What’s going on here? Is Jesus against marketplaces? Well, no — Jesus doesn’t go around Galilee and Jerusalem denouncing local markets, and after all, the temple had to include a marketplace (with vendors selling animals, currency exchanges, etc.) in order to make the longstanding sacrificial system run smoothly. And that’s precisely the point: Jesus’ anger seems to be focused not on marketplaces, or on corruption in general, but rather on the sacrificial system itself. His actions seem to say: It’s high time for that system to end, and for a new era to begin.
4) Speaking of new eras, this week’s passage from Exodus is the story of another step in the covenantal journey we’ve been tracing over the last few weeks, beginning with the universal covenant in the time of Noah, then the particular covenant in the time of Abraham and Sarah — and now the covenantal law in the time of Moses, iconically represented by the Ten Commandments (literally “ten words”; see Ex 34:28). Conceiving this law as covenantal — that is, as a framework for Israel’s relationship with God — can transform how we hear it: these commandments aren’t arbitrary prohibitions, but rather loving limits that guide human beings toward living with justice, grace, and dignity. Even more, they mark out a way of relating and listening to God in everyday life. This is yet another development or unfolding of what “covenant” means for Israel: with the gift of the law at Sinai, Israel's relationship with God becomes a tangible, day-to-day, ongoing form of listening (the root of the word “obedience” is the Latin audire, “to listen”). The covenantal law transforms "doing what is right" into “responding to God’s call” — which is to say, into a calling, a vocation, something done not only for its own sake but also as an act of listening, devotion, and companionship with God.
Scripture:
1) Passover is near, the Jewish festival of deliverance from bondage — and at the same time, deliverance into the intimate obedience to God represented by the Ten Commandments. There are three Passover festivals in John, the last one coinciding with Jesus' crucifixion; thus his public ministry begins approximately two years prior to his death. Jesus' first "sign" at the wedding at Cana has just happened, though only his disciples, mother, and a few servants are aware of it. In this story, then, Jesus truly “goes public” with a bold, provocative drama in the most prestigious Jewish space of all, the Temple in Jerusalem, at the most prestigious Jewish time of all, the days just before Passover.
2) No weapons are allowed in the temple, so Jesus improvises a whip out of cords and drives out the merchants, animals, and money changers, turning over their tables with righteous indignation: “Stop making God’s house a marketplace!”
3) The temple’s sacrificial system depended on that marketplace to supply both the animals suitable for sacrifice — cattle, sheep, and doves — and the special coins permitted in the temple. To do away with this market, then, was to strike at the heart of the sacrificial system itself. In the background here is the ancient prophet Zechariah, the same visionary whose words will be enacted on Palm Sunday (“Lo, your king comes to you...humble and riding on a donkey” (Zech 9:9)). Zechariah also speaks of a new age to come when the holiness associated with the temple will pervade the whole world, and “there shall no longer be traders in the house of the LORD” (Zech 14:21). The idea seems to be that the traders are part of a layer of separation between God and Israel that one day will be overcome. Thus, Jesus driving the traders out of the temple, like his eventual arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey, is a kind of street theater declaring through action that the long-awaited new epoch has begun. Holiness will overflow conventional bounds, and the-temple-as-we-know-it will give way to a more widespread, accessible, direct mode of encountering God.
4) Perhaps recognizing the audacious claim embedded in Jesus' actions, the religious authorities demand a sign that would justify his authority. In veiled and resonant language, Jesus proposes a sign the authorities mistakenly take at face value: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They think he’s referring to brick and mortar, but in fact, John explains, “he was speaking of the temple of his body.” Thus, Jesus does at least three things at once: (1) he counters the religious authorities; (2) he cryptically predicts his death and resurrection, something his disciples realize only later, “after he was raised from the dead”; and (3) he casts a revolutionary vision for worship in the new era. His body is the temple. Those who “abide in him” (one of John’s favorite themes; see 15:4) thereby abide in "the house of the LORD." This theme will surface again in Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman about worshiping God not in any specific location but rather “in spirit and truth” (John 4:21-23).
5) In other words, for John, Jesus’ arrival signals the dawn of a new age, a new intimacy with God, a new conception of “the temple” not as a building but as a person in spirit and truth, Jesus, God’s Word made flesh. The old sacrificial system must end; there's no need for animals and blood and money changers; in fact, the old system only stands as an impediment to the new day. Drive out the traders! Zechariah’s vision is fulfilled! Fashion a whip out of cords, let a thousand doves arise and scatter — for the hour has come!
6) It’s worth remembering here that the Gospel of John was written after the Roman armies had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, a period when both Jews and early Christians were struggling to make sense of the world without what they had considered its sacred axis. Rabbinic Judaism eventually refigured “the temple” in the home, and early Christians refigured "the temple" as the body of Jesus, which is also the body of the church — and the body of, as John put it, the Logos, the Word made flesh, the pattern underlying the cosmic temple of creation.
7) A similar emphasis on more intimate and direct relationship with God is clear in the Exodus passage. God gives Israel the law as a mode of ongoing covenantal interaction, an opportunity for Israel to listen to God and live out that listening every day. And once these “commandments” are heard in this loving, relational way, they become less a list of imperatives and more a collection of indicatives, descriptions of what graceful, dignified human life looks like. Thus, the famous refrain “you shall not” no longer rings like an imperious injunction; rather, it becomes an illustration, a portrayal of human integrity and beauty, as if God is saying: When you walk with me in humility and love, you shall not murder, you shall not lie, you shall not steal...
Takeaways:
1) Why is Jesus angry? It’s the ancient anger of the prophets, a sacred zeal that moves against and beyond the sacrificial system of dead animals and toward an intimate simplicity of prayer, spirit, and truth, unbound by any particular building or system of exchange. And it’s an ancient passion, too, for the coming of God’s Jubilee, a new Passover, a new Exodus from all bondage, a new freedom to abide in God, as God abides in us, in a world saturated with divine glory and presence. These ideas are shot through the prophets: think of Jeremiah’s “temple sermon” (Jeremiah 7), or indeed his prophesied “new covenant” in which God’s law is written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). Think of the devastating critique of sacrifice in Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos (Isa 1:11; Hosea 6:6; Amos 5:22), or the famous verse in Micah, contrasting justice, kindness, and humility to animal sacrifices (Micah 6:6-8). In his own way, Jesus picks up this prophetic mantle — and fashions his whip out of cords. In brief, he is angry about any system or structure that creates an apparent barrier between God and God’s people. At its heart, his mission is about dismantling those barriers, exposing them as illusory. In that sense, his mission is about reconciliation, mutual indwelling (“Abide in me, as I abide in you” (John 15:4)), and the just, kind, humble life that flows from such intimacy.
2) The Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann once warned that the quickest way to desecrate a landscape was to build a church — since the supposed “holy ground” would instantly imply that everything outside its doors is profane (and sure enough, the word “profane” comes from the Latin for “outside the temple”). Like the prophets before him, Jesus can be understood in this week’s passage as challenging our tendency to domesticate God into a temple or a church or a sacred system. In fact, all of creation shimmers with divine glory. When we go to church, we don’t step into God’s presence; rather, we step into a community that, at its best, helps call our attention to the fact that God is present everywhere, that the body of Jesus and the movement of the Spirit are boundless, and so that the temple’s architecture must extend all the way out — all the way to the expanding edges of the cosmos.
3) This basic idea isn’t unique to Jesus; rather, he stands in a lineage we can find in the prophets — and also in Exodus. At Sinai, God could have given the Israelites a temple and a fortress, but instead God gave them a law, a code that would saturate their lives as they wandered in the wilderness, investing virtually every moment with the possibility of holiness and beauty, dignity, and devotion. At its best, a law is a pathway for living, an immersive form of listening to a call. It’s a way of abiding with each other in intimate companionship — doing the right thing, yes, but also living together: “doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Any barrier to that abundant life, to that joy and gladness — makes Jesus angry. Angry enough to move decisively toward taking that barrier down, once and for all.