March 3, 2024 Text: John 2:13-22
Dear Friends in Christ,
Have you ever been somewhere where an individual is disruptive. A classroom? Family gathering? Office? Or how about when you travel? Each year about 60,000 flights get cancelled which costs the airline industry 3 billion dollars. Just this week tornadoes grounded flights at Midway and O’Hare. Haven’t we all had the experience where an illness or diagnosis disrupted our future plans?
In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus seems rather disruptive. Sometimes this reading makes us uncomfortable as we watch the Savior in action.
“DISRUPTIVE JESUS”
Let’s get right to the text, “In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.” (v. 14-16)
Well, this is a different side of Jesus and deep down in our soul, which we don’t talk about at parties we kind of like it. This isn’t a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. He’s not the young boy in the temple with the inquiring mind. He is not healing or telling parables. He has a whip, and he is turning over tables.
Some of you don’t like this Jesus. You prefer the soft, gentle-spoken, going after sheep Jesus. He confronts sinners. Outwits his enemies. But this is not what we get in our Gospel for today. Jesus is holding nothing back.
The obvious questions arise. Did Jesus lose his cool? What about his command to love your neighbor as yourself? Aren’t we supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us?
Yes, this is all true. But please note that this is not a different Jesus. He is not out of character. This is our patient, merciful Jesus acting out of love and compassion for his people. Was Jesus upset? Yes. Was he angry? Probably.
This is our disruptive Jesus. A Jesus who loves his enemies enough to disrupt them from their sinful life. He knows their sins are not good for them. The same goes for you. Jesus comes in and disrupts the sinful things in your life and loves you enough to hold you accountable for your sins. Disruptive Jesus takes our sinful lives and exchanges them for his holy life. Jesus didn’t lose his cool with the money-changers, he was staying cool enough to save them from eternal damnation.
As your Pastor, I hold you responsible out of love for your soul. I know that when you sin it is not good for you. The easy way is to say nothing, but both Jesus and I don’t want to see sinners go to hell. Believe me, it is not comfortable sometimes. You get the blowback. But it is done in love because Jesus wants each one of us in heaven with him.
“Jesus, answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body.” (v. 19-21)
Jesus goes to the cross and is raised in three days for our salvation. He comes and disrupts all things that would keep you and me from the loving arms of the Heavenly Father. This is his Father’s house. He wants each of us to respect his Father’s house. He wants to see us in his Father’s house in heaven forever.
Disruptive Jesus commands us to stop listening to the lies of the devil and start doing things the Jesus way. In our Baptism, he interrupted the corrupt plans of the devil and claimed us as his own. Now he feeds us with his very body and blood so that faith can be nurtured and sustained.
Before getting excited about table turning Jesus, maybe we ought to examine our own tables. We confess one truth and then turn the table and live another. We say sorry in one breath and then turn the table and hold tight to our pet sins. We try to play God, but he turns the table, and he loves and forgives us and then has his way in our lives. Jesus is here today to do a little Lenten housecleaning by overturning the tables of our sinful nature.
Jesus knows what needs overturning. There are things in our sinful hearts and minds that need to be driven out. There are sinful things that Jesus needs to take a whip to. So that he can forgive them by his cross.
When Jesus disrupts our lives, he is doing it out of divine love and mercy without any merit or worthiness in us. Jesus disrupts our sinful lives so we can have eternal life in our Father’s house. Praise be to our disruptive Jesus who stops at nothing to save us.
Amen.