"A Home for the World" 
Jesus' call to the whole world
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Palm Sunday, April 8th, 2001
Text: Mark XI: 11 - 18
A lady went to the door, for there was a knock at it. She opened it, not knowing who would be on the other side. There was a man looking most forlorn, and weary, and concerned.
She asked him what he wanted. He replied: "I am here on behalf of a family that lives in our neighbourhood and really needs your help." The lady, being compassionate and seeing that the man was clearly aggravated, said: "Well, tell me, what is their problem?" He said: "The husband lost his job. His children are not well. All their utilities have been cut off. They cannot pay their medical bills and, most pressing of all, they are to be evicted from the house if they cannot raise money within the next forty-eight hours."
The woman looked and said: "Okay, if someone is in that kind of need, I will help; but who are you?" He said: "I'm the landlord."
If there was one thing that Jesus of Nazareth despised above all things, it was pseudo religious, self-righteous hypocrisy. The people that Jesus denounced in the Bible were not usually those who were sinners or beyond the law, but those who were using their own righteousness, or their own positions of power, to drive others out. They made Jesus the most angry and the most disgruntled.
If there was anything that Jesus hated the most, it was pseudo religiosity and self-righteous piety which was exclusive. This is perhaps seen at its most powerful in the moment that we encountered in this morning's reading.
It was a powerful moment. We had read, had we not, that Jesus had just entered Jerusalem. All the crowds had lined the streets and waved their palm branches as you have your palm branches today. They sang: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. The crowds flocked to see him. They welcomed him and he was received with praise and adulation, and with glory. But now, he is going somewhere else.
No sooner has he come into Jerusalem than, Mark tells us, he goes straight to the Temple. Some other Gospels tell us that in fact he went to the Temple the next day, rather than immediately after; but the facts don't really matter much here. Jesus went to the Temple very shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem and when he entered, as we read a few moments ago, he overturned the tables saying this was supposed to be the House of God for all nations, but that they had made it into a den of thieves.
Now in order to understand the power of this moment, you have to appreciate the nature of the Temple at the time of Jesus.
The Temple was known as the Herion or the sacred place. It was some thirty acres in size, and some of its walls were as long as a thousand metres. But in this particular Temple, in the time of Jesus, there were four different courts. These four courts are absolutely essential for us to understand what Jesus was doing.
The first court that you would go to was known as the Gentile court. This is where Gentiles, who were believers in God but who were not Jews, would come and worship God. There is a tiny wall that separates it from the next court, but, if you were a Gentile and climbed over that wall, you could face the penalty of death. The court inside that was the court for Jewish women. This was the place where women would gather and worship the Lord. Inside that was the court known as the Israelite court, where male Jews would gather to worship God. That was their unique place. Inside that was the Naos, known as the particularly sacred place. It was the place where the priests would go. Inside that was the very innermost part of the sanctum, the Holy of Holies, where God resides.
And so we have four different ways to get into the Temple: the Gentiles' way, the women's way, the Israelites' way, the priests' way, and then, the Holy of Holies.
Now, as we are told by Mark, Jesus arrives on the scene. It was fitting that he would want to go, not only to the physical centre of Zion and to the great city of Jerusalem, but also to the spiritual centre, the place where God's people would gather. We are told that he entered into the first court and was absolutely furious about what he saw. Now, what he saw went on regularly within that particular court, the Gentile court, for there are two things that anyone who comes into the Temple must do.
The first thing they must do is to pay their taxes. Isn't it amazing that you pay your taxes first. You have to pay half a shekel when you come into the House of the Lord. The problem was that this was Passover, and there were people coming to the Temple of the Lord from all over the world. There were people coming with currencies from many different lands. In order that they could present their half shekel, they had to have that money changed from the currency that they brought, into the currency of the land.
The second thing that they were supposed to do was to bring a sacrifice. Because many of them had traveled hundreds or thousands of miles, the only sacrifice they could get that was good enough was one that they actually bought there in the Temple. Many of them would buy the cheapest thing of all, which was a dove or a little bird, so that they could make this sacrificial gift in the temple.
The only problem was, however, that those who had to go and get the half shekels were often duped out of their money by false exchanges. Those who were going to bring half a shekel often had to pay a great deal more in order to buy that currency. They were being ripped off, to put it mildly. They also had to buy the doves, and, like the law of supply and demand, the fewer the doves, the higher the cost. And so many Gentiles had to pay extraordinary amounts of money for these doves that they were to sacrifice. Even in the Talmud, one of the great writers, Simon Ben Gamaliel says that indeed many of the doves were overpriced. People were being gouged in order that they could bring their gift into the Temple.
Jesus sees this and he goes absolutely wild. He sees that there is the exploitation of Gentiles, often of poor people who have traveled a long way to make their gifts in the Temple and he cannot stand it. He also sees that the House of the Lord is being desecrated: A place that should be a place of worship, the inner court of the Gentiles, is simply a market-place for people to sell their wares and to make money.
But I would suggest to you, and here I am with T.W. Manson, the thing that annoyed Jesus the most was that it was the House of the Gentiles, the House of the Gentiles only, that was being made the place where this commerce was going on; that the people from around the world who had come to worship Yahweh, their living God, were finding that what was going on in their midst was simply commerce.
Let me put it to you this crudely and give you the clearest example by our own image: If you were to come into the church today and if you were to have the sacrament of Holy Communion, before you could get up there, at that very rail, at the point where you come to receive the gift of the glory and the grace of God, you had to start forking out money to people who would be gathering there to take it. Can you imagine how upset you would be? Can you imagine how that would break your worship of the Spirit of God? In fact, it would belittle you, would it not? Because, as Jesus said, in quoting Isaiah LVI: 7, the House of God is a house for all nations.
Jesus had a vision and that vision was being broken and destroyed: that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, can come to Yahweh in gracious love and worship. Because they were exchanging money where the Gentiles had come to worship, however, their worship was being ruined and compromised. Now, this tells me a couple of things about the beliefs of Jesus, one of which is that he really did believe that the House of God was a very large house indeed.
Jesus, in many ways, stood in the tradition of many of the prophets who had come before him, whether it was Isaiah, or whether it was the post-exilic prophets: prophets who really did believe in their heart of hearts that Zion, Jerusalem, David's city, would be the place where all nations would come and worship. Jesus is reiterating their great universal vision. He is expressing in his own words what they had said before: namely, that the very purpose of God's covenant with Israel, of the construction of the Temple, was that Jerusalem be a city, a beacon, a hill, for all the nations to be able to see and to glorify their God. Jesus had this great vision. It was a vision that was so broad and so wide that there were others around who did not like it, and who could not stand it.
But you might be saying to me: "Well, that all sounds very nice. Isn't it wonderful that Jesus opened up the doors to God, and opened up the doors to Yahweh, but what does it really mean to me?
Well the fact of the matter is, my friends, that it connects us with the covenant that God had all the way back to Abraham: Abraham was told by God that all the people that would worship in his name, that would have faith because of this God, would be as numerous as the stars of the sky, or the sand grains that are along the beaches.
When God made this covenant with Abraham, he made it with you and me. We belong to the covenants that God made with Sarah, with Isaac, with Jacob, and with Joseph when he went into Egypt, and about whose amazing coat our young people will be singing in a few weeks time. Through the gift of Jesus Christ, we understand that the very presence, the very worship of God is something that is open to the world, but it is open through him.
When Jesus was crucified, he understood that he was opening his arms wide to the Temple of God. By coming in person, God was saying: Here I am. I am telling you: Don't worry about the rules that people set. Don't worry about the obligations that are established. All you have to do is believe in me. All you have to do is have faith and you can come into the Temple of the Lord. So, Jesus of Nazareth goes into the Temple in Jerusalem, and he turns those tables over. He turns them over as a sign and a symbol of everything that his crucifixion would mean. It means that the covenant that God had with Abraham, the covenant that God had with Israel is actually being seen again in the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord. He opened the doors for you and me to come to the temple of the Almighty.
But, as you can imagine, when you do something that dramatic, you are going to face rejection. And Jesus was rejected, then, for the whole world. No sooner had Jesus come into the Temple than people were getting angry with him. In fact they tried to trick him in three different ways, in order that he might make enemies, enemies that would turn on him as soon as possible. For example, some of them came to him and they questioned Jesus' authority. They said: "By what authority do you do this? What right have you, Jesus of Nazareth to turn over the tables in the Temple? What right do you have to do that?" Jesus answered them by saying: "I am not going to tell you by what authority. You are going to find out on your own." Some of them came to him and tried to trap him with the Romans. (I love this argument.) They came to him, and said: "Now, then, should we pay taxes to Caesar?" (That's always a sensitive subject, is it not?) Hoping that he would say no, you don't have to pay your taxes, they tried to set Jesus at odds with the authorities. They wanted the Romans to turn on Jesus. The bad news is, I'm afraid (and I know it's near the end of April), Jesus didn't say you don't have to pay your taxes. What he said was: "You have to pay unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar's and unto God that which is God's." Therefore, their argument broke down. They couldn't trap him. Another group tried to trap him by setting him up against the Sadducees. The Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead. They tried to trap Jesus by cornering him and getting him to talk about the resurrection. They asked him this question: "Now then, tell me: What happens if a man is married to a woman, and the man dies and goes to Heaven, and she marries another man, maybe his brother, and they have a child? Whose child is it, when they get into Heaven? They then started to get into picayune arguments about who is ultimately married to whom in Heaven, and what happens if someone dies ahead of another person and remarries. It all gets very complicated in Heaven. Jesus says: "This is ridiculous. Heaven's not like that at all. You are just imposing your own earthly values and visions on the after-life. You are making all kinds of ridiculous problems for yourselves. The fact of the matter is, in Heaven, there is no marriage. Marriage is here on earth, so why are you worrying about that. Indeed, the after-life is something much greater. And so, he dismisses that argument, and they can't trap him there. You see, time and time again, one after the other, particularly in the Gospel of Mark, there are attempts to belittle Jesus and reject him, because there are forces at work who simply cannot stand the fact that God is opening the door wide; that God is opening the door by the power of his Grace; that God is opening a door that is accessible through faith; that the Holy of Holies, rather than being a block away, has come right into the midst of the people, right into the street, right into Golgotha. They can't stand it.
Now, my friends, I believe that even today, there are some who can't stand that message; who reject it; who do not want to hear of the grace of Jesus Christ; who would rather try to keep God in a box, than allow Him, by His Revelation and Grace to reveal Himself with power and glory. If you think that I am simply fabricating this to make a point, let me give you an illustration.
Just this week, I received in the mail a letter which I had already received by E-mail a week earlier. I opened it and was deeply moved and touched. It was a letter written not by me, nor to me. It was a letter that was written by Dr. Allan Boesak to a Minister in the current government of South Africa. Now you know why I got the copy. Allan Boesak, in the 1970s, was one of the greatest preachers in the country of South Africa, one of its greatest opponents of apartheid, one of its bravest souls. There were some Sunday nights in Cape Town when I would go and hear him preach. The place would be packed. People hung on every word that Boesak spoke, so much so that I believe he was offered an honorary degree here in Toronto for the work that he did. He was one of the truly great coloured preachers of his time. There was only one problem. Allan Boesak committed adultery, and not only did he commit adultery, but he also took money falsely from an organization. To this very day, Allan Boesak is defrocked and in prison. He has not been heard from for a long time because he has been behind bars. Something happened, however, three or four weeks ago that so incensed him that he felt, no matter how unrighteous he was, he had to write an open letter. He wrote an open letter to the Minister in South Africa who had heard through the grape-vine that Christians were going to gather in Cape Town to pray for their nation. Praying for their nation was something the Minister found he didn't want. He felt it was too exclusive. He felt it was too religious. He didn't think it was a constructive thing. He therefore tried to ban the gathering. He established another gathering by the African National Congress in the hope that concerned people would go to this parallel gathering, rather than to the Christian gathering. Well, on the day that it was held, three hundred people went to the gathering that the Minister had set up. Forty-five thousand gathered for prayer in the Newlands Rugby Stadium. Forty-five thousand! They went there defiantly, being told that they shouldn't go. They went because they were concerned for their land. They were concerned that the vision that Jesus Christ has for that land was not being lived up to. They were in pain, and all they could do was pray. Allan Boesak wrote this letter to the Government on that day, and I will leave it with you. He said:
Mr. Minister, I have no right to write to you for I am unworthy, but what you saw on Wednesday, in Cape Town, Mr. Minister, was not an exhibition of Christian exclusivity, but the continuation of a long tradition within the Christian Church which believes the words of Jesus: "Pray and you will receive." Without this passionate belief in the power of prayer, without our faith in Jesus the Messiah, Christians would never have been able to join the struggle and to make the tremendous contribution they made. Through all those years of struggle, were we not inspired by our faith? Did we not do what we did in the name of Jesus the Crucified One? It did not then offend our comrades, why should it now? We are not ashamed of our faith then, why should we be now? When we marched and demonstrated for the exiles to come home, for Nelson Mandela to be released, for the detainees to be set free, for the banned to be unbanned, we prayed and we believed. When we were tear-gassed and beaten, set upon by dogs, detained, tortured, arrested by the apartheid police in our churches, publicly humiliated and scorned, when we lay bleeding, dying and afraid, we were inspired, not by Marx or Lenin, but by faith in Jesus of Nazareth. We faced the viciousness of the régime and we took the pain, not because we strove for ideological perfection, or were lured by the dream of some paradise, but because Jesus said: "Do not be afraid. I have overcome the world." We did not then ask if Mandela was a Christian, whether the exiles were communists, atheists, or agnostics, or whether those detained shared our faith. We prayed and His love sustained us and drove us to act. Now today, there are millions who feel that what we have fought for is not yet realized. They are deeply disturbed that our new democracy is threatened by crime and violence; by corruption in high places, public and private; by injustice in the courts and by relationships poisoned by hatred, racism and class consciousness. They are concerned by the abuse of women and children, by an ever growing gap between the rich and the poor, and by a casual indifference, a frightening carelessness by those who have the power to make a difference. They come together to pray, because they are deeply convinced that transformation that is only social, economic and political, however indispensable, is not enough. They believe that we need the power of God in our lives so that transformation can be fundamental. Let me be bold, Mr. Minister: South Africa would not be free today if it were not for such people, and South Africa needs them more than ever before. According to the newspaper, you said that the ANC is different from Christians, but we do not care what race or what faith you are. We do not celebrate Human Rights Day like other people. We celebrate it with joy and love. We do not exclude anybody. With all respect, Mr. Minister, that is a statement of stunning ignorance, for first of all, at the heart of the Christian faith, is the belief that there is no Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ. The universality of the work of Jesus of Nazareth was one of the most revolutionary characteristics which moved that movement that took his name. Mr. Minister, that is why we pray, Nkosi Sikele I Afriko, God bless our land."
My friends, that is the Gospel. It is born out of the cross which hangs over the wrecks of time and says: Here is the loving Grace of God. Come and receive it. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.