The book of Haggai reminds us that after years of exile the temple was to be re-built as the dwelling place of God, the people had become discouraged as they felt this new temple was not going to be as good as the previous one (without the gold and silver – the shiny things of life).
God assured them that his presence would still be with them (v 5 my spirit remains in your midst) and gave them a promise of future glory. He wanted them to stay devoted to him without letting such distractions and discouragement get in the way. A reminder for them, and us, that God was, and is, with us and we will know His peace.
In the passage from John there are three interested parties– Jesus, the leaders (the scribes and Pharisees) and us. We are very subtly encouraged to engage with the exchange between Jesus and the leaders. We can learn so much about our own response to what is happening around us today from it.
Here, the Temple was still a focal point, the promise was there that God’s presence would still be with them.
However Jesus had gone into it and He found that all was not as it should have been.
He discovered that God was no longer the focus there and their worship and service of Him had been redirected elsewhere. Their focus was now directed towards the love of money (with corrupt practices being allowed).
When Jesus found this out, the leaders were left in no doubt that Jesus was angry about what was happening. He made it clear he wanted to clear out (destroy) the corrupt practices that had been allowed to take place there. He literally turned things upside down.
His anger at seeing how the temple was being used was nevertheless controlled and carefully directed to get the attention of the leaders.
Once things had been turned upside down, the leaders had certainly got a message, they just were not sure what the message was, and who was behind it. ( Although I wonder if they had that feeling deep down inside, that many of us can feel, of fully understanding what was going on but trying to dismiss it?)
There was something that made them question who this person was to exert such authority in the Temple – was He a prophet, or could it even be the promised Messiah?
As we are invited to engage with this passage we can, I am sure identify times when we have asked the same questions the leader do,- who is it that exerts such authority over our lives when we get distracted and let things slip.
As I said, deep down we know, as they did, that we can sometimes lose focus on the worship and service of God and get caught up in things that we should be challenging. Many of us can easily get distracted away from what we should be doing.
When Jesus confronts the leaders on what is happening, it is clear they don’t understand his response and what it means for them.
The leaders question here is “what does he mean when he talks about destroying the temple (that has taken years to build) and then says He can re-build it in three days?”
Likewise in our lives when we have been confronted in a similar way many of us can remember only too well how we have not understood what he means – we have been slow to “connect the dots” between what He is saying to us and the impact of what that will mean for us. It can take us time to get the message from him.
Therefore, like the leaders, our questions may be reflected in our relationship with Jesus -what does Jesus mean when He is challenging me by seemingly telling me He to change (which can include in effect destroying?) something in my life that I have taken x number of years to achieve, and seems to want to re-build it His way? How might we respond to Him?
For the leaders this uncertainty, and having heard how Jesus had been using signs in other places, led them to want some kind of sign as confirmation from Him as to who he was.
To be fair, this does not seem to be an unreasonable request. However, Jesus had other ideas. Instead of giving them a sign, He talks about his death and resurrection, pointing towards Him as being the Temple, something they could not grasp even with all their knowledge of the scriptures.
We, with our knowledge now of the Gospel story, have an advantage over the leaders in this exchange in understanding what He means when he is talking about his body being the temple.
Jesus, however, not only does not give them a sign, He also does not cite scripture to them either (such as those found in Isaiah 56:7 or Jeramiah 7:11) which they would have been familiar with – reminding them that the temple was going to be destroyed and rebuilt?).
Instead, He had shown them His authority by speaking about his Father’s house.
In Verses 17-18 John particularly highlights the contrast between the disciples understanding of who Jesus is by the use of previous signs and actions which were pointing to him, and the lack of understanding of the leaders who want a sign from Him to show his authority.
A sign, the leaders thought, would be the only thing that could convince them of who Jesus was. However, Jesus knew it would not make any difference to their understanding, (something that is later confirmed later in his life).
This story also engages us as there are times we can identify with this need of a sign – with all our knowledge of Jesus, we can still believe we need some kind of sign as confirmation that we are hearing from Him.
In addition, we can also identify with the loss of focus from being in God’s presence, worshipping and serving Him.
We too can be distracted away from things that we know, deep down, (as the leaders did), are corrupt and unjust . Like those who went before us we can focus on the “new shiny things” such as silver, gold and the treasures of earth. These are the same things that Jesus would want to come and challenge us on, turning things upside down and challenging us to do the same to bring his Gospel message of peace today.
I wonder if we, like the leaders here , are just missing the obvious –we know in our heads that Jesus has given His authority to us to take action. We are called by Him to challenge the corrupt, harmful practices that we see around us, just as the leaders back in Jesus day should have been doing, but, like them, we often wait for a sign we can recognise before doing so.
Don’t get me wrong it is good sometimes to get a message that convicts us or a word of confirmation of what we are to do – we are human after all – but our actions in response to what we see around us should not be reliant on getting these. Very little will happen if we sit around waiting!
So, I wonder if we are able to learn something from the leaders exchange with Jesus and be assured of the true authority in our life, (or in the lives of our communities) and act on his commands.
At the beginning I asked the question we can often ask ourselves:
“why is Jesus challenging me by seemingly destroying something in my life that I have taken ” x number of years to achieve, and wanting re-build it His way”? What is he calling me to do? – what is he calling us as a community to do?
By the way, if he is not challenging you/ or us in this way the question to ask perhaps is “why not”?
The answer is not an easy one – and sometimes there seems to be no clear answer, sometimes it is possible to clearly recognise, or be convicted of, something that is not of God that is affecting your life, and worship of God. At other times you may only come to recognise it later when looking back.
It may not be easy, but we are called in our daily journey with Christ to be with Him, know more of his way for us and the world and to be built up in Him and not be distracted so that we know, and can act, when something is not of Him.
This is the Gospel message of this passage – of being convicted, (or having an awareness,) of things that are not of God, dying to them in our practice, and being raised to a new understanding of the life we have in Christ, through his death and resurrection. We are to be his voice, his people on earth, we have his authority to act.
We “just” need to see everything through the lens of our faith. We have been given the tools and the authority to take this message into the whole world, He has promised to be with us. We are called to replace the worlds natural way of doing things, by bringing in His ways and light into dark places, bringing peace into the world.
The world certainly needs to receive the message we have, through Christ, to deliver and is waiting for us to take action! What am I/we going to do about it!
