You are probably quite familiar now with the lectionary, our cycle of readings throughout the liturgical year. We read according to a cycle of three year, each time focusing on one of the Gospels: Year A is for Matthew, Year B is for Mark, Year C is for Luke. And John’s Gospel is spread out here and there, in the in between. You may have noticed that since the beginning of our liturgical year, we have really focused on the Chapter 1 of Mark’s Gospel with a few later readings for the feast of the transfiguration (at the end of the season of Epiphany) and then the announce of the passion and the cross, a theme that fits our Lenten theme. Starting this Sunday though, and until the end of Lent, we’re going to read several passages from John’s Gospel. Year B is Mark’s year and, in a way, it is also John’s year: Because Mark’s Gospel is so short, we have more room to insert readings from John’s. And this leads us to an interesting contrast. You may or may not know that Mark’s Gospel is believed to be the first Gospel to have been written, and because it is so early, it really focuses on very down to earth aspects of Jesus’s life, immediate observations, less reflection. I have mentioned already that we have a lot of stories of healings and miracles, and not many teachings or commentaries. In Mark’s, Jesus is always on the go, and things happen very quickly. John’s Gospel is quite different. It is the latest Gospel, probably written at the very end of the first century, and a lot of maturing has been done, the text really focuses on a few stories of Jesus’s life to give us some lengthy interpretation. Jesus meets fewer people in John’s Gospel, but he spends more time with each of them, having long conversations to explain all he has to teach them. We are very far from the “Capernaum” (the “big Mess”) of Mark’s Gospel. Theologically, it’s quite different as well: Mark’s Gospel is focused on Jesus’s humanity (Remember last week, we talked about this expression “The Son of Man”) whereas in John’s Gospel, it’s all about Jesus being the Son of God (The Word made flesh, from the very beginning). Don’t get it wrong, there is no doubt in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus is the Son of God, but it is really acknowledged at the foot of the cross, John, on the other way around, can’t help reminding us that Jesus is God at every turn of the page.
Okay, so why am I saying all of this?
Well, because I think it’s interesting to realize that, if John’s Gospel insists so much on Jesus’s divinity, it is also the Gospel that insists the most on Jesus’s emotions. For example, it’s in John’s Gospel that we find the famous verse: Jesus wept (at the death of Lazarus). And so to me, what it tells us is that Jesus didn’t have emotions only because “he was human after all” but also because he was divine. For John, the ability to react emotionally, as well as the ability to feel deeply, to have compassion, to experience grief, and, as in our text today, the ability to be upset, is not something that only happens to us because we are “human after all”, weak, or at least not all knowing and not all powerful. To John, the holiness of God is also expressed through emotions and feelings, they can be very sacred.
In the passage we have just heard, it seems rather clear that Jesus is upset at the vendors in the Temple because he is passionate, holy, “consumed by zeal” for God’s house (although the story is told by each evangelist, John is the only one mentioning this inner disposition). Would Jesus only have been an ordinary human being, he may have remained quite indifferent at the activity in the Temple, or maybe he would have felt a little elated, excited, like when you arrive in New York city. But he would certainly not have become emotional to the point of making a “whip of cords“, “driving everybody out“, “pouring out the coins” and “overturning the tables“. So John makes it quite clear that Jesus was upset because he was holy, and so, for those who want to cling to the idea that God’s wrath is something of the Old testament, think twice. It’s all in here in the Gospel as well. Holy anger. And we may not like it. Now the trick is that there is a reason we shy away from acknowledging that anger can be holy. Because you know, it is easy for any Christian to label everything they feel as holy anger and then lashing out and being terrible people.Criticizing other denominations? Holy anger. Despising the Jews? Holy anger. War on the Muslims? Holy anger. Being mean, discriminatory, passing judgments on people? Holy anger. And so on.
So having this in mind, maybe we need to think a little bit about what Jesus’s “holy anger” is really about…and then we can understand what “holy anger” could look like (or not) for us.
To help with that, there are a few things we can notice in the story:
– The story does not contradict Jesus’s way of non violence. I think it’s important to realize that very clearly, Jesus is not attacking people. When you read about the whip, maybe you have in mind one of these terrible paintings where we see Jesus hitting people. Well, this is really not what it is about: Jesus, John tells us, makes a whip to drive out the animals, as anyone would do to lead their cattle, it’s not directed towards people, and then, as Jesus is driving out the animals, far from hurting them, he is actually protecting them, preventing them from a certain death. Jesus directs his action, his violence if you will, towards material things, the money and the table of the money changers.
– Now we have to understand: Why this charge towards the money changers? You could assume that Jesus was attacking their business, and it may seem a bit unfair because everybody needs to make a living. The thing is that those vendors they were making a huge profit at the expense of the poor. Money needed to be changed at the entrance of the Temple because everybody came from everywhere mostly carrying Roman coins at the image of the emperor, which was considered idolatrous for the religious authorities. So you couldn’t use that currency in the Temple to buy your animal for the sacrifice. But money changers took advantage of this, exaggerating the fees and inflating the exchange rate.
This is what I found in a historical commentary:
The Money Changer’s share of the temple tax was about one day’s wages and his share of the transaction from international to local currency was about a half-day’s wages. And that was before [pilgrims] purchased their unblemished animals for sacrifice and then had to buy them again (at an enhanced price) because the inspector found a blemish or otherwise inadequate for the offering.
We see that Jesus was mad at the way people were abused in a system that wasn’t directed towards honoring God, but used religiosity to make a profit. We can also see that his desire to protect the innocent would go as far as protecting the animals. There was about 2 millions people visiting Jerusalem for Passover, if you count a sacrifice for each family, that would represent the slaughter of 500 000 animals. I just assume that Jesus didn’t think God rejoiced in this bloodshed.
The bottom line is: Jesus’s anger, holy anger, is not about belief, about being right, about being the moral authority, if our morality consists in judging people’s lifestyle. Jesus’s anger is protective, it’s all about defending the powerless, and advocating for people’s rights to a relationship with God through a religion that is about acceptance and forgiveness, rather than financial contribution and sacrifice. Making his body the actual Temple, Jesus shows us that holiness has to be embodied, lived out in our human life, in how we think, feel and act, and treat people around us (See our collect for social justice)
And that tells me two things:
– On one side, I think that indeed, we must be careful at what we label “holy anger”, because genuine holy anger is about compassion for the poor and protection of the innocent, and so often we call holy anger what rises up when we are offended at people’s beliefs, religious practices, or choices, when we are defensive of our ideologies and when our ideologies are a cover up for our personal interests (Here: You better defend a religion of sacrifice if you make money providing the sacrifice)
– Yet, on the other side, when we refute consistently “holy anger”because of these very issues, we can also fall into the other extreme, that is to practice a religion that can be too complacent. This week we had, as always, a good conversation with our Bible group, and one of the things we talked about is how at some level, for us women, the only things our Christian upbringing has given us authorization to express are positive feelings, wrapped up in the imperative to be nice. Yet reading at the stories of the women of the Bible, we have noticed that experiencing indignation, speaking up and acting are also part of our calling as Christians. Have you ever heard about the “Frozen chosen”? Well, I think it’s a little bit sad we are called like that, especially when we see how Jesus was on fire for God.
So how does it look like for us? We also had this question when we read about Esther who became the Queen of Susa and saved all her people. We’re probably not going to get there, and we struggled a bit to find examples in our own lives of us being “like Esther”. But something came back in mind for me. I have a friend who struggle with alcoholism, but none of us her lifelong friends never confronted her on that, because we want so much to be nice. Recently though, one of our friend’s partner did just that, and talked to her about her addiction quite directly. Well, when I heard about that I was ashamed of ourselves, her close friends, I realized how our niceties weren’t helping anybody. My friend’s partner, she did the right thing in talking to our friend. She did the caring thing, at the risk of not being that nice, at the risk of not being liked. It may be a drop in the ocean, but it may literally save my friend’s life. We need to be able to get indignant when people hurt themselves or hurt others and to be able to point it out, not because we think of ourselves as moral authorities, but rather, as Jesus did, because we see a sacredness in people’s bodies and lives and we want to protect that.I read a commentary that said that we often think about Lent as this quiet, contemplative time, but maybe Lent is also a time for action.
So where is your holy anger directing you in this season?
Great sermon as usual.