8 Mar 2015 John 2:13-22

8 Mar  2015  John 2:13-22 

The story of Jesus and the money changers is a familiar one, and one in which it is easy to assume we are aligned with Jesus and ready to drive away the profiteers trading at the doorways of our religious establishments. However, what does making "his Father's house" a marketplace look like nowadays? The moneychangers were just doing what was culturally expected in making sacrifices of doves and sheep convenient by providing them for the worshippers.  We might want to remember St Francis and his refusal to get into the ways that the church of his day did "business as usual." . St Francis took Jesus seriously enough that he gave up his wealth and comforts, left the church of his time and built a community that was out in the world rejoicing in nature and caring for the poor, being with the "unhoused" and "unchurched."

There are movements within our denomination today that are asking us now to reimagine "church" for the 21st century, as something other than a place where we can come comfortably and companionably and have our bodies and souls cared for Some years ago, Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd (who died this week at age 91) asked “are you running with me, Jesus?” as he challenged us to engage with him in radical inclusion through the civil rights movement and AIDS activism out in the streets,  campuses and coffeehouses.  Excluded by his church for decades, he was finally welcomed back. As a gay man, he rejoiced in being part of an inclusive church community.

 

Like Fr. Boyd and St. Francis, we should resist the division between “the church” and “the world” not by accepting the exclusions and money-making tendencies of both institutions but by challenging both to live up to Jesus’ radical “housecleaning.”  There is a lot of work to be done in and for the church. Making our physical building really God’s house where all are made to feel welcome will cost us time and money and inconvenience. But we are also asked to make efforts to take church out of the building and out of the business of doing "transactions" with God.  The "temple" Jesus describes in this gospel isn’t a building, but his body, which is the body of all people.  Loving our building and welcoming people to it and leaving it in order to share God’s love with those outside are not alternatives but two sides of a single mission.  As Christians who need to stay fresh and close to our real purpose, we should ask whether we use the idea that "church is not the building" as an excuse for not making the effort to support it or as a challenge to do much more than merely come here "for comfort but not for renewal."