Cleansing the Temple and 7 Deadly Sins of the Church

Join Pastor Paul has he talks of Jesus cleaning the temple, and the seven deadly sins of the church. A transcript follows below.

00:38

Our Gospel for today comes from the Gospel of John, the second chapter. The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, doves, and money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those selling the doves,

 

01:09

Stop making my father's house a marketplace. His disciples remembered what was written, zeal for your house will consume me. The Jews then said to him, what sign can you show us for doing this? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. And the Jewish leaders then said, this temple has been under construction for 46 years. Will you raise it up in three days?

 

01:38

but he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. This is the gospel of the Lord. Holy God, give us grace, open our hearts and minds to hear your true and living word, Jesus the Christ, who will transform our lives. Amen. Well, it's quite a powerful scene, isn't it?

 

02:07

Jesus making a whip of cords, driving all the livestock out of the temple?

 

02:15

Livestock out of the temple? Really? Yeah. When you were a devout Jew at this time, you came to Jerusalem on Passover every year, and you were required to either bring or buy something to sacrifice. So the enterprising folks who lived near Jerusalem started to, would bring their livestock to the temple and try to sell it to folks who had traveled from afar.

 

02:44

and who either didn't want to or couldn't afford to bring an animal for sacrifice. Well, over time, this became a big business. So the question we ask is, why did Jesus take exception to this? Well, first off, the Romans took a cut of every transaction. Think of it as the Roman sales tax. Then...

 

03:12

The priests not only took some of the sacrificed animals for food, but they also took a cut of the transactions. Third, even the poorest of the poor were required to buy something to sacrifice. Those were the doves. They were the cheapest thing. And if you recall an earlier story about Mary and Joseph, they bought doves when they went to the temple. That's how poor they were.

 

03:39

So the poor were really getting taxed in a greater proportion to the people that could afford it. And fourth, you could only use Hebrew money, denarii, to purchase your animals. And because Roman coins, which is what everybody used in all kinds of other commercial transactions, Roman coins had a blasphemous image on them, and they weren't allowed. OK?

 

04:08

So the poor who only received Roman coins got taken yet again by having to use those coins and changing the money. In short, the temple system was corrupt. It preyed on the common folks, on the poor, the ones who had to travel a long way. So it's kind of no wonder that Jesus got really irritated here.

 

04:39

Now in conversations with various professors and other pastors and with some special thanks to a gentleman named Dan Foster who is an Australian ex-pastor who started this conversation about the seven deadly sins, I have come to believe that the system of Christianity in this country is also corrupt. The church commits seven deadly sins.

 

05:09

Back in the 6th century, Pope Gregory and the Church started to categorize our sins as either venial or mortal. Right? You've probably heard about this. Venial sins were mild sins. Like if you just hate your neighbor and kind of wish bad things would happen to him. But a mortal sin was hating your neighbor and wishing he would die. Okay? So, or, if you used abusive language,

 

05:38

towards somebody and if you did it sort of as a joke or as fun or sport that sort of thing, that's a venial sin. But as soon as you intend or actually incite harm, that's a mortal sin. Mortal meaning you're going to go to hell for that one. Okay? So, a modern day example of a mortal sin is something that has been started to be called stochastic terrorism.

 

06:07

And that's when a political or media figure publicly denounces or demonizes a person or a group of people in such a way that it inspires others to commit violence.

 

06:24

Now, I'm not going to indict the church, this church, Blair Lutheran Church, but the church in general, especially the American church here. And we should care about that because we are the church, we the people are the church. We have to be the ones that will change it. Okay, Lent.

 

06:52

The word that we should always think of when we hear the word lent is the word repent, right? We need to change our mind. We need to change our way of thinking and being, not just personally, but as an institution.

 

07:09

So, this sermon could be entitled The Church's Seven Deadly Sins of Today. The first one, we abuse and misuse scripture. We have turned scripture into a weapon against others instead of a mirror to examine our own sins and our own relationship with God. Anyone who doesn't believe the same as me

 

07:40

we say, is vilified, or we say, you're going to hell. We cherry pick verses here and there to support our ideas. We ignore the context and the overall message of the Bible, which is clearly stated by Jesus. You should love the Lord your God and you should love your neighbor.

 

08:03

We constantly misuse scripture by using it simplistically and irresponsibly. We use a few select verses to condemn LGBTQ people, or we use it to justify a lower status for women, or anything else that we want to.

 

08:24

The second deadly sin is that we are selective about what sins we condemn.

 

08:34

Gossip? Oh, that's just keeping people informed. But if you wear revealing clothes to church, oh, the sacrilege! Oh!

 

08:45

If you skip church, ah well, I'm just too busy. But if you're addicted to drugs or alcohol, well there's no need to waste our money helping those people.

 

08:59

How about if you use a vulgar slang term? Oh, mercy me! Or you lie about somebody. I'm just taking them down a nut.

 

09:10

You tell a racist or a sexist or a classist jokes. You dismiss it. Oh, you just don't have a sense of humor.

 

09:19

But you get called a hypocrite? Ha! Who do you think you are?

 

09:24

Right? We have a selective morality about what sins we get upset about. We get up in arms about those minor transgressions when we turn a blind eye, or outright denial to systemic things like systemic racism or blatant hypocrisy. Selective morality is alive and well in this church. Ask yourself why we don't see many people here.

 

09:53

who are truly poor.

 

09:59

The third deadly sin is self-congratulation, or an exaggerated sense of self-importance or self-righteousness. Three closely interrelated attitudes. We love to look down on others, not just because of our churchiness, but we look down on people because of our politics or our social class, like the Pharisees.

 

10:24

We often pray, Lord, thank you that I'm not like that sinner over there. Our churches start to look more like clubs for Pharisees than anything else when we start to hurl insults at people. We always like to assume that we're on the right side of morality, and we love to condemn people who don't meet our middle-class standards.

 

10:50

In speaking, in work ethic, in dress, in living standards, in cleanliness, in the ability to support themselves, anybody who isn't like us is somehow morally deficient, seems to be our attitude. Self-congratulation at all breeds arrogance and creates an atmosphere of exclusivity and judgment instead of the attitudes of humility.

 

11:20

and empathy that we are called to. No wonder that there are people who don't meet our standards. No wonder they don't.

 

11:34

The fourth deadly sin of the Church is overlooking the marginalized. This Church, Blair Lutheran Church, I think continues to grow in how it helps the poor and the outcast. With the food pantry, the backpack program, neighborhood lunches, cooking with love, we have members who build beds, who reach out to the disadvantaged and the lonely, but in the great scheme of things, the greater Church falls short.

 

12:03

Some churches have reduced or eliminated supporting their synods or the larger church bodies, ignoring the fact that it's only when we work together that we can tackle some of the bigger problems.

 

12:17

And we have abrogated our responsibility to advocate for the poor and marginalized them in our local, state, and national governments. The church has frequently been all too vocal about cutting off the lazy or creating welfare dependency and has been complicit in the further oppression of the poor as well as perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

 

12:46

and prejudices about people who are on welfare.

 

12:54

The fifth and deadly sin is political idolatry. When you start worshiping a political figure instead of Christ, you have become an idol worshiper.

 

13:08

When politics drives your treatment of the poor instead of compassion, you are sacrificing them to an idol. Instead of holding political leaders to a higher standard and by turning a blind eye to their moral failings, we have chosen tarnished and hollow idols.

 

13:29

And when you try to bind your political beliefs, no matter what they are, when you try to say that you're more Christian than somebody else, you have undermined the moral authority of the church and you have contaminated the name of Jesus.

 

13:49

The sixth deadly sin is fear-mongering. Some of you may have based your first learnings in faith, learning towards faith because you were terrified of going to hell.

 

14:04

So having faith was an act of self-preservation. But God doesn't want us to follow Jesus because we are afraid, but God wants us to follow out of love and gratitude. When the church resorts to fear tactics, if you do this, you're gonna go to hell or something like that. When the church resorts to fear tactics for anything.

 

14:30

Whether it is to maintain power or enforce obedience, it loses its credibility as a force for good. This church should inspire love and courage and compassion. And when it breeds insecurity, anxiety or mistrust, it erodes whatever trust people have had in it. Fear-mongering or coercion of any kind is a sin, period.

 

15:01

In the latest Gallup poll of what institutions do people trust, the church has fallen. It is now behind the police and the military in terms of what institutions people trust and only slightly ahead of large tech companies.

 

15:24

And the seventh deadly sin of the church is probably the biggest one. And that is our sin of silence.

 

15:36

The church has historically been and is currently too silent in the face of injustices of all kind. We prioritize comfort and complacency. Don't change anything, the building, the music, the traditions, nothing, don't rock the boat. Don't talk about politics or anything that might make us uncomfortable about who we are currently. We want church to make us feel good.

 

16:06

The church supported slavery was silent in the face of war atrocities, is often silent in the face of social issues of social justice, even to the point of some churches looking sneeringly at people who are trying to do something and calling them social justice warriors.

 

16:33

The church resists, including the LGBT community, the addicted, all the people that the rest of society looks down on.

 

16:48

and the church still remains primarily segregated. Lutherans are still the whitest denomination in the country.

 

17:02

Elie Wiesel, the author and concentration camp survivor, famously said, we must take sides. Silence encourages the tormentor or the oppressor. It is time for the church to repent and to stand up for Jesus and Jesus' way of living, to cleanse our own temples, to drive out the idolaters.

 

17:29

to challenge the morally bankrupt and the abusers of scripture, the fear mongers and the self righteous. What does it look like for us to follow Jesus in our own time and place? Who are our models of faith? What unpopular or difficult decisions should we make as we walk the way of the cross?

 

17:52

We have to be willing to resist the forces of hate and division and also take them on to call them out in love. We need to pick up braided cords and drive them from the temple or hold them accountable.

 

18:15

We have to stand up and say things like, no, it is not right to look at all Democrats as baby killers, or all Republicans are racist. We have to stand up to the false patriotism that equates being an American and being Christian. We have to stand up for the immigrant and the refugee, whether someone thinks they're illegal or not. We have to stand up to our neighbors, who think God is on their side and not on somebody else's.

 

18:46

We have to stand up and say with love that calling people names and disparaging their reputations is wrong.

 

18:58

We have to stand up when somebody uses God as an excuse to bash someone else and say with love, God does not hate anyone.

 

19:15

We have to stand with and support people who are on welfare assistance and not disparage them. We have to stand up and be the voice of hope for all people. St. Augustine said that hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage.

 

19:42

Anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain as they are. Jesus cleared the temple because he was undermining the systemic oppression of that time. God's love is located in, through, and among us, God's people, the body of Christ. And we are charged with clearing.

 

20:12

our own temples, the temples of our mind, the temples of our church, and then doing what we can to bring about the kingdom of God's love right here and right now.