Part 1
When you saw that my reading today was from Christian Scripture [John 2:14-16], I suspect that some of you may have had a reaction, annoyance, maybe even a bit of anger. "Oh, no, this guy is showing his true colors -- the honeymoon is over!" You who know a bit about Scripture may have even thought, "good God, he quoted from John, too -- this is not good".
I too, have a reaction to the use of the book of John. I've come to understand that each of the four Christian Gospels have their own slant, their own marketing spin if you will, that they were each likely written to address a particular concern as the early Christian movement was developing. So the writer of Mark, the earliest book written, and probably the most historically accurate, seeks to discredit Jesus' immediate followers, his disciples, as somewhat foolish. And the writer of Luke seeks to emphasize Jesus good works among the poor and oppressed. And the writer of Matthew seeks to increase the credibility of both Jesus and the emerging church by connecting them to ancient Hebrew prophecy. And in the book of John, the last one written, well, the writer of John was laying out this whole new Christian theology in which Jesus becomes part of God.
It turns out that our story today, of Jesus Cleansing the Temple, appears in all four Gospels. That's unusual. That means that this story must be very important to the emerging Christian faith, and it is! This story is the setup for Jesus being arrested, tried, and executed.
So why did I pick John today? It's pretty simple -- of the four versions, the story in John seemed tome to be the most dramatic.
In this story, Jesus has just come into town. He's now well-known, top of his game, and crowds follow him. He goes to the temple to be part of the holy days of Passover. He sees what is going on in the temple, and he gets angry.
Let's take a moment and look at what was going on in the temple, all this buying and selling of animals and money changing. This was part of the religious culture of the day. People would bring food or an animal to the temple for sacrifice, the priests would sacrifice the animals. They'd burn some as an offering to God, and the rest would be used to feed the priests and other staff. As this system developed, people wanted the convenience of not having to travel with their own animals to the temple, so a market developed, and you could buy animals and change your local currency into temple currency. It was a whole super-Walmart, just steps away from the temple.
But this is all part of the ordinary operation, and Jesus comes in and gets quite upset. Angry. Perhaps even outraged. He lashes out in violence, turning over the tables of the moneychangers, whipping and beating the sales staff to drive them out of the temple. He tells them: "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."[1] That sounds pretty righteous to me.
Most of us Unitarian Universalists like to think of Jesus as a great teacher rather than a god. That was one of the early conclusions of William Ellery Channing and early Unitarians -- they rejected the divinity of Jesus, but thought of him as an exemplary teacher. But if we are to learn from Jesus' life we must contend with the meaning of this violent outburst.
Part 2
We can become angry for any number of reasons. We can become angry when we want something we can't have, or because it is taken away. Sandy is quite naturally upset when her Dad shows up and takes away her TV time.[2]
The ancients in many religions were very much in touch with this sort of anger. In the Bhagavad Gita, written in India many centuries before Jesus time, we learn:
When you keep thinking about sense-objects,In other words, these ancient people had tapped into the realization that when we get attached to things or pleasant experiences, we want to hold on to them, to have more of them. Like TV. And we get angry when they are taken away. That anger clouds our judgment, and we make bad decisions, these can have consequences.
Attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire,
The lust of possession which, when thwarted,
Burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgment
And robs you of the power to learn from past mistakes
Lost is the discriminative faculty,
And your life is utter waste.[3]
I offer this example not to try to argue that the eastern religions had anger all figured out earlier than the Jews of Jesus' time. Rather, I'm trying to make the point that they saw anger differently. They saw anger as a generally troubling emotion that had to be treated carefully.
Unfortunately, many western people who practice these eastern religions today believe they need to suppress their anger completely, to never experience it, and certainly to never show it. We also may have got this message as children: don't get mad, control your temper, supress your feelings. I'm not sure this is helpful.
In some circumstances, the pent up anger can burst out in rage: anger amped-up with even less judgment and less moral control. Or that anger stiffens over time into bitterness, and it slips out in unkind comments or even complete withdrawal and silence.
I think it is better that we pay attention when we're angry. Just pay attention. The anger is probably trying to tell us something.
Harriett Lerner, in her book The Dance of Anger, tells us:
Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something is not right.[4]For example, anger may be signaling a deeper emotion of fear. I think of the people going on at the various town-hall meetings this summer on healthcare reform and at the tea-party rallies earlier this month. Those people seemed angry, even enraged, far beyond what seemed reasonable. I wonder whether some of that rage was coming up from fear. Fear that everything was changing, that they were now the 'out crowd' and stood to lose everything. Their world was being threatened, and they responded with white-hot emotion.
For many of us, especially here in this community, our anger also comes up when we see others being hurt, or when we see others rights being violated, or others in need. This is righteous anger, and it is also worth listening to.
Perhaps this is what Jesus faced, as he saw people being cheated by the animal salespeople. See, if people brought their own animals, or bought them at a discount animal supplier on the edge of town, the priests would inevitably say that the animals were no good for sacrifice. You had to buy your animals from the right guys. It was a corrupt system. And Jesus reacted with righteous anger.
Part 3
So let's go back to Jesus at the temple. What emotion was he experiencing when he became violent? Was he responding in the heat of emotion, in anger or even rage? Or was he executing a well-thought-out act of civil disobedience?
It's hard to know. I will mention that two of the gospel books describe Jesus around this same time cursing a fig tree for not having fruit, and causing it to become barren. However that gets explained, it sounds to me like the behavior of an angry or even enraged man.
But whether or not Jesus was having a meltdown, it's clear he was responding to injustice and unfairness to others. We like to think that sort of righteous anger is somehow more acceptable than anger we feel because we ourselves were mistreated. The question is how we respond to this harm to others.
The deeper question is this. Suppose you see injustice, unfairness to others, and you get angry. You are able to control your anger, you see it as a signal that somethings not right. But you see that your only viable response is to take physical action, to intervene, even to respond with violence, or to get attention with harsh words. Are hateful words or physical violence ever OK? This is the question of Pacifism.
I think of the web of relationships that we are part of. It's part of a larger web, that interconnected web of which we are all a part. This web of relationships gets built up, slowly, over time. I visualize this web as a spider- web and we are like spiders tending to this web, strengthening it and keeping it in good repair. OK, I know spiders are solitary insects but bear with me. Put yourselves in this big imaginary spider-web of relationships with me and everyone here. Sometimes minor disasters happen to our web, a leaf falls on it, and we work to repair it. Occasionally, major disasters happen -- a tree branch or an animal crashes through the web and we have little choice but to cut away and destroy great parts of it if we are to save any of it. We do this, with sadness, knowing that the task of rebuilding will be a long and difficult one.
In the same way, we are wise when we avoid reacting to anger by becoming abusive or violent. We are aware that there are rare situations when harsh words or physical action may be required. We may have to defend ourselves from harm or protect another, and we may realize that there is no other way to respond but with harsh words or action.
I hope when we are confronted with this, we are disappointed, because we were unable to think of a more clever, creative solution to our problem than violence. And because we realize that the task of repair of relationships, even with our enemies, will be that much harder.
I like to think that Jesus, in the temple, was acting from a place of sadness, rather than anger. He was
righteous, he wanted to make things right, but could think of other option than to make a whip and drive the people and animals out.
Now you know the rest of the story. Right after this outburst, the priests arrange to have Jesus arrested and executed. Jesus was likely just one of many passionate, religious fanatics that took on the system in that day and came out on the bottom side because of it. He is killed, his followers scatter, and are filled with fear. They gradually reorganize and go on to create the religion about Jesus that is Christianity. And from Christianity emerged Unitarianism Universalism.
I'm glad that Sandy, in our story this morning, was able to find a way to accept and see past her anger with her Dad, and remember that even when she was annoyed with him, she still loved him. I know that many of us carry annoyance, even anger over our own past experiences with Christianity, or with present-day encounters with certain forms of Christianity. And that anger is an important signal, worth paying attention to. But I also hope that we can accept that anger and see past it, as we realize that we have a rich UU Christian past, and there are many Christians UUs in our midst. This past and these people give our movement depth and diversity, and for this we should all be grateful.
Notes
1 Mark 11:17 RSV
2 Searle White, "The Conference Tree", Stories for All Ages
3 Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita, chapter 2, p. 68.
4 Harriet Goldhor Lerner, The Dance of Anger, p. 1.
