Spring Cleaning

The Third Sunday in Lent

March 3, 2024

John 2:13-22

 “Journey to Joy: Spring Cleaning”

Is spring cleaning even a thing anymore? Most of us no longer heat our homes with coal or wood, so there’s not all that soot to contend with. So is this just a carry-over from generations past when people really had a need to clean out from the winter’s build-up of dirt and soot? Turns out there are not only physical advantages to doing a bit of spring cleaning, there are psychological advantages as well. A clean house helps support a healthy immune system as well as keeping allergies in check. Tidying up at home, including spring cleaning, just helps us feel better inside. There is a mental health aspect to this that can help to decrease stress and depression (Here Are 5 Ways Spring-Cleaning Can Make You Healthier (healthline.com). In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus does some spring cleaning of a sort as he drives out the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem. Our Lenten series, “Journey to Joy,” continues today as we focus on Jesus’ cleansing of the temple under the theme, “Spring Cleaning.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

Interestingly, I tried to find a hymn that speaks to Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, but couldn’t find anything. I searched in multiple hymnals, and had our Director of Music do the same. We came up dry. So here is an open invitation for some enterprising individual to write a good text for this passage of Scripture that can be set to music. Although I could not find a hymn to go with this text, there are multiple images readily available of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, and that is what I would invite us to do now: spend a few moments viewing these different artistic renderings of what we heard and read in today’s Gospel message.

We begin by looking at the Old Testament lesson (Exodus 20:1-17) for today, often called the “giving of the Law.” But that word “Law” is not a good translation of the original Hebrew word Torah. A better word for Torah is “instruction.” Only after God had acted in behalf of his chosen people, only after he had delivered them from slavery in Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, only then did God say to his people how they were to be in relationship with him and with one another. It is a because/therefore relationship. Because God had delivered his people, therefore they were set free to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). But it didn’t stop there. That’s only the vertical relationship between God and people. The horizontal relationship between people remained. And so God’s people were also called to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). Love God and love your neighbor. Sounds so simple, right? Why is it so hard

As Pastor Martin Schultheis, Chief Ministry Officer of the Southeastern District, wrote this past week: “The Law was not meant to bring God’s people out of one type of slavery and into another – though it gets treated as such and results in episodes such as the cleansing of the Temple in the gospel lesson. Rather, the Law gives us a picture of what humanity is created to look like. Jesus fulfills this perfect picture. Jesus in us gives us a new perspective of the Law – one of gift and promise. This is the good work that He is accomplishing in us through the sanctifying work of His Spirit” (Rev. Martin Schultheis, SED Connect email, 02/28/24)

The One who came to fulfill all that is written in the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17) is the very One who was so enraged that his Father’s house had become a marketplace and a stockyard. Instead of being a house of prayer, the temple in Jerusalem was reduced to a commodities exchange. The popular image many people have of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” is very different from the Jesus we see in today’s Gospel lesson. We see Jesus who is justifiably angry over what the temple had become. The Spirit-given words of the psalmist, “Zeal for your house will consume me” (Psalm 69:9) are here fulfilled in Jesus’ decisive action to cleanse his Father’s house and return it to its intended purpose. But in doing so, Jesus’ action sets in motion what will lead to his death, as he testifies to those who were upset by what he had done: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). Jesus is not talking about the temple in Jerusalem, but the temple of his own body. Here is a clear prophecy from Christ Jesus himself about what would soon take place with his own death, burial and resurrection. For the disciples, all of this led to faith: “When therefore 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” (John 2:22). That is still the goal today – that we, too, may believe the Scripture and the words of Jesus, as Paul writes in today’s Epistle lesson (1 Corinthians 1:18-31): “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). The word of the cross is life and salvation.

When we think of the temple, we probably think of a grand structure that is awe-inspiring. But Scripture tells us this: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16; see also 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Jesus did indeed cleanse the temple in Jerusalem, but in a far more glorious way, through his life-giving death upon the cross, he has cleansed each one of us to be his own temple. Our hearts are now his home. Washed clean in the waters of Holy Baptism, nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ at his table, strengthened by the power of his Word, we are the Lord’s dwelling place.

On this journey to Easter joy, is there a need for some spring cleaning in our own lives; within our own temple? Of course, that is true for every child of God. That’s what this Lenten season is all about: to repent and return to the Lord our God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Joel 2:13). May God bless us on our journey to joy for Jesus’ sake. Amen.