“Church Marketing 101” Sermon on March 11, 2012
March 11, 2012
Scripture: John 2: 13-22
The Passover was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the 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 who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jewish leaders 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.” They then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But Jesus 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.
Sermon: Church Marketing 101
By Rev. Doreen Oughton
Our scripture opens with Jesus going to the Temple in Jerusalem for the Passover. Let’s talk about the Temple, what was and what it meant. The Temple in Jerusalem was not just a place of worship, it wasn’t like a local synagogue, only bigger. It wasn’t a house of worship for God’s people. It was considered the house of God. It had been standing since 516 BCE, and was the second one built approximately in that place. The first is thought to have been built by King Solomon, and stood for over 400 years. It was destroyed by the invading Babylonians, who sent the Israelites into exile. After 70 years of exile, the political climate changed and the Israelites returned to their homeland and built a new temple. In both of the temples there was a room, the Holy of Holies, which held the Ark of the Covenant, a vessel holding the stone tablets on which were written the 10 commandments. On those tablets, in that vessel, in that room, dwelt the word of God, the holy vibration, the sacred name.
The Hebrew scripture laid out all the rituals by which the Jewish people would approach this place, would worship their God who dwelt there. These instructions were believed to have come from God. The books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were specific about what kinds of sacrifices should be made to the Lord, the measurements and materials required for the Ark. The Books of Kings and Chronicles tell some of the controversies about additions to the Temple, about some of the practices, but by the time Jesus went for the Passover, the rules and rituals were well established. The Temple was being renovated, a project begun by Herod the Great. It was an important project. Something had to be done to accommodate the incredible influx of people to the Temple during the three major festival periods – Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacle. Over a million people came, all eager to worship God in the ways their scripture told them to. Israel was under Roman rule, so the money all had images of Caesar. It was considered idolatrous to bring such images into God’s house, so money was supposed to be changed to an acceptable currency before being brought into the Temple or used as an offering. So the Temple offered that service.
People wanted to offer sacrifices to their God – lambs if they could afford them, doves if they could not. The animals had to meet a certain standard. Scripture called for unblemished sacrifices. Someone could chance it and bring their own sacrificial animal from home, but what if blemishes were found. It was a service that the Temple offered unblemished animals for sacrifice. And it accommodated people of lesser means by offering acceptable, but the less expensive doves.
So what is Jesus’ problem with all this? The story of Jesus disrupting these Temple marketplace activities is in all four Gospels. In the three earlier written gospels, Mark, Mt and Luke, this disruption occurs after Jesus’ Palm Sunday entrance, shortly before his arrest. In fact it is one of the events that initiates the conspiracy to arrest him. Gospel writer John knew this, and yet he places the disruption right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, a few years before his arrest. The story in John takes place shortly after his first “sign” of turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana. The other Gospels indicate that there was something corrupt about the activities, that people were being overcharged for the animals, or paying an exorbitant exchange rate for acceptable currency. They have Jesus calling it a den of thieves. But John doesn’t say anything like that. In his story, Jesus’ complaint is that it is a marketplace. But this confuses me. These services are offered to help people with their worship. It’s not a souvenir stand, it’s not selling bobble head Moses or Ark-styled purses and piggy banks. So what is the problem,and what does it mean for us?
If Jesus is against any “marketplace” activity in the Temple, does that apply to churches, too? Would Jesus be against our raffling off baskets on Bunny Day, against the Busy Fingers table of knitted goods at our Strawberry Hill Fair, against the whole fair, against our Organ Fund yard sale? Is it just stuff that happens in the church he’d be against, our would selling apple crisp on the Common at the town Harvest Fair be a problem also? I mean these things are even less connected with worship than selling doves or changing money was to the Israelites. Sure, we could make the argument that we are providing services for the Community. Bunny Day offers a fun family time with games and treats, collects food for the food bank, and donates all proceeds to the Food Bank also. People in the church give and give to this – donating money, candy, toys and hours and hours of labor. And yet, in a way, it is a marketing event. We want people to come into our church, meet all you wonderful people, meet me, be reminded that church has so much to offer, and maybe start coming to worship with us. Is that wrong? If it is wrong, there is a whole lotta sinning going on.
Is it the whole sacrificial system that Jesus is objecting to? Is he trying to communicate to the religious leaders that God doesn’t want to be worshiped through burnt animals, or through currency of any kind? Perhaps, perhaps. One understanding of Jesus’ death is that he was the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. And yet, don’t I ask you to sacrifice each and every week during the offering? We’re not killing animals, but we are giving a symbol of our work, our livelihood, something of value to us. Isn’t that sacrifice, and isn’t it holy?
Would anyone like to share a thought about this?….
Let’s move on to the next part of the reading, skipping over for now what the disciples recalled about the scripture passage, “zeal for your house will consume me.” The Judeans ask Jesus, basically, why he is doing this. What sign is there that the marketplace is a problem? He doesn’t really answer their question, but says, “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” By the time this Gospel was written, most likely all the Gospels, the Temple had in fact been destroyed. All the Gospels have Jesus talking about the destruction of the Temple, though it wasn’t destroyed for several decades after Jesus’ death. In this passage, John directly makes the connection that Jesus replaces the Temple. If the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the Stone Tablets, all now lost, had contained the Word of God, God’s holy vibration, God’s name, those things were not lost to God’s people. They resided now in the person of Jesus Christ. They resided now in the Body of Christ, the people who followed him, lived out and shared his good news. And that was good news to the early Christian communities.
But this doesn’t really clear up the questions about Jesus’ anger over marketplace activities. I think there are a few things going on. I think Jesus is challenging not only the sacrificial system, but the meaning of the Temple itself. Now the first Temple was the brainchild of King David. After all the years of traveling with the Ark, keeping it in a tabernacle, which is a fancy tent, he wanted to give God a home. But God didn’t want it. David did not follow through with his plans to build because God told him not to. So Solomon built it. There were raids and controversies through the years about the things or rituals added to the temples, and in all those centuries prophets like Micah and Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah railed against the worship rituals, the burnt offerings, the rivers of oil. They challenged the notion that God dwelt with the people by way of stone tablet and ark and Holy Holies. They said God dwelt with the people through acts of kindness and justice and mercy, that God rejoiced when they refrained from oppressing the widow and the orphan, when they were kind to foreigners, when they remembered their dependence on God, who brought them out of Egypt.
I don’t think Jesus objected to people sacrificing, but I think he wanted them to understand that differently. I believe that Jesus, like Micah and Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, did not think the lambs and doves, the kosher currency, were the sacrifices God wanted. The Temple may have needed those things to stay relevant and important to worshipers, but God didn’t. Things had gotten all tangled up. Symbols had come to replace the things they symbolized. A thing offered to God was supposed to be a symbol of our commitment to God, our prioritizing of God in our lives. But instead it became a replacement for our commitment. If I give a lamb at the Passover festival, I have done my duty, and it doesn’t matter if I cheat people in my business, or beat my wife, or spread gossip about my neighbor. The sacrifice God wants is what we give up when we truly love our neighbor as ourselves, when we are as concerned about the well-being of children in Uganda as we are about our own. And we don’t just feel that concern, but act on it in ways that make a difference.
I also think Jesus wanted people to know that the Temple was never really the place God lived. God couldn’t be confined like that. No one needed to go to the Temple, no one needs to go to church, to find God. Does this mean churches don’t matter, that they have no legitimate place in what it means to worship God? I hope not, and not just because this is where I get my paycheck. I believe that church should be a place that reminds people that God is with you in all areas of your life. The symbolic holy meal – that tiny square of bread and tiny cup of juice – are meant to remind us that every meal is sacred, a gift from God. Coming to church should remind us that God can be found and known in your home and your workplace and on the mountain and at the ocean and in the cities. Church is a place where you can listen together for God, where you can go outside these walls and look for God, where you can learn more about how people experienced God and related to God through the centuries.
So I don’t think Jesus minds if we love this church, if we give to this church, if we raise funds for this church and its ministries. But I don’t think he wants us to worship it, to limit our looking and listening for God to this place. I think he wants us to understand that we gather to worship and serve God, not to serve a place, a building, not to serve our own narrow interests. We come to know God better not primarily through singing hymns or reciting prayers, or listening to a sermon. We come to know God primarily through relationship, relationship with others, with ourselves, and most importantly, relationship with Jesus Christ. If hymns and prayer and hearing scripture and reflecting on it with me builds and strengthens that relationship, that’s wonderful. But don’t let that be the extent of it. Build that relationship with Christ in your homes and workplaces, in the food pantry and on Worcester Common, and even in the market place. May it be so.
