Luke 19:47-20:8 In the Temple

This passage comes immediately after Jesus has entered Jerusalem and driven out the merchants from the temple. It is a difficult text- for a couple of reasons, though at first it may seem a simple matter of Jesus outwitting, out debating, the chief priests and scribes and elders. 1) We don’t know the intentions and emotions of the leaders- we can only suppose they were angry with Jesus for coming into the temple and chasing all the people out, and so, would want to put him in his place; we cannot know Jesus’ intention behind his question to the spiritual leaders, we may merely surmise that he wished to show them as perhaps too comfortable in their faith, or too prideful, men who would do anything to maintain their religious monopoly. But we may be slightly or even completely wrong about the meanings.

Their question to Jesus, “Who gave you this authority?” may have been a sincere desire to understand his actions and teachings; and Jesus’ question to them about

John the Baptist may have been a honest attempt to understand their ideas about faith and worship, as well as an attempt to make them confront what they believed and taught. 2) The passage is difficult because it forces us to answer the question of Jesus, as well. So, as we go through this hard scripture, if I lose you at some point, you can still ponder that crucial question about religion and our worship and your personal faith, which I have taken the liberty to paraphrase: which parts are from God, and which parts are our own that merely make us feel a certain way?

Were you ever at a church when a new pastor came in and it felt like everything was changing- the worship felt different, his preaching style was odd- or her preaching style was odd, and because everything was different, you didn’t experience the same comfort and peace in the service, didn’t sense God’s presence in the same way? That new person, that new style, those new emphases challenged you, and perhaps distracted you from the normal warm feelings of God’s grace you may have felt previously. On the other hand, there may have been several folks who welcomed the changes and felt God’s love and mercy in new and powerful ways. Which parts of that are from God? It is not an either/or- contemporary worship or traditional, emotional or more academic worship. One side is not right and the other wrong, but, if I may suggest, feelings and comfort cannot be the only criteria, but rather, how the worship gives glory to God and confronts us and makes us ask ourselves, how can I best be God’s person, how can I best love as

Jesus loved? When worship does this, and inspires us to love, then it comes from

God. It isn’t easy, of course. Sometimes church is hard. I saw a cartoon in a church newsletter last week in which a church committee had just ended its meeting- with exhausted people and broken furniture, some people lying on the floor, either tired out or beaten up, one man with a chair crashed over his head, and the chairperson announcing, “All right then, it’s decided, we’ll paint the Sunday

School classroom blue!” All that work and hard feelings for something perfectly unimportant. Church isn’t easy, feelings are involved: we all need to feel loved, to feel hopefulness, and yes, comfort (and maybe blue rooms help!), but those feelings also come with the demand that we live in a way so that others may feel hope and love and kindness. Here, Jesus’ question to the chief priests and scribes and elders becomes a penetrating question to us: is it from God or from our desires and feelings?

Twice Luke mentions the fact that Jesus is in the temple. All this time Jesus has been on the way to Jerusalem, and now he is here, and the last week of his life he teaches every day in the temple. Each other time we have seen him he has been in synagogues around Galilee and dealing with Pharisees and synagogue leaders in other towns, but now he is in the capital city, the seat of government, the center of the Judaic religion, and these are professional religious men who are the best educated and most influential, and who have the most to lose if change occurs. So

Jesus’ question is very direct “which part of your religion comes from God?” We cannot know precisely what Jesus taught in the temple, but we should infer that it was somewhat different from the lessons of the chief priests and scribes. His teaching was a challenge to them, for it welcomed and inspired the people and they were captivated by what he taught.

This is the first time in Jesus’ adult life Luke shows him in the temple.

Maybe you recall much earlier in the gospel his parents taking him to the temple to consecrate his birth and to offer sacrifices, and there the old man, Simeon, who recognized the child as the Messiah, and the old woman, Anna, who praised God and told everyone about Jesus and the redeeming of Jerusalem. Maybe you remember the story of the 12-year-old Jesus who stayed behind that time after the journey to Jerusalem for Passover, and his parents found him three days later, in the temple, “sitting among the teachers,” who were “amazed at his understanding and his answers.” So, yes he had been to the temple before on two extraordinary occasions. In our passage it seems the religious leaders at the temple were wrong about Jesus- didn’t understand him, not because they should have remembered that baby of long ago or the wise pre-teen, but because they should have known him by his teaching. As we have read the gospel, we have known from the first who gave him such authority. Simeon and Anna proclaimed it, the 12-year-old boy displayed it, John the Baptist prepared the way for him, and his actions and words in the temple show that his authority had come from God. Every part of his life belonged to God.

And so, we may ask again, “which parts of what we do here are from God and which are our own?” Some may say that worship isn’t really worship unless we have singing and prayers and a sermon. Those are things we must do, yes, they are expressions of our faith, they perhaps draw us to God, but they are our expressions. The songs we sing, the manner and focus of our prayers are based upon our understanding of God. The words I use in preaching are based upon my interpretation of the gospel. Our acts of worship are a mixture of our feelings about religion, our understanding of the commandments and grace, and God’s word. They are hard to separate sometimes, and anyone might want to ask, “By whose authority do you do these things? Which part of all this comes from God?”

But I think there is one part that comes directly from God and not out of our interpretation or our feelings. It is what we do right now. At the Lord’s Table, the call comes from the Lord to meet him here: to worship, to give thanks, and to confess his authority,

Earlier, I asked if the question of the religious leaders to Jesus was sincere. We may be undecided except for this telling phrase from verse 47, “they sought to destroy him.” These men must have been so fervent in their faith, and they must have believed true religion is so important, that that they could permit nothing to question it. It seems to me much of the world thinks that same way about religion.

But religion ceases to be worship of God when it tries to kill in God’s name. In this scripture, the chief priests and scribes and elders were wrong, not just because they did not recognize the Messiah, not only because they tried to destroy God’s chosen one, but because they sought to kill for God. Perhaps the question becomes most pointed here, “which parts come from God, and which are our own?” They are our wrong ideas, and it is bloody-handed sin, at the point where other people become expendable. When we try to destroy, those things are not from God, even though it happens every day in the religious world. We may try to justify our actions toward and our attitudes about certain persons or groups of people, but no part of hating or condemning or bullying comes from God. And we can know that we operate under God’s authority only when we love and show mercy to all, and when we help the hungry and the downtrodden, and when we welcome the alien and the outcast.