George A. Mason Third Sunday in Lent Wilshire Baptist Church 4 March 2018 Dallas, Texas “Location, Location, Location” John 2:13-22 I was in Durham, North Carolina, camping out. It’s quite a on Thursday for my last board tradition. meeting of the Duke Divinity School before rotating off. I was If you’ve ever bought or sold real staying with my friend, Curtis estate, you know the maxim: Freeman, who teaches there. We location, location, location. The parked in the faculty lot in front same is true of opening a of Cameron Indoor Stadium, restaurant or retail business or where Duke’s basketball team even a church. The value of the plays. It was 40 degrees and property has a lot to do with its raining outside, but that didn’t location. Sometimes location has stop the undergrads from to do with where it is: a high camping out in tents as they elevation or near a body of water prepared to secure their place in or, in the case of apartments in line for student access to the New York City, proximity to a Duke-North Carolina game that subway station. Sometimes was played there last night. Duke location has to do with access. won, by the way. Can people get to it or get in it? In that case, some property Cameron Indoor is one of the values are better if people can, as smallest college venues for one with retail or restaurants. And in of America’s most successful other cases, the harder it is to basketball programs. Duke get access, as in a residential seems to think that the cramped gated community or Cameron atmosphere is part of the charm. Indoor, the higher the value. The small size makes people want to get in by making it hard Near the beginning of John’s to get in. So the so-called Gospel, Jesus goes to the place of Cameron Crazies make a big deal the highest-value real estate in of trying to gain access. The lawn the world, the Temple in where they camp is named Jerusalem, and he pitches a fit. Krzyzewskiville for the It’s Passover time, and the legendary Coach K, Mike population of Jerusalem has Krzyzewski, who sometimes swelled to capacity. Pilgrims orders pizzas for everyone from all over the Near East have come to offer sacrifices to God in except for one day of the year on the Temple. But because they the Day of Atonement. have had to travel so far, they didn’t bring their own cattle, Otherwise, the Temple consisted sheep or doves with them. of four courts, arranged in Temple merchants were happy relationship to Judaism’s notion to accommodate. They sold these of human holiness. Closest to the animals to the supplicants and Holy of Holies was the Court of made a handsome profit. What’s the Priests (Levites only), then more, they took another cut by the Court of Israel (Jewish men exchanging Roman currency, only), then the Court of Women which couldn’t be used to pay (Jewish women only), and finally the temple tax because of the the outer court, where all this image of the emperor on the business of buying and selling coins. This wasn’t a problem for was going on—the Court of the the rich, but the poor were being Gentiles. It was an elaborate exploited because they believed layout designed on notions of that their only access to God’s purity that gave the best location blessing was by means of their to the worthiest in the hierarchy Temple sacrifice. of creation. Compounding this problem was In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the way access to the Temple Jesus goes into the Temple in the was granted. People were last week of his life to “cleanse” considered more or less holy, it, we say. That is, he wanted to not on the basis of their cleanse the Temple of its unholy relationship to God and their commercialism and return it to a faithfulness in keeping the house of prayer for all people. He commandments, but simply by was killed a few days later, as virtue of who they were. prophets of any time will be when they start messing with That is, only the High Priest people’s money. could enter the Holy of Holies to be nearest to the presence of Pastors understand this fact God, who was said to reside in well. There’s a God we can talk the Ark of the Covenant, which about on Sunday who cares held the stone tablets of the Ten about your spiritual life, your Commandments. It was a small heart, your generalized feeling of room and otherwise off-limits, sin and repentance. No problem 2 there. “Good job, preacher.” But cherished in the time of Jesus business is business. There’s was this temple that King Herod another god of the marketplace, had started building 46 years who runs things with an earlier. It was built to replace invisible hand and won’t have Solomon’s Temple, which had the preacher interfering. Don’t been destroyed centuries earlier. talk about payday lenders who Solomon’s Temple had replaced charge people 700 percent the mobile tabernacle that interest and claim that it’s a contained the Ark of the service to the poor. Don’t talk Covenant during the time that about the money that buys Israel was traveling to the politicians and makes them go Promised Land. Israel had the mute in the face of schoolkids sense that God’s presence was being massacred by military- localized in a place, and that style guns. access to it was a privilege for some more than others. Don’t talk about the morality of access to health care or a living By the time John wrote his wage or a higher quality of Gospel, Herod’s temple in public education: the Jerusalem also had been marketplace will sort all that out destroyed. In AD 70 the Romans in its magical way. And that had had enough of Jewish magic somehow ends in greater rebellions, and he scattered misery for some. them to the countryside, leveling the temple that is still in ruins in But here in John’s Gospel, Jesus Jerusalem today. John and the goes to the Temple, and the other disciples remembered parts of the event that John Jesus’ provocative act a remembers include this back generation earlier, when he and forth about the Temple talked about how the temple itself. Here, Jesus isn’t just trying would be destroyed and raised to cleanse the Temple and again in three days. The religious reform it; he is replacing it leaders thought he was talking altogether by claiming that his about the stone temple they own body is the true location of were standing in, but Jesus was God’s presence. talking on two levels at the same time. The physical temple would The only location of God’s be destroyed, but he was laying presence that Jews knew and the foundation for something 3 eternal. The temple of his own politics that always has winners body would also be destroyed by and losers, the only identity that his crucifixion, but it would be matters for the whole world now raised immortal on the third day. is that God was in Christ Jesus. God took on a human identity in This encounter signaled a major Jesus in order that every human shift in the history of biblical would have equal access to God. religion. The first location had to No buying and selling cattle or give way to the second, the sheep or doves to gain access. No temple of wood and stone to the being a priest or a man or a temple of flesh and bone— convert to the right religion or Christ’s flesh and bone. setting up a tent to get your place before someone else. Now After the Jerusalem temple was God has drawn the whole world destroyed, it isn’t that into God’s own presence through Christianity arose to replace the flesh and bone of Jesus Judaism, because Judaism itself Christ. was reinvented as a rabbinic movement. Religious devotion This is why the church must be would not be tied to a physical in relationship with all other location; it would consist of a human beings. Since God would community of prayer, study and become one with us, we can’t deeds of lovingkindness. But keep up this outdated religious already other Jews—those who practice of trying to locate the believed in Jesus—had presence of God in some people remembered Jesus’ words and and not in others. We can look shifted the location of their for Christ everywhere and not be religious devotion to where they afraid that our associations with experienced the presence of God, certain kinds of people are which was in relationship to the somehow polluting or diluting living Christ through his Spirit our relationship to God. If God among them as the church. In had felt that way, God would both cases, the shift was to a never have moved the location of people rather than a place. God’s presence from the temple of wood and stone to the temple This is a stunning religious of Christ’s flesh and bone. claim. It means that instead of jockeying for access to God by But that truth leads to the last playing the game of identity location in our spiritual mantra: 4 “location, location, location.” If connected with Danny, whose the church is the body of Christ, full name is Fidan Rizvanolli— we do our best witnessing to the which is why he goes by Danny, presence of God in the world don’t you know?! Danny is from when we are working to break Kosovo and has been here for down all the walls that divide three-and-a-half years.