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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Since the Palestinian group Hamas attacked the State of Israel in October, hardly a day seems to go by that we do not read or hear some accusations of anti‑Semitism—usually understood as hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. Anti‑Semitism sensitivity seems to be off the scale—so much so, that any apparently critical statement about either the State of Israel, or those who are Jews ethnically, or those who are Jews religiously, is called “anti‑Semitic”. Religious anti‑Semitism is sometimes distinguished from what is called “anti‑Judaism”, which is then said to include such views as the complete abrogation of God’s covenant with Moses and the appropriation and adaptation of Old Testament Scripture. Does that label “anti‑Judaism” sound to you as if it could be applied to Christianity? It often is. Especially the Holy Gospel according to St. John is sometimes said to be “anti‑Semitic”, and no doubt that in today’s Gospel Reading even the Lord Jesus could be accused of “anti‑Judaism. However, considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, this morning, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we realize that “Jesus is Pro-Judaism (properly understood)”.
Likely written decades after the Romans destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem—destroyed them arguably because of “Jewish nationalism”—the Holy Gospel according to St. John in some ways seems to “diminish” the Temple. For example, the Prologue to the Gospel account describes the eternal Word’s becoming flesh and “tabernacling” among people, showing forth glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:14), which glory normally would have been associated with first the Old Testament Tabernacle and then the Temple but instead is associated with Jesus. Similarly, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus Himself refers to His body as a fleshly “temple”. Yet, in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus is initially concerned about the right use of the stone Temple and its Courts, referring to Scripture (Zechariah 14:21) as He fulfills Scripture (Psalm 69:9) by at a minimum “relocating” the Scripturally necessary sale of sacrificial animals and exchange of currency (Deuteronomy 14:24‑26). And, although Jesus had foretold the eventual destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem (for example, Mark 13:1-36), even after His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, His apostles continued to use the Temple Courts in order to reach out to the religious Jews (for example, Acts 2:46; 5:42), until those religious Jews’ apparent hatred of the Christians resulted in the religious Jews’ persecuting the Church in Jerusalem and so scattering the Christian believers throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:1).
Also in those places, the Christians continued to reach out to religious Jews and Gentiles, as their Lord had done before them. Even in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus is concerned about both Jews and Gentiles: likely clearing the Court of the Gentiles so that they could pray for forgiveness (confer 1 Kings 8:30, 41-43) and calling the religious Jews to repentance so that they could be forgiven. Jesus did not hate the religious Jews, but Jesus loved them. Likewise, Jesus loves us and calls us to repent. We do not completely abrogate God’s covenant with Moses, but we let God use that covenant’s moral code—the Ten Commandments, which we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Exodus 20:1‑17)—in order to show us our sin: our sin against one another, but especially our sin against God. By our sin, we provoke God to a righteous jealousy, as Jesus was provoked to a righteous zealousness for the right use of His Father’s House. Because of our sin and our sinful nature, we deserve nothing but both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. In some ways, God’s letting us go to hell would be “easier” than His loving us by calling and so enabling us to repent (Hoem, CPR 34:2, p.24)! Yet, God calls us to repent, and, when we do so turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive us, then God does forgive us, for Jesus’s sake.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus essentially confessed Himself to be both true God and true man: true God as the Son of God the Father and as capable of raising Himself, and true man as able to be destroyed. The sign that He gave to the Jews essentially commanded the Jews to destroy Him, and later the Jews garbled His statement (Schrenk, TDNT 3:243) and turned it from prophetic to political (Bruce, New Testament History, 189-190), as they ironically brought about both the sign for which they had asked Jesus and the end of the Temple as a place of sacrifice for sin (Morris, ad loc John 2:19, p.175). Mocked with that garbled statement while hanging on the cross (for example, Mark 15:29), Jesus hung on the cross as our substitute. And, in parts of three days, He raised Himself up! Fulfilling properly understood Old Testament Scripture (for example, Isaiah 52:13-53:12), Jesus was the true Passover Lamb of God Who took away the sin of the world, including your sin and my sin. By grace for Jesus’s sake, through faith in Him, we are saved! As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 1:18-31), Jesus, in some sense, is our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; to us who are being saved, the saving power of God comes through the word of His cross.
Notably, in today’s Gospel Reading, the Holy Spirit led Jesus’s disciples both to remember the Old Testament Scriptures and the things that Jesus said and did and to put their faith in them equally. In verses that follow in St. John’s Gospel account, Jesus speaks about both the need to be born from above by water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism in order to enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:1-8) and the need to eat His flesh and drink His blood in the Holy Supper in order to have life in one and be raised to life on the Last Day (John 6:53-55), and, on His apostles and so also on their successors, Jesus breathes out the Holy Spirit with the authority to forgive sins and withhold forgiveness, as in Holy Absolution and excommunication (John 20:21-23). Truly, not only is Jesus a temple of God, but, as St. Paul writes elsewhere, the body of believers in the Church is likewise a temple of God (for example, 1 Corinthians 6:19), in no small part because the Triune God abides in each one us, especially as we feed on Jesus’s flesh and drink His blood (John 6:56; confer John 14:23).
Once, in expounding today’s Gospel Reading, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther explained that Jesus Himself used force in driving out the animals but forbid His apostles the use of force, because Jesus was, as it were, between the Old and New Testament, sometimes acting as Moses or the prophets would have acted and sometimes acting as He expected His apostles and their successors to act. Likewise, Luther distinguished between the Church and the secular government, telling the preachers to keep their hands off of the secular government, and telling the secular rulers to keep their hands off of the Church, and noting that the devil wants to mix the two up so that neither prospers. No one in the Church, Luther says, should imitate the example of Christ in using force or the secular government. (Luther, ad loc John 2:15, AE 22:221-228.) Even if at one time the United States was in some sense a Christian nation, our primary focus as the Church should not be what might be called “Christian nationalism”, making civil laws that reflect Christianity, much less re‑establishing the Temple in Jerusalem, as if that Temple is needed in order for Christ to return. As Jesus told Pontius Pilate, Jesus’s Kingdom is not of this world (John 19:36), but the day will come when the kingdom of the world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever (Revelation 11:15). Until then, our primary focus as the Church should be preaching both God’s moral law and God’s Gospel so that people repent and believe, as did many in the Gospel Reading, when they saw the miraculous signs that Jesus was doing.
“Jesus is Pro-Judaism (properly understood)”, and so are we. In no way do we hate ethnic or religious Jews or consider them or their beliefs, properly understood, to be inferior. As we live in the forgiveness of sins, so we also want them to live in the forgiveness of sins. For, as we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 19:1-14; antiphon: v.8), the fear of the Lord—that is, faith in Him—is clean—that is, morally and ethically clean—enduring forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +