Did you see the Super Bowl last month? Over 110 million people watched it; the most-watched television program ever. Not all those who go to Super Bowl parties are football fans, they just like the conviviality, the food and drink. But whether they are fans or not almost everyone will stop to look at the commercials during the game, because big sponsors roll out new and attention-getting commercials. After the game an informal poll is taken, “Which commercial did you like the best?” Those commercials cost millions to make and broadcast. Their audience is vast and the sponsors seize the opportunity to show their products in the best light possible. After all, they are trying to attract customers to their products.
So what’s wrong with St. Paul today? Isn’t his mission to show Jesus in the best possible light so he’ll be acceptable to as many people as possible? What’s all this talk about Jesus being a “stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles?” Why point to God’s foolishness and weakness in the crucified Christ? I want to say to Paul, “What kind of sales pitch is that Paul? Let’s get with the program Paul and display Jesus in a more appealing way so that people won’t turn away — as they did and still do — when you mention the cross!
Paul knew his contemporary Jews and Greeks wouldn’t be initially attracted to the crucified Christ. Crucifixion was a punishment for criminals, hardly a drawing card for the masses. The Greeks wanted a heroic figure, not a defeated and humiliated one. The Jews wanted a powerful Messiah to lead them out from under the Roman yoke to independence in the land God had promised them. They expected God’s Messiah to perform sensational signs of power on Israel’s behalf. Throughout his ministry Jesus had to contend with his opponents’ insistence on signs to prove his validity (e.g. John 4:48; Matthew 16:4).
Still, Paul did not shrink from proclaiming the mystery of Christ’s suffering and death which could only be penetrated through faith. Even today some preachers shrink from Paul’s message of Christ crucified and instead preach a gospel of prosperity and success. A person of faith, they proclaim, will be rewarded by God in this life with “blessings.” (These preachers also urge people to express their faith by generous donations.)
Only the “called,” Paul says, are capable of seeing the wisdom of God in Christ crucified. Others will always be “outsiders” to the mystery — trying to make sense of God’s “foolishness.” One has to have the eye of an “insider.”
The Greek Christians in Corinth would place a high value on knowledge and the ability to think logically in order to come to a “sensible conclusion.” We are that way too, aren’t we? But where’s the logic, sensibility and neatness in a crucified Messiah? Rather than believe and put faith in a sensible and reasonable God, throughout First Corinthians Paul has called upon the community to see the love God has lavished on them in Christ and he has challenged them to imitate that love by loving and serving one another. There is to be no separation in the community; none are to receive special treatment, but all are to live and be treated as equals.
Some (Many?) believers still tend to see God at work only in the successes of their lives: our well-behaved and prosperous children; our secure jobs; our respectability in society; our good health and our long lives, etc. We are tempted to think God is absent, even displeased with us, when things fall apart and our lives seem to be directed more by a trickster, than by a loving God. At these times, when we feel lost and abandoned, we cling to Paul’s message that God’s “foolishness” is our wisdom. Indeed, God is more present when God feels absent — just as God never abandoned Christ, even as he hung on the cross.
Paul was not naive; he knew his message was indeed controversial to his Jewish and Gentile contemporaries. But is the self-sacrifice and generous love Jesus exhibited to us on the cross any less ridiculous and nonsensical to our contemporaries? Why should anyone deny themselves or willingly suffer for another? Where is the “blessing” in self-denial? What a scandal the cross was to ancient ears, and to our ears as well.
We call today’s gospel the “cleansing of the Temple.” We also tend to quickly pass judgment on the trade and commerce that seem to have invaded a place meant for worship. As the kids might say in judgment, “How gross!” Imagine businesses setting up shop in a sacred place! But that’s not exactly what was happening. The Temple itself was a small building with outside courts. Only specific priests were allowed to enter the inner Temple. There were courts outside for priests, women, men and Gentiles. There were places where devout Jewish pilgrims could exchange their Roman coins (forbidden for Temple use because of the graven images on them) for Jewish coins, in order to purchase animals for sacrifice.
The other gospel accounts of the cleansing are placed at the end of the gospels — before Jesus’ passion and death. But John places the story at the beginning of his gospel and Jesus quotes Psalm 69-10 as his reason for his actions. “Zeal for your house will consume me.” (The gospel writers were less concerned with chronological details than with the theological meaning of the events they describe.)
Jesus’ opponents want to know what “sign” Jesus will give them to justify his actions. When he tells them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” they take him literally. How can he rebuild a Temple that has been under construction for 46 years in just three days? Then the gospel writer speaks directly to us, “He was speaking of his body.” John tells us that the cleansing takes place at Passover time. (Later John will also tell the account of Jesus’ death in terms of the Passover.) Thus, the believer is confronted early in this gospel with its focus on Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection.
Jesus’ opponents take him literally when he speaks about destroying the Temple and raising it up in three days. But the believer sees another meaning. Jesus isn’t speaking of an earthly temple, but himself; the expression “raise” is the same one John uses to describe Jesus’ resurrection — hinting at post-resurrection belief.)
Today’s gospel is just one example of Jesus struggle with religious leaders who, though they should have known better, had misinterpreted his mission. There is always the danger and history has confirmed, that religion can get sidetracked and its values diluted. (For example a recent book, “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World,” By Cullen Murphy, is about one of those “sidetracks” we made in our church, the Spanish Inquisition.)
As I travel giving parish retreats I’m often struck by how beautiful most of the physical churches I visit are. Even the humblest show the care their congregations and staff took in building and maintaining them. John isn’t attacking those institutions or their religious practices in this story of the cleansing of the Temple. But among other things, he is warning us to put first things first: our devotion and relationship with God comes first, not the design of the buildings, or the structuring of our liturgical practices.