Last week I wrote a post on the first half of John 2 and today I am finishing my thoughts on the chapter. I must admit I love the second half of the chapter. Perhaps it’s juvenile, but I love that Jesus gets mad. Real mad. Here is the scene: Jerusalem has swelled from roughly 60,000 people to over 250,000 because of Passover- a religious event commemorating God’s protection of the Israelite people throughout history.
In Old Testament times, God established animal sacrifice as a means for his chosen people to atone for their sins. The wrath of God would be executed on the animal instead. People are spared. Animals die. Animal sacrifice continued in Jesus’ day. And since faithful Jews came from long distances, they would not travel with their soon-to-be-executed animal. Instead they would buy animals at the temple. Convenient, right?
Since Jews came from various regions there were a handful of currencies in use, but the temple only accepted one. So money changers would set up shop a month before Passover and exchange “foreign” currencies for the accepted Tyrian coin. Also convenient, right? One problem. Their exchange rate was grossly inflated above the accepted rate. Somebody was getting rich. The money changers were (no surprise), but another group was too. The temple officials. The guys who ran the show. The guys in charge of maintaining the purity of the temple. Remember, the temple is where Jews experienced God, where God revealed his glory. One author has called it “the place where heaven and earth collided.” Are you beginning to sense the root of Jesus’ anger?
Try to imagine the scene: tens of thousands of people packed into a small area and trying to buy and sell animals and exchange money. It was pure chaos. You might guess this madness occurred outside the temple walls. It did not. It was going on in the area designated for the Gentiles (non-Jews) to worship God. These people could not have possibly been able to pray. So the temple, already segregated by ethnicity, was now making it impossible for these Gentiles to worship God.
The economic exploitation, coupled with the flagrant disregard for the Gentile people, pushes Jesus over the edge. He makes a whip of cords and starts driving people and animals out of the temple…I always envision Jesus whipping people like we do with a wet towel! He flips over the money changers’ tables. He taunts the temple officials by saying: “Destroy this place and in three days I will raise it up.”
Things are about to change. They’ll never be the same. Jesus’ words and actions have such terribly deep meaning. What do they all mean? I’ll do my best to answer that question in my next post.
Late last night my dear friend Mark and I took a prayer walk through the campus here in Kent. As we walked we presented our prayers to God, asking Him to move mightily through our young church. Our prayers were saturated with a deep sense of desperation. We unashamedly admitted how entirely incapable we are to bring revolution to Kent State University. We pledged our submission to any changes- no matter how radical- God may have in store for our church; indeed we welcomed God to shipwreck our plans if they don’t align with his mission at Kent State. We asked Jesus to draw to himself near to the students we’ve met who are far from him. We committed to engaging students in God’s work of justice in our ever-broken world.
In the midst of our prayers for our church and for others, Mark uttered a different prayer- one that caught me off guard. He said to Jesus: “We’ve come to be changed.” As he continued this prayer, I began to understand and appreciate his words. Those of us (who moved to Kent to see God establish a church) came not only to join God in changing other people’s lives; we came to be changed ourselves.
You see, God’s work of transformation and restoration in person’s life is never complete. While we long to see God move in the hearts of young people, at the same time we desperately need him to change us too. The beauty of this experience thus far is that in the midst of calling others to renewal, I am being renewed myself. In the midst of sharing the gospel message, I am learning that message afresh. God is not just changing Kent State; he is changing our church plant team.
Our church is studying the Gospel of John for the next few months. This past Sunday I taught on the second chapter of the gospel. Not a dull chapter at all. Jesus launches his public ministry by resurrecting a dead wedding reception. The groom was facing serious social embarrassment when the wine ran out; it was his responsibility to make sure everyone had food and wine. Since weddings were entire-town affairs and lasted seven days, hundreds of people were standing around waiting for a new “keg” to be rolled in. Jesus turns a couple of twenty-gallon jugs of water into wine.
Cool story, for sure. But what does it really mean? Jesus condones the use of alcohol? Jesus felt sorry for the poor groom? Jesus wanted to show off his miraculous powers?
Actually, none of these are right. Jesus is here asserting his Messiahship. He is claiming to be the long-awaiting Savior who ushers in the new Kingdom of God. Old Testament writings claimed that at the coming of the final kingdom there would be an abundance of wine. And most of the people at the wedding reception would have known this. The hope of a Messiah was deeply embedded in Jewish culture; the people lived with an anticipation and expectancy for this promised King.
This kingdom is often described as a wedding banquet. So, the message of the wine is that the messianic age has started. God is unveiling his new plan for the salvation of his lost people…and the plan is Jesus.
So what do you think? What else might this sign reveal? How do you interpret it?
I’m not really a fan of stand-up comedians, mostly because I find their content to be crude and demeaning to certain groups of people. But one day about five years ago while channel-surfing I stopped at Comedy Central to watch a guy named Brian Regan. I figured he’d be like the majority of other comedians. But he wasn’t. I watched the entire hour and was laughing so hard tears were coming down my face. For Christmas last year, my wife Tiffany bought us tickets to see him live in Columbus. It was one of the coolest things I’ve experienced. So, if you haven’t heard or seen him yet, here you go:
I remember my excitement three years ago when I first heard my church was planning to plant a new church in a new city. Almost immediately I enlisted in the future endeavor, though the location of the new church was not then known. Perhaps it’s just my cavalier nature, but the prospect of being a church planter stirred my soul. I started dreaming about what it would look like to help start a church from scratch. Having become familiar with the church I had been working for, I was ready for the unfamiliar, the unknown…
…Or so I thought I was. The few weeks have been a crash course of sorts in church planting. I have realized just how uncomfortable are the unknown and the unfamiliar. We leaders committed to not doing any advertising or large-scale events so that our church plant team would learn to live missionally- faithfully seeking to make Jesus known in the context of true relationships with people. In fact, our church doesn’t have any programs or events other than Sunday night worship.
Seeking to develop natural friendships with other students and young people at Kent has been my mission since everyone moved back into town last week. This has been one of the most unfamiliar things for me. I had become so accustomed to simply pursuing friendships within the church. But now there aren’t hundreds of people standing around at our services. There are no programs to connect me with others. There’s not much of anything…and it’s been the most gratifying place I’ve been in a long time.
Our entire church community lives with a real desperation for God. We need him to connect us with others, to reveal himself to others through us, and to grow our little church. We are missionaries gripped by the dream of seeing young people encounter Jesus. This dream makes the awkwardness and discomfort of it all bearable.
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