On Going to Jerusalem

 

On Going to Jerusalem

October 20, 2021

 

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

That Jesus’ earthly life ended in Jerusalem is as well established as any other fact about him. The Gospel of John differs from the other three in that it has Jesus go to Jerusalem more than once in the course of his ministry. In the others he only goes once, or at least he only goes once if you don’t consider Luke’s story about him going there at the age of twelve to be about Jesus as an adult or you disregard it altogether as unhistorical and essentially meaningless like I do. In the Gospel of Luke he was in Jerusalem as an infant, but that detail really doesn’t matter for my purposes here. The turning point in the Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the canonical gospels, comes when he begins his fateful journey to Jerusalem. See Mark 10:32. In all four Gospels Jesus’ earthly life ends in Jerusalem when the Romans (not the Jews) crucified him as a political troublemaker. For the sake of simplicity I will consider Jesus’ fateful final journey to Jerusalem to be his only one.

Of course Jesus wasn’t from Jerusalem or anywhere else in Judea. He was from Nazareth in Galilee, at least a three day’s walk north of Jerusalem. (The Microsoft maps app says Nazareth is about 90 miles from Jerusalem.) He began his ministry there, and in all four Gospels (even in John) he conducted most of his ministry there. He didn’t have to go to Jerusalem. He could have stayed in Galilee and probably died a natural death. Surely he knew that Jerusalem was a much more dangerous place for him to be than Galilee was. It was the largest Jewish city by far. There had been anti-Roman uprisings there before, so the Romans were especially sensitive to anyone stirring up the people there. Especially at Passover, which is when Jesus went there, the Romans strengthened their presence in the city by bringing in more troops. At that time the Governor Pontius Pilate, who most of the time was in Caesarea Maritima, a Roman city over on the coast, came to Jerusalem so he could more directly control the troops and thus control the crowds. The Romans were always on the lookout for trouble in Jerusalem, especially at Passover, a fact that made Jesus’ going there at that time even more dangerous.

Mark has Jesus predict three times that he would be killed in Jerusalem. Whether the historical person Jesus of Nazareth actually knew what would happen to him there we don’t know, but he must have known the he assumed a terrible risk when he went there. Yet he went. As the Gospels tell the story he spent the last week of his earthly life there and was indeed executed on a cross as a threat to public order. Why? Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem when as far as we can see he didn’t have to? The answer to that question tells us a lot about Jesus and what one of the major facets of his ministry was all about.

To understand why Jesus went to Jerusalem we have to understand just what that city was in the life of the Jewish people of Jesus’ time. It was the economic center of the region, but its place in the life of the Jewish faithful was more important than that. Jerusalem was the seat of Judaism’s religious authorities. It’s where the temple was, the only temple the Jews of Jesus’ time recognized as authentic. At the temple were the clergy of the faith, most importantly for our purposes the priests and the scribes. They controlled the faith life of first century CE Jews in both Judea and Galilee. The heart of the organized, institutionalized structure of first century Judaism was there. The Jewish institutions of Jerusalem decided all questions in the Jewish faith. If one were going to bring about any fundamental transformation of first century Judaism they had to do it in Jerusalem.

OK, so Jesus went to Jerusalem, the place where the central institutions of his faith were located. But why did that matter to him? He had followers in Galilee. He could have stayed there with them, which would have been a much safer thing for him to do. He had to have had some powerfully compelling reason to leave his home and the place of his ministry and go to Jerusalem, and indeed he did. Jesus went to Jerusalem because he was so convinced that the people of those central institutions of the faith were getting that faith all wrong. He went there to disclose their error and to proclaim what he knew his Jewish faith was truly about.

In Jerusalem Jesus did not less than overthrow the governing institutions and people of the Jewish faith at the time. He didn’t do it physically, he did it symbolically. He did it not as a violent revolutionary but as a prophet in the tradition of the great Hebrew prophets of the eighth century BCE Isaiah, Amos, and Micah. We see him doing precisely that in two powerful stories from the Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the canonical Gospels. They are his prediction of the destruction of the temple and his prophetic act of overturning the tables of the moneychangers and disrupting the selling of animals there. I’ll take a look at both of those stories here to explain what I mean.

The story of Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple is found at Mark 12:38-13:2. The fact that our numbering system puts a chapter break just before the end of the story has no significance. That break wasn’t in the original and many later texts of Mark. The story has three parts. The first and the last of them frame the middle one. That structure tells us that all three parts belong together and that to understand the story we must consider all three of them.

In the first part of the story we read that Jesus is teaching in the temple. He said:

 

Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation. Mark 12:38-40.

 

The “scribes” Jesus mentions here were temple officials whose primary job was writing out copies of the Jewish scriptures especially the Torah. Together with the priests they constituted recognized authorities on the meaning of the Jewish scriptures and what those scriptures meant for the Jewish life of faith. The most important thing for our purposes that Jesus says about them here is that they “devour widows’ houses.” By “houses” he doesn’t mean just the places where widows lived. He means that the scribes (and by implication the priests) took everything widows’ owned.

The second part of this account is the famous story of the “widow’s mite.” In this part of the story Jesus observes people putting money into what the text calls the temple’s “treasury.” That’s probably a sort of collection box where people put the money they were giving to the temple. We’re told that many rich people put in large amounts of money. Then we read:

 

A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he [Jesus] called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’ Mark 12:41-44.

 

Here’s the important point to take from this part of story. No matter how many stewardship sermons you may have heard based on “the widows’ mite,” this story is not about generous giving to the church. The widow in this story is not being generous. We must take the text seriously when it says she put in everything she had, all she had to live on. She was poor, and now she is completely without any resources at all. Given the circumstances of the time, unless she could get some money by begging or prostitution she would starve to death. She isn’t being generous, she is attempting to pay what part she could of the temple tax the temple authorities said every Jew was to pay. She’s been told all her life that she would be a sinner if she didn’t pay that tax. She has come to the end of her resources, so in what was certainly a desperate attempt to get right with God before she died she gives the temple everything she had left. The temple has indeed devoured her house.

The third part of the story is Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. We read:

 

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings! Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left upon another; all will be thrown down. Mark 13:1-2.

 

We see that this three part structure goes like this:

 

1.       Jesus says the temple authorities “devour widows’ houses,” that is they take everything a poor widow (there was hardly any other kind) has.

2.       A poor widow comes and puts in the temple’s collection box all she has, all she had to live on. The temple has devoured her “house.”

3.       The temple, the house of the officials who devour widows’ houses, will itself be destroyed.

 

There will be consequences of what the temple and its officials have done to this poor widow and certainly countless others like her. The “house” of those officials, the Jerusalem temple, the symbol of Jewish faith and the power of the priests and the scribes, will be destroyed. Those religious officials who abuse their power in order to glorify themselves and oppress the poor will have done to them what they have been doing to others, especially to the poor. To Jesus the temple and its officials were so corrupt that they had no more right to exist. Overthrow the whole thing, he said. Tear it all down, he said. God will tear it all down because of the way the temple’s clergy oppressed the poor for their own benefit. Jesus telling his disciple that it would all be torn down is him making a prophetic statement about the wrongs of the temple and about what people of faith really ought to be about.

Next we consider the famous story usually (and grossly wrongly) called “the cleansing of the temple.” A version of this story appears in all four Gospels, though John sets it early Jesus’ ministry rather than at the end of it the way the other three Gospels do. Mark’s version is the oldest. You’ll find it at Mark 11:11-19. We read that the first thing Jesus did after he entered Jerusalem was go to the temple. The text says:

 

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. Mark 11:15-16.

 

It is true that Mark’s text has Jesus explain his actions by saying: “Is it not written: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.” Mark 11:17. Yet this story surely has a much deeper meaning than that those doing business in the temple were ripping off their customers. What might that deeper meaning be?

To understand what this story is really about we must understand that Jesus was not “cleansing” the temple. Who were the people he drove out of it? They were money changers and sellers of doves. But why were there money changers in the temple at all? And why were people selling doves there? They were there because what they did was necessary for the temple to function the way it was meant to function. We saw in the story of the widow’s mite that people contributed money to the temple. Roman money was the only money there was, and it was all coins not paper. The coins usually had the image of the Roman emperor on them. Some of them had the words “Divii Filius,” which means son of the Divine One. To the Jewish way of thinking those coins were impure. They were defiled. They were idolatrous. The temple could not accept them. So the money changers were there so that the people could exchange their unacceptable Roman money for special money that the temple could accept. The temple could not function without them. It did not need to be “cleansed” of them. They weren’t defiling it, they were enabling it to function the way it was supposed to function.

The same is true of the sellers of doves in the temple. The worship in the Jerusalem temple consisted mostly of animal sacrifice, which the Torah law specified must be done under certain specific circumstances. Forgiveness of sin was one of those circumstances, but there were others as well. People offered animals which the priests sacrificed, that is, killed as an offering to God. The temple was in effect a giant slaughterhouse. But people couldn’t bring any old animal to be sacrificed. We read a condemnation of the offering of imperfect animals in the book of Malachi:

 

O priests, who despise my [Yahweh’s] name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food on my altar. And you say, ‘How have we polluted it?’ By thinking that the Lord’s table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not wrong? Malachi 1:6c-8a.

 

The temple clergy taught that only healthy, whole animals could be sacrificed. The only way the people could be sure the animals they offered for sacrifice were animals the priests would accept was to buy them from specialized sellers at the temple. So there were people in the outer courtyard of the temple selling ritually adequate animals to be sacrificed. They weren’t desecrating the place. The temple didn’t need to be “cleansed” of them. Like the money changers they were essential to the temple’s proper functioning. So Jesus’ prophetic act in the temple wasn’t to “cleanse” it. It was symbolically to overthrow it.

That, I think, is why Jesus went to Jerusalem. He knew that all that animal sacrifice wasn’t what God wanted. He knew that the people didn’t need priests acting as intermediaries between them and God. He knew that oppression and exploitation of the poor wasn’t what God wanted. He knew that at least the organized, institutionalized expression of the great Jewish faith needed radical transformation if it were to become more faithful to the God it claimed to serve than it was. He could not make a truly profound expression of what he knew to be true out in the hinterlands of Galilee. He could not perform a truly prophetic act to demonstrate the truth he knew there. He could do those things only in Jerusalem. That’s where the beating heart of Judaism was. Jesus knew his mission and ministry had to lead him there if he were to complete it, so he went. There he preached, he taught, he demonstrated, he suffered, he died, and he rose again. He would not have fulfilled his life’s mission had he not gone, so he went.

Now, I have long insisted that the Bible stories, the great ones at least, are not just about what happened to other people a long time ago in a place far away. These ancient stories arose in times very different from ours, but they retain their power because they are also about us. I mean by that that we can find meaning in them for ourselves and for our world. If we couldn’t these stories would have faded into historical obscurity and be of interest only to those odd creatures called historians ( and I confess to being one of those myself). The story of Jesus going to Jerusalem tells us not to accept uncritically what so-called religious authorities tell you about your faith. Do your own informed discernment. That’s an important issue for all of us.

I, however, am more concerned with a different question that arises for me as I read of Jesus going to Jerusalem and what he did there. See, I am Christian clergy. I’m retired now, but I’m still an ordained Christian minister. When I read this story I put myself not in Jesus’ place in it (something it’s always inappropriate to do in any case), and not even in the disciples’ place in it. I put myself in the place of the Jewish clergy, the priests and the scribes of the Jerusalem temple. They represented the religious power structure of their day. I’m ordained in the United Church of Christ, a small and mostly very liberal Christian denomination with really no power in the world other than the word. Still, I’m ordained and have served in a religious institution. This story causes me to ask: What would Jesus say the religious institutions of today are getting wrong like the temple authorities of his day got wrong? That is of course an extremely broad question. There are after all more religious institutions in the world today than I can even begin to know of much less offer informed critique of, and they’re getting all sorts of things wrong. Here I will limit my remarks to the type of religious institution with which I am most familiar, the Protestant Christian denominations, including my own United Church of Christ, that we used to call mainline. I’ll treat them collectively, for they all share a lot of faults in common.

Mainline Protestant Christianity has been in decline in the United States for a very long time. All sorts of polling and analysis have been done to try to figure out why, but for now ignore all that polling and analysis. The question before us here is: What would Jesus say mainline Protestant Christian institutions are getting wrong? I have nowhere near enough hubris to claim to speak for Jesus. Still, there is one major critique against those institutions that I am bold enough to believe Jesus would share with us. Here it is.

You have not been telling the people the truth! You have let fear of losing members and their money keep you from telling the people the truths your ordained people, or at least most of them, learned in seminary. You have instead played to the people’s preexisting beliefs and prejudices. You have not shared with them understandings of faith generally and Christianity in particular that would be new and probably challenging for them. You have not adequately challenged conservative Christian evangelicalism with its narrowly conservative ethics and biblical literalism. You have let that bastardized version of the faith become the dominant, most visible face of Christianity in your country. Because you have done and not done these things Christianity has become and is becoming more and more irrelevant and unacceptable to most of the people in your context.

Here in no particular order of importance are a few of the things that are central to true Christianity that you have not adequately shared with your people:

 

·       God is transcendent mystery. You humans can never fully comprehend who or what God is. Your call is to live in and with that divine mystery not to solve it.

·       Truth consists of more than facts. Mythic and symbolic truth is far deeper and more powerful than mere factual truth.

·       God’s grace is universal and totally unconditional. God has already extended it to everyone not because of who they are but because of who God is.

·       Jesus was hardly at all about what you have to do to get your soul to heaven after you die.

·       You don’t have to do anything to get your soul to heaven after you die. You certainly don’t have to have believed any particular thing to get your soul to heaven after you die.

·       There is no such thing as hell.

·       Thoughts and beliefs do matter, but they matter mostly because they lead to actions. Proper thoughts and beliefs lead to proper actions, improper thoughts and beliefs lead to improper actions.

·       Faith without works is useless for everyone except perhaps for the spiritual needs of the person holding the faith.

·       Jesus was a radical, nonviolent revolutionary who sought to turn every conventional belief, custom, and institution in his world upside down. He calls us to do the same in our world.

·       Because God’s grace is universal and unconditional, and because of the conditions of human existence, there is no one way to God. Christian exclusivism is an abomination.

·       God is nonviolent. Period.

·       God calls all people away from violence and toward creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil. That after all is what Jesus did.

·       God is love, and God’s love so far exceeds any human conception of love that you can never truly understand it. You don’t understand it, you stand under it.

·       God calls all people to lives of love, acceptance, and inclusivity not to hate condemnation and exclusion.

·       No human institution, including especially the church, has ever been, is, or ever will be perfect. They all need constant renewal and reformation.

·       God is neither a Puritan nor a Victorian. Victorian sexual ethics are not from God.

·       Sex, like everything else, must be grounded in love not in rules.

·       The Bible is a human product. God didn’t write it. God loved the people who wrote it but gave them no special revelation about what they were to write. They wrote of their experience of God not something that came directly from God.

·       Because it is human not divine the Bible is full of contradictions and falsehoods as well as full of truth and wisdom. Use love as your guide to what to take and what to reject from it.

·       Symbol and myth are the language of faith. Read the Bible stories for their mythic meaning (if a particular story has any—not all of them do). Don’t get hung up on mere facts.

·       Most of all, God loves you. Period. God loves everyone. Period.

·       God calls everyone to love God, all people, and themselves. Whatever expresses love is true. Whatever contradicts it is false.

 

You have had all of these truths available to you for a very long time. You’ve sat on them. You haven’t asserted them nearly strongly enough either to your church people or to the world. You haven’t gone to Jerusalem the way Jesus did. You haven’t challenged conventional human truth, you’ve surrendered to it. Knock it off! Go to Jerusalem! Turn your world upside down in the name of love! Don’t delay, do it now! It may yet not be too late.