3/4/18 “Tipping Point: A Generation’s Temple Cleansing Moment” by Nancy Petty

Text: Exodus 20:1-4; John 2:13-22

Tipping point is the point in a situation at which a minor development precipitates a crisis. Growing up, my grandmother called this “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Whenever my sister and I would get into trouble with our parents we would head for our grandmother’s house that was nestled on the farm about 200 yards up the road from our house. We would run as fast as we could and bust through the front door screaming, “Hide us, hide us. We are in trouble.” Mama Lillian would look at us with her sassy eyes and say, “Lord children, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back this time?” As a child, I didn’t understand the phrase but I certainly knew what the question meant. Translate: “What did you do this time?” And our response always started, “We just…” Whatever we had done seemed so minor in our eyes. But to the adults, it was the final “minor something” that precipitated the frightening explosion.

If you are like me, the kind of tipping point that can send a minor development into a crisis can occur regularly. Like yesterday in the parking lot of Whole Foods. Along with the fish I had bought for dinner, I had bought a small container of cut up watermelon. After paying for my food and walking to the car I had placed my grocery bag in the back seat of the car and gotten out of it the container of watermelon that I was going to eat on the drive home as a treat. As I was opening the front door of the car with my watermelon in hand, my phone rang. Now, as I was juggling the container of fruit with one hand while trying to open the car door with my keys in the other hand and acting like I had a third hand trying to get my phone out of my pocket to answer it, I dropped my beloved container of watermelon to the ground. The top of the container flung half way across the parking lot along with my red juicy cut up pieces of watermelon—all 5 pieces that had cost me $5.00. As I looked down at my unsalvageable pieces of juicy delight, comingled with dirt, I became angry and then I began to weep. As small and insignificant as it was, my watermelon strewn across the Whole Foods parking lot was a tipping point moment for me.

But was it the lost watermelon that was the crisis or was the watermelon the tipping point—the precipitating factor that drew tears from my eyes? This past week, I have been reflecting on loss. The loss of a dear friend whose ashes I scattered this week. The nearing loss of a valued colleague. The inevitable loss of a beloved pet that I have had for nearly 16 years. The loss of my youth that became painfully obvious after running up and down Hillsborough Street leading a justice march only to be followed by a week of not being able to hardly walk on my feet. The loss of innocence thinking that the “American dream” was real for those who sought it and that I lived in a country that did “right” when it comes to justice and kindness and opportunity. No, it wasn’t the watermelon. The watermelon was the tipping point in a series of losses—it was, as my grandmother used to say, “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” The season of Lent has a way of inviting us into tipping point moments as we contemplate in these days loss and death. And that is what brought the tears as I stood in the Whole Foods parking lot.

Our gospel reading for today, the story of Jesus cleaning of the temple, presents a picture of a tipping point moment in Jesus’ life. An observant reader of John’s gospel will immediately recognize that his account varies from the other gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Rather than place Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple at the end of Jesus’ public ministry, as the synoptic gospels do, John places it at the beginning of his gospel. Why? One theologian writes:

Because of distinct theological agendas…the Gospels are confessions of faith from the first century rather than historical accounts of the twenty-first century. So each difference provides us with a clue to the distinct confession of faith the particular evangelist offers. In this case, the synoptic writers cast the disruption in the Temple as the final provocative act of Jesus that precipitates his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. John, however, uses this same scene to announce the inauguration of a new era, one in which the grace of God is no longer mediated or accessed through cultic sacrifice but instead is available to all who receive Jesus as God’s [incarnation in the world].

…not only [is] the timing of Jesus’ actions different in John, but so is the accusation he levels at the moneychangers. Rather than accuse them of turning the Temple into a “den of robbers” – accusing them, that is, of defrauding the poor – Jesus instead says they have turned the Temple into a market place. Ironically, however, the Temple had to be a market place – or at least have a market place – so as to enable devout Jews to purchase animals for sacrifice and to change the Imperial coin for the local currency with which to make such purchases. So when Jesus drives the animals out of the Temple, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and demands the end of buying and selling, he is really announcing the end of this way of relating to God. (David Lose, Working Preacher)

The way John tells the story, God no longer dwells primarily, let alone exclusively, in the Temple. Instead, as John confesses in the opening verses of his account, Jesus invites us to experience God’s grace upon grace (1:17) through our faith in God. Given that John’s account was written well after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, his insistence – and perhaps reassurance – to his community that they would find God’s mercy in Christ outside rather than inside the Temple makes practical as well as theological sense.

It is my opinion, that this theological position—that God cannot be contained within the walls of an institution or bought by exclusive rituals of the wealthy and powerful—is what moved Jesus to his tipping point. His whole ministry had been about how all people had access to God, God’s love and grace—especially those who did not have access to the Temple, “the church.” He himself had walked uncounted miles to take the good news of God’s love and redeeming power to those who could not, were not allowed to enter the temple—to the woman at the well, to two Gardarene demoniacs, to a wee little man hold up in a tree, to the blind and lame and sick by the pools of Bethesda and Siloam, and the leper standing at the bottom of the mountain who cried out to Jesus to make him clean. Jesus was finished, done with a religion/a faith that was boxed in, hold up, contained, locked away in a building that demanded payment, that practiced litmus tests, and offered exclusive rituals to the powerful and wealthy, practices that had little to no relevance to God’s transforming love and grace in the world.

By the time he entered the Temple that day, the frustration and anger and sadness of people not getting his message of inclusion and justice-love, chief among the offenders his own disciples, had been growing and intensifying. And in that tipping point moment the altars of wealth were turned over, institutional practices of exclusion flew across the ground like my watermelon in the Whole Foods parking lot, the oppressed were set free and those in power scattered to find cover—the old way was being challenged and a new reality was being ushered in. Tipping point moments are like that. They break open the way to a new reality. And in the case of the temple cleansing that new reality was a whole new way of relating to a God who could not and would not be confined within the walls of a church, or through practices that are accessible to some and not to others.

Since February 14 we have seen a generation’s temple cleansing, tipping point moment. The tipping point came when a 19-year-old with an assault-style rifle entered Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and killed 14 students and 3 adults. As you know, that school shooting marked the 18th school shooting in 2018. What you may not know is that there have been 164 school shootings in this country in the last decade. And with each of those 164 school shootings the frustration and anger and sadness around gun violence in our schools has been building and intensifying with a generation that has had to endure the gun violence first hand. A generation of youth have watched as their classmates and teachers have been killed by guns while sitting in classrooms designed for learning not hiding; and walking hallways where the noise should be laughter not the popping sounds bullets. And this generation is saying “no more.” No more!

Their temple cleansing moment—their tipping point—is ushering in a new reality. They are turning over the altars of complacency as they protest with their student walkouts. They are exposing the moneychangers of the gun industry and our political system. They don’t know it but they are challenging the US Constitution’s Second Amendment with the Bible’s Second Commandment. Yes, this nation has made an idol of the second amendment (the right to own a gun) and ignored the second commandment (you shall not make for yourself an idol). Just listen to the debate: guns have become an idol in this country, a focus of our nations worship at this moment in our history. But listen also to the words of one Boston high school junior.

Bulletproof Teen

Run, if you can
Hide, if you can’t
If neither, fight
The fighting isn’t to save you
It’s to save the next class, the next hall
It’s to give them a couple more seconds
To get there, to stop it
I am a child, a teenager
But, I am also a bulletproof vest
A diversion
A fighting chance for the others
Hope in the form of a distraction
I am blood and flesh
But I need to be Kevlar and fabric
Minimal casualties
Minimal children dead
Minimal little girls and boys
Minimal college applications
Minimal honors students
And minimal teachers and coaches
But, not none.
The Constitution doesn’t allow for none.
That document is living
But will I be?

Katie Houde
Junior at a Boston High School

There is hope for change. A generation has reached its tipping point with this idolatry and they are ushering in a new reality. They are taking to heart the words of Malcolm Gladwell: “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.” This generation is following the tradition of a young and fearless prophet who walked into the temple thousands of years ago and disturbed the idol worship of a people who had lost their way, too. Jesus’ tipping point broke open a new way of relating to God—a way that took God from being locked inside a building and put God out into the world where hate could be met with love, suffering with compassion, despair with hope, and death with life. And in that tipping point moment a new reality was ushered in.

As people of faith, we are called to look at the world around us and see, where with the slightest push, we can tip hate toward love, violence toward peace, fear toward courage, suffering toward healing compassion, despair toward hope and death toward life. These tipping point moments are constantly presenting themselves to us. The Lenten question for us is this: Will our eyes be open to see them and will our spirit be willing to push ever so slightly so that we may do our part in tipping the world toward being the kingdom God envisioned here on this earth, within our hearts. The current generation is doing their pushing, and not so slightly. May God bless them and protect them in these days. And may we, like them, have the courage to do our pushing.