John 2:13-2228
Rethinking the Worth of Worship
By Pastor John Eich Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Alma, MI
John 2:13–22
The Jewish Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money changers sitting at tables. 15He made a whip of cords and drove everyone out of the temple courts, along with the sheep and oxen. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those selling doves he said, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a place of business!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 So the Jews responded, “What sign are you going to show us to prove you can do these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” 20 The Jews said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple! And you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. 22When Jesus was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this. Then they believed the Scripture and what Jesus had said.
What gets in the way of your worship? You can probably come up with a long list. How we feel, whether we had an argument in the car on the way to church, if our kids are rambunctious during the service, if the pastor or the subject that Sunday isn’t interesting. All of those things and so much more can get in the way of worship.
I wonder about our commercialization of faith and worship. The church with the slickest advertising, the most throbbing music, the most dynamic preacher, or the most delicious coffee and donuts seems to attract the most attention.
I wonder about the personalization of worship. Some complain: “I don’t get anything out of worship at your church.” I get that. Everybody has different tastes. Others are even more blunt, “Worship doesn’t do anything for me.”
Are those ideas of worship Jesus would shake up? Would he say “wait a minute you’ve got it all wrong. You are missing the focus and purpose of worship?”
So I come back to the question, “What gets in our way of truly worshiping God?” What cleansing do we need to do this Lent that will free us to more fully worship God?
In our text, Jesus enters the temple to celebrate the Passover. Instantly he is surrounded by the commercialism which had become a part of the Jews daily worship. During Passover, moneychangers and merchants did big business. Those who came from foreign countries had to have their money changed into temple currency because this was the only money accepted for the temple tax and for the purchase of the sacrificial animals used during Passover.
Now selling animals and exchanging money was not wrong. Normally, you bought animals and exchanged money outside the temple’s outer court, called the Court of the Gentiles. Since the Gentiles were not allowed to enter into the inner court and worship with the Jews, there was an outer area for them to worship. But now these peddlers set up shop right there in the Gentiles’ worship space. Can you imagine what that did to the Gentiles’ worship?
Imagine someone bringing a barn into our church. As you pray, a cow steps on your foot. You lift your eyes up to heaven in prayer and cannot help but notice a sheep butting heads with another sheep. The lemony pine smell of your incense blends in with the pungent odor of manure. You try to sing, but someone shouts over you: “Exchange your money here!”
Jesus was angry because all of that had caused something to get lost in the shuffle. That something was the most important thing of all. The forgiveness of God. So in anger Jesus overturns tables and scatters the money. He makes a whip out of cords and drives men and animals from the Temple.
This is not the Jesus we’re used to seeing! It is not gentle Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. It is not the Jesus who dines with tax collectors and sinners and touches untouchable lepers. And yet this is not a different Jesus. This is Jesus still acting out of love and caring for His people. This is Jesus’ love that cannot stand by and watch people lose worship’s true blessing - forgiveness.
It's easy to lose the purpose of worship. Our lives can become so commercialized with the ideas of this world that we have little or no desire to pray, or study God’s word. They can become so busy that we can’t imagine being still before the Lord. Our lives can become so personalized that the thought of serving God or others seems an interruption. Worldly filth can spoil our worship - Greed. Pride. Arrogance. The stubbornness to refuse admitting that you are wrong. Refusal to admit that your lifestyle actually does not match up to God’s commandments. Thinking that your cursing and swearing is acceptable; that your thoughts are yours to think. Your heart can get filled up with all this filth.
If this spiritual filth remains there, then, like these Passover-marketers, you find no reason for Jesus, even if you go through the motions like so many of the Jews of Jesus’ day did. Worship is no longer a hunger for the forgiveness you need, but a desire to get what you want. It’s an empty habit. So many of those who say “I don’t get anything out of worship” are looking for the wrong thing. They are looking for fast-food in a gourmet restaurant.
We don’t go to worship looking to be comfortable. Sometimes the sanctuary is too hot, or too cold. Sometimes there are crying babies or someone has a coughing fit. The reason we attend worship is not to be comfortable, but to be comforted by receiving God’s precious gift of forgiveness.
We don’t go to church to get rules for a better life. We already have those anyway – the Ten Commandments. If we could keep those we wouldn’t need any other rules. But we can’t even keep those simple commands, so why add to the burden of more rules we can’t keep? We worship to be assured of forgiveness for every commandment we have break – which is all of them.
We don’t go to church to get excited. Many want God to be their cheerleader. They want to hear how proud he is of them. But if hearing about the forgiveness of your sins doesn’t excite you, then you don’t realize the severity of your sin. The Jewish offerings pictured that. Constantly the scream of dying animals, the smell of burning flesh and the pools of blood causing them to slip as they walked, reminded them how serious sin was and how much they needed forgiveness. Or at least it should have. Unfortunately the rush of daily living, the lure of money, and the apathy of self-righteousness took the meaning out of their worship.
Many Christians assume that the word “worship” is the same as the word “praise.” This is why many churches, even Lutheran, have a “Praise Service” or a “Praise Team”. The first word for worship that occurs in Genesis actually means to “bow down.” Bowing down is quiet and reverent and submissive. But the lure of the exciting can rob us of being still and knowing God.
Look at Jesus in bloody sweat in Gethsemane’s garden. See the torment of body and soul of God’s perfect Son dying for your sin on the dark enshrouded cross. To pay for your sin God had to die. No animal sacrifice would cut it. Not even your eternal torment in hell would pay for your sin. The sinless, perfect, and holy God had to sacrifice himself willingly for your forgiveness. How could that not bring comfort and passion.
St. Paul wrote, “we preach Christ crucified.” Not a God we can control to hand out the blessings we want. Not a God who is content to let us go our own ways, or who ignores our wrongful actions. We proclaim the holy Son who worshipped His Father in perfect obedience that lead to him sacrificing himself on the cross. He is holy, unstained, while you are stained with the guilt of your sin. Your lack of holiness and perfection is covered by Jesus. This means that when you feel condemned by your sins, when you know you deserve temporal and eternal punishment, when you feel shame, guilt, sorrow, Jesus stands with you before His Father and speaks on your behalf. You are forgiven! You are saved!
When we are confronted by our sins and accused by satan, we need that assurance. That’s why we worship!
As much as we know that worship is about God, we somehow manage to make it about ourselves: how we feel, how passionate we are. We tend to measure worship by crowd size, volume, or how attentive others are. What we are missing is that our desires, planning, and actions aren’t the essence of worship. The essence has been taking place from time eternal. The work of our salvation.
Acceptable worship does not start with human intuition or inventiveness, but with the action of God. In worship, God invites us to join him in what he is already doing. Our response, initiated by God, grounded in the reconciling work of Christ, and enabled by his Spirit, is to gladly participate in the perfect worship of Jesus, who through his once-and-for all sacrifice has made all our offerings acceptable to God (1 Peter 2:5).
Far from being a moment in a Christian meeting God-honoring worship is the natural state of our hearts when we seek to “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). That’s real worship, whether in this building, in your home or on the street.
The season of Lent is an opportunity for us all to rethink our worship, to be sure that God’ grace is why we are here. Amen.