Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome ~Jn 2:13-22~ Susan McGurgan, D.Min.

High up on the shelf in my Sunday School classroom, there was a picture book about the life of Jesus. It had been written and illustrated long before I was born and its pages were fragile and yellow with age.

The Jesus in that book—and the Jesus I met in most of the pictures I saw as a child, was a gentle man with a faraway smile.  

Some pictures showed him sitting quietly with a sheep across his shoulders or a child upon his knee. Others showed him standing in a meadow, gazing up at the sky, or walking along the shore of Lake Galilee.

 Those were the boring pictures.

But even the exciting ones—illustrations that pictured Jesus driving money changers from the temple or arguing with the Pharisees, never really showed him as angry or impatient. He never looked like the kind of person who might call someone a fool or a viper, or the type of man who would heave a table full of coins across a crowded courtyard and send cages filled with doves flying through the air.  

Our teachers told us that he was so popular, that crowds followed him everywhere. But the man in those pictures didn’t look as if he had ever laughed so hard, he fell backward out of his chair, like the most popular boy in Miss Studebaker’s class—and he didn’t look like someone who might know all the best jokes, even the ones you couldn’t tell your mother.

 And although Jesus must have walked along the dusty roads of Palestine, his robe always looked clean. The pictures never showed him with blisters on his feet or knots in his hair. He never looked sweaty or grimy or just plain worn out the way we looked after we played tetherball at recess.

It is hard, looking at those images,  to imagine Jesus so angry that he made a whip of cords, and drove oxen out into the streets.  

We were supposed to love Jesus. We were supposed to be just like him: meek and mild and tame.

 The problem was, most of us weren’t.

 But frankly, neither was he.

 Yet, we absorbed that image of Jesus along with our graham crackers and milk. Those illustrations were as much a part of our religious formation as learning the Creed and knowing when to kneel or stand. And those images helped shape our own sense of life, and faith, and the journey of discipleship, often blinding us to the reality of righteous anger, urgency, and the hard work of justice.

 But what about the Jesus we finally discover, if and when, we read Scripture through adult eyes?

--The Jesus who speaks sarcastically at clueless disciples?

--The Jesus who utters difficult sayings and makes troubling demands?

--The Jesus who eats and drinks with the dregs of society?

--The Jesus who applies a sharp pin to institutions and people filled with hot air?

--The Jesus who refuses to pick up an earthly crown or use temporal power?

--The Jesus who repeatedly states that he is heading towards the cross?

The Jesus who overturns things?

What do we make of this Jesus? The Jesus who confronts hypocrisy and injustice –not meekly, but with a shout and the crack of a whip?

This Jesus isn’t quite so meek and mild. He is not so much interested in carrying us forever as little lambs upon his back, as he is turning our hands toward justice; turning our hearts toward the poor; opening our eyes to religious hypocrisy; turning our faces towards Calvary and our feet toward the cross.  

This Jesus is not so much interested in keeping his robe clean as he is in plunging into whatever faces him—

The hungry crowd

The deep water,

The life of prayer,

The troubling demands,

And in this reading,

the problem of trying to buy and sell holiness.  

The real Jesus we encounter as adults may not be quite as tame or quite as comforting as the Jesus of our childhood picture books. It is true, he calls us to generous love and humble service. And yes, he reminds us to turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile.  He teaches us that receiving a child in his name is like receiving him in person.

But there is nothing tame or boring here.

The adult Jesus upsets our plans and challenges our beliefs. He overturns our expectations as thoroughly and as abruptly as he overturned the tables of the money changers and the cages of the merchants.

This week’s reading invites us into this world of an adult Jesus. The Jesus who is impatient with people who try to monetize God and turn a profit on holiness. This Jesus should still challenge us, because moneychangers with their tables and goods didn’t disappear with the fall of the temple—they simply morphed into something a bit more subtle.  

Instead of oxen, it’s a $500 a plate political fundraiser masquerading as a “prayer breakfast.” Instead of a cage full of doves, it is a slick social media campaign shilling the latest publication from a pin-up priest. Instead of Temple coins, it is Church communities sitting on hefty bank accounts while around the corner, children are hungry.

In our landscape, what would Jesus overturn?  What would make his eyes flash and his fist clench around a whip? What would shatter and break under his keen gaze? What needs to be thrown aside?

If we let Jesus out of the pages of a picture book and into our lives and communities, what would we hear and see?

We can avoid hard questions, turn the page, carefully straighten the picture of Jesus holding a lamb over his shoulder....or we can follow Him.

Wherever it takes us.