March 7, 2021
Left with a Mystery
John 2:13-22
I was in the tiny island town of Sobra in Croatia. There is not a lot in Sobra. A restaurant or two and grocery that is a third the size of our narthex. We had a room in an old house on the second story overlooking the bay. The shore was about 15 yards across the street, so I could look out my window and watch the small boats move about.
The water was ice blue and the bay was calm. Each morning I would see this elderly couple come to their boat. The gentleman was certainly 80 and his wife was on a walker and yet they would go down the concrete steps to the water’s edge. He would get into his 16 foot wooden boat. She would negotiate the steps with her walker and then climbing in the boat. The man would crank up the Yamaha boat motor and they would head across the bay. Never could quite figure out where they went to…over there. A few hours later they would return in their boat. They had some fish and….I could see that each time they returned they had a medium sized canvas bag of something that they hauled out of the boat. A picnic lunch? Contraband? More fish? Guns? They didn’t look too nefarious to me. It was a puzzle to figure out and I finally did…the next day. It made perfect sense too…once I figured it out. At least I think it did.
John 2:13-22 contains two great passages. One is about driving the sellers out of the temple.
The other part of todays Gospel of John tells of Jesus predicting that the temple will be destroyed and then in three days will be raised up. The disciples are astounded and baffled. It took 46 years to get the temple to where it is today they said. How can you rebuild it in but three days?
Permit me to set up a story.
Often I go to the Drexel Theatre in Bexley on the SE side of Columbus. Bexley is the home of many Jewish Synagogues and a large Jewish population. I recall a movie I saw there a year or two ago. It was about a Jewish family in NYC and flashbacks to Europe during the time of the Nazi occupation. Several times during the film, the Jewish movie characters would say something…and there would be a collective gasp or spontaneous laughter from the largely Jewish audience. As a Christian guy I was able to glimpse behind the curtain so to speak, of certain cultural phrases and memories that as a Midwestern Christian man, I would not normally be privy to. I saw and heard this movie through different eyes, ears and experiences of those around me.
I’m reading a the Gospel of John
His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The people then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’
Now, stop for a moment. When I read the line just
20The people then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’
I recall very clearly sitting in seminary classrooms in Berkeley as we studied Scripture and I remember professors and Bible Scholars reading passages and then explaining them. I thought the words in the Bible were only the words, but through study I began to see that the words are just two dimensional but knowing the history and the cultural context, the words became alive and three dimensional. I began to see that the Scriptures are more nuanced that I thought possible. “Rebuild a temple in three days?!” Rebuild a temple that took 46 years to build in the first place?
Jesus is speaking of the re-building of his body in three days after it is destroyed on the cross. We’ve read it before, we do realize that Jesus speaks oft times in metaphors and stories that almost hide their true meaning. And besides, all you have to do to understand what Jesus is speaking about concerning the re-building of the temple in three days…is to read the final lines of the passage where it says…
But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Of course they believed. But it took some time and as we see… hindsight is 20/20.
But wait, I have a Post Script for the sermon today. Remember that elderly couple who got in their boat each morning and disappeared across the bay and returned with a canvas bag of something or other? It’s not really a great mystery or even a satisfying end to a mystery. Turns out that all they had was a canvas bag of wood. The wood, I believe was for the restaurant next door for their wood fired ovens. A little extra cash for these pensioners. Nothing too confounding about all that. Though upon closer inspection I noted that the firewood had been cut by a chain saw…and how those two managed a chain saw remains a mystery to me.
But, I like that you and I are left with a mystery. Amen