PALM SUNDAY MARKET
Matthew 21:9-15

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
March 20, 2005 / Palm Sunday

In the churches I attended when I was a child Palm Sunday was a big deal. We had palms and special music, children sang Hosanna, and all the rest. But I have to admit I was an adult before I knew the rest of the story. I never knew that the end of the Palm Sunday procession was Jesus over turning the tables of the money changers in the Temple. I knew that story as well. But I never knew that happened on Palm Sunday until I was an adult.

My childhood leaders had celebrated the parade, but forgot the confrontation.

As a child I had the idea that everyone except a few high priests joined in the Palm Sunday celebration. Now I get a different feeling in reading Matthew. On the one side are the children, the blind, and the lame. On the other side are the priests, the scribes, and the money-changers.

When Jesus set his heart to go to Jerusalem, he apparently set his heart to challenge the materialism of the culture, to challenge a religion that gotten itself all tied up with gold and silver, to challenge a belief system that isolated God behind a trading floor for the best dove or lamb. The end of all this Lenten journey is a challenge to the powers that be.

Let me back up for a word of explanation. The ancient Hebraic religion at Jesus time had only one Temple, the one in Jerusalem. People were expected to make pilgrimages there, and to offer sacrifices to God. The most common sacrifices were doves or lambs. There was an entire economy built around the Temple, and the priests were some of the wealthiest people in the country.

Part of that economy was a trading business. People who were artisans, carpenters, fishermen, arrived without doves or lambs. So there was a whole menagerie of cages and merchants there to sell you just the right lamb, just the right dove. They were making huge profits. And apparently the more you paid, the better lamb or dove you got, the happier God would be with you.

The system was notoriously corrupt, and much money circulated under the table. Some commentators say that it was this corruption that most angered Jesus. But I tend to think that his anger was more based on the system itself: you could barter your way to God. What angered Jesus was the idea that you could buy out God. It was a materialistic system using capital to create an idol instead of God; an idol that loved money and things and not people.

It was a system, as the Pilgrims said, where the rich would live and the poor would die.

So Jesus challenges the system. And the system responds: the blind, the lame, and the children are relieved; the priests, the scribes, and the money changers are angry.

The thirteenth century German mystic Meister Eckhart takes this farther. ¹ Eckhart reminds us that in the new Christian religion the Temple of God is the human body. "Do you not know that you are God’s temple, that God’s spirit dwells in you?" (I Corinthians 3:16). There is no longer any Temple in Jerusalem. Not only has the curtain been torn, but the whole thing is gone. Instead God’s Spirit is available to you.

But then, if you are the temple of God, and the purpose of Jesus Lenten journey is to drive the money changers out of the temple, then what is Jesus asking, expecting, demanding of our own souls?

Eckhart says "The temple God wants to master is the human soul… God wants the temple to be pure, so pure that nothing should dwell there except [God] [God’s] self." But says Eckart "the people who buy and sell… are all merchants. They want to exchange one thing for another to trade with our Lord." The buying and selling in our soul means that we have become merchants within. We sometimes actually do good things, like fasting, or watching, or praying, but we do these things so that God will do something for us. We trade off caring for the poor so that God will do "something [we] ardently want to have done." ²

Our souls are filled with trade rather than gratitude. God does not trade with us. God’s good gifts are exactly that, gifts. As long as we think we can get God to respond by having the right lamb, or the perfect dove, or go to church the most, or talk religious the most, we are still acting like we can control God, that God can be bought and sold, and that God is an economic commodity. None of that is worship. The only posture for worship is gratitude. The children shouting "Hosanna," the blind and lame seem to know that. We need to drive the money changing out of our own soul.

The buying and selling kept going on during Holy Week. The priests gave Judas Iscariot thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus. Its always a trade, a bargain, a transaction.

But there is another aspect that bothers me about this story. It bothers me particularly for I am a minister. You get the sense in this story that the money changers are part of the church system, the religious establishment, the people who set up the high holy days. They are the religious officers of their time.

Are those of us who take leadership in the churches the people most likely to put merchandising into our souls? Do we think that all our efforts will earn us brownie-points in heaven? Or the option of sitting on the right hand of the throne? Or just a little respect, and forbearance, and personal security on Earth?

Look at the story. The blind and the lame and those crying out seem like the estranged, the forgotten, the passed-over, or the passed-by. They seem outside the bargain. And yet, as the Sunday sun seems to fade, they are the ones still celebrating with Jesus on the Temple edge, while in the dark inner sanctums other plans are being staged.

The whole journey of Lent is a journey of confrontation. It is a challenge to the powers that be in our world, in our nations and empires, and in our religion.

But the Lenten journey is also a challenge to the way we see life and the way we relate to God. It is a challenge to all inside of us that wishes to make God into an idol, a puppet that responds to our whim, all that denies God: God’s majesty, and awe, and proper deference.

It is a challenge to us. It suggests that that within us which is lame, that within us which is blind, that within us which is child like – and knows it – these are the parts of our life that may celebrate with Jesus in the Temple; while all the scheming, and the trading, and the merchandising must depart.

Amen.

1 – Eckhart, Meister, "Merchandising Truth", Bread and Wine, (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2003), pp. 107-111.
2 – Ibid., pp.107-108.