Lent III: Driven out of the Temple

by the Rev’d Dr Hugh Kempster (Lent 3; 7th March 2021); Ex. 20:1-17; Ps. 19; 1 Cor. 1:18, 22-25; Jn 2:13 - 25

 In today’s gospel, St John the Evangelist re-tells the dramatic account of Jesus making a whip of cords and driving out the sellers of sacrificial animals and money changers from the Temple. It is a tale told in the Synoptic gospels as our Lord’s last great public act; the final trigger, if you like, that resulted in the lightening rod of the crucifixion.

In John’s gospel, however, it is our Lord’s first public act; the sealing of the first sign, turning water into wine. This is a Messianic act, a declaration, the fulfilling of what was foretold in King David’s Psalmody (69:9) “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me.” St John then introduces the ultimate overarching sign, the end of our Lenten disciplines, the proclamation of the Triduum: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

One of the books I am reading this Lent is A Future That's Bigger Than The Past (2019) by the Rev’d Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martins-in-the-Fields in London. This will be a study text at this year’s Parish Leadership retreat in May, and then we will be running a parish study group, open to everyone, later in the year. In his book Wells comments briefly on today’s gospel passage (pp79-80): “For a lot of people … there’s a lingering memory that Jesus drove money-changers out of the temple, and for some this invalidates commercial activity altogether; but most people realize he was condemning the exploitation of the poor and the instrumentalization of religion for profiteering, rather than discrediting business itself: after all, his family were carpenters.”

The question of the relationship between money and our Christian faith is an important one, perhaps especially so in this time of pandemic. Churches globally are facing a crisis, and we here at St Peter’s are not immune. We are working hard to sustain and rebuild our faith community after nearly a year of on-again off-again lockdowns. The end of March this year is front-of-mind for most parish treasurers, wardens and vicars around Australia as the end of Job Keeper looms. This existential threat is perhaps our Lenten discipline this year. But also, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of all invention.

In his book Sam Wells plots a fascinating history of the church’s relationship to money. Biblically, he argues, there are two influential models that have shaped church practice over the centuries. Firstly, our Lord’s advice to the rich young man (Mark 10:21): “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” One could call this the Franciscan model. Over the centuries many have followed this path of self-emptying mendicancy. I even gave it a try myself, as a young man in India. But it is a hard model to sustain. In 1987 I arrived in New Zealand with no money and carrying every possession I owned in a backpack. I have to confess, when we moved into the St Peter’s Vicarage, Ree and I filled a large removal van with our possessions, and by that stage our retirement home was almost mortgage free.

Another model is drawn from Acts chapter 2 (44-45): “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” This might be termed the Benedictine model, which in the High Middle Ages had become a vast network of powerful wealthy monastic communities, but by the Reformation, in so many places, lay quite literally in ruins. Sam Wells writes: “both models turned out to be flawed when translated into a vision for a whole society. The friars evoked anarchy, while the monasteries generated corruption, wealth and hypocrisy.”

So what of today? Very few of us choose to live the mendicant life, or to sell up and invest in a Christian commune or monastery. The dominant model of church for most Christians today is the parish model, but this too is facing profound challenges in our age, undoubtedly compounded by the pandemic. In a recent letter from one of our bishops, he noted that around 80% of parishes in the Melbourne Diocese had recommenced public worship. That means that 20% of Anglican churches, in February this year, had not yet reopened for public worship. It is a significant collapse, and that’s prior to the end of Job Keeper.

It is easy to feel disheartened. But I think we have a rather important model of church that works here at St Peter’s. I call it the “Community Facing Model.” It is a model of service to those who are not yet Christians. It is a mission-centric model that drives us out of the church in the service of Christ. With this model, our energies are not consumed by our own needs as a faith community, but rather our Eucharist gatherings are a power source, driving us out to engage with the City. And importantly, in these times of fiscal challenge for the church, it is a model that has a commercial sustainability beyond the offertory plate.

We are much smaller, but in many ways we have developed a very similar model here at St Peter’s to that of St Martins-in-the-Fields. Our worship, especially the Mass, is very much the beating heart of who we are as a faith community. But our church life does not stop there. Through our partnership with Anglicare we feed upwards of 50 poor and homeless people 7 days a week, continuing a tradition that began at St Peter’s with Mother Esther’s Mission to the Streets and Lanes in the nineteenth-century depression, and again burst into life in the 1930s with Fr Tucker’s Brotherhood of St Laurence. The conception of our St Peter’s Bookroom also goes back to the time of the Great Depression, and most recently the newly formed St Peter’s Social Enterprise has been feeding international students and others of Melbourne’s “new poor” during the pandemic. Next year we will celebrate 175 years since the founding of the St Peter’s choir, and restrictions-permitting we will continue with our nationally renowned and highly successful choral program. Once we’ve fixed the roof, I expect our parish hall will be once again buzzing with community groups and church-related activities 7 days a week.

I wonder what our Lord would make of this hub of activity, much of it commercial activity, at The Hill? Would he break in, with a whip of chords, to the Bookroom, or the Coffee Caravan, or the Meals Program, or the Film crew hiring the hall, or our next Messiah performance? I think not. Actually, I think he might have already visited us for breakfast, and snuck into the back pew for Tenebrae, and picked up a few meals and a coffee during the last lock down, and perhaps browsed through Carol’s collection of the latest Lenten study guides. I think our Lord would be encouraging us in our zeal to help those in need, our zeal to reach out to those who are not yet Christian.

“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these … you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40).