Palm/Passion Sunday
13 April 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
TEMPLES
Mark 11.11-21, 13.1-2
Following Jesus Through the Gospel of Mark
This morning, and continuing Thursday night and Friday night – we will be walking with Jesus and his disciples through the final days of Jesus’ life. We call it Palm-Passion Week.
It begins on a Sunday with the entry into Jerusalem, which we partially re-enacted this morning, processing into the sanctuary with palms led by our children. Jesus carefully planned this entry as a prophetic action: “Who is this king of glory? Not a God mighty in battle, riding on a stallion, but a God on a lowly donkey, riding toward death.” He was to be a different Messiah than the one people wanted or expected.
As he enters Jerusalem the crowds lay their cloaks on the road. Something of a poor man’s red carpet treatment. But the simplicity of it is a gorgeous sight! These hopeful peasants wave palm branches and sing, Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
After entering Jerusalem, Jesus goes directly to the temple and, Mark says, “He looked around at everything.” And then left with the twelve and went to Bethany for the night.
The next day after a night’s reflection – (did he toss and turn?) – he walks by a fig tree looking for something to eat. He found nothing but leaves. It wasn’t the season for figs. But still he curses the fig tree, saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Mark makes a point to say,“And the disciples heard it.”
Then Jesus, in a fit of righteous rage, reenters the temple and drives out the money changers, turning over the tables and chairs of those who were selling pigeons. He quotes the prophets of old: Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people and all nations”? But you have made it a den of thieves.
Mark says, “He would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.” In short – Jesus called off church! What is going on here?
Well, the temple was the sacred center of the Jewish world. It connected this world to its source in God. It was believed to be God’s special dwelling place on earth. To be in the temple was to be in God’s presence. The temple gave one access to God. It was a center of devotion, the destination of Jewish pilgrimage.
The presence of money changers and animal sellers were legitimate and necessary for the temple’s normal functioning. Money changers were needed so that pilgrims could pay the temple tax in the approved coinage. Buying animals or birds on site was the only way pilgrims could be sure the creatures were ritually appropriate for sacrifice.
However, the coinage exchange rate had taken on the nature of a Payday Lending Company, charging exorbitant fees, making the religious and political officials even wealthier. And the animals did not meet the requirements for sacrifice. So here in the temple the religious elite and the money-hungry politically powerful were exploiting peasant pilgrims who had no alternative. This is the reason Jesus lost it in the temple. He named it for the blasphemy that it was!
The God of the Bible is a God of justice. And when worship ignores (or worse) promotes economic exploitation and social injustice, God rejects God’s temple and God’s church. What happened to the fig tree is a parable of what will happen to the temple.
The chief priests and scribes know exactly what Jesus is saying. He is threatening their authority and positions of power. So they intensify their search for a way to kill him. They were afraid of him, Mark says, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.
They had reason to be afraid – as do we all. Because Jesus, in judging the temple, is calling us to repent of all our religion which has become a haven for the rich and powerful and the ways of injustice and exclusion, instead of a house of prayer for all people.
We don’t mean, not one of us, for our religion to turn out this way. But it does sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes without realizing we hide behind our injustice when we favor the wealthy and well-connected and clarify who is excluded, or we use the language of faith to claim that “God is in control of everything” and “whatever happens is God’s will.” Sometimes Jesus needs to overturn our theological tables in order for us to face the truth about our systems of injustice and oppression.
What about you? Are there any tables that need turning over in your temple today? In this temple? It’s important work. Because in the judgment of our temples there is a saving cleansing for ourselves that frees us to love God and neighbor and experience the grace of God more fully and allows the kingdom of God within us to flourish in the world around us. Where does Jesus need to turn over some tables in the temple of your life and mine?
After pronouncing judgment on the temple on Monday, Jesus enters the city Tuesday morning. Peter sees the fig tree Jesus cursed the day before. It has withered away to its roots. It’s a parable of the temple, of religion that has lost its moorings.
Jesus spends the day in the temple with his disciples, and as they are leaving one of his disciples says, Look, Teacher! What large stones! What great buildings! The holy temple – planned by King David, built by King Solomon a thousand years before Jesus, destroyed 600 years before Jesus by Nebuchadnezzar, then rebuilt in the five decades before Jesus by Herod the Great. It was a massive and magnificent temple, triply walled with massive stones. Believed by many to be indestructible. Set on Mount Moriah, golden and gleaming against the sun so that travelers could see it half way from Jericho. The holy center of faith.
And Jesus says to his disciples, You see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another. All will be thrown down.
The disciples want to know when these things will take place. Well, they are likely taking place as Mark writes his gospel in the 60s and 70s of the first century. In 66 AD, the Zealots mounted a major revolt against Rome. Emperor Nero sent his finest general Vespatian with 60,000 soldiers to quell the uprising. By April of 70, Vespatian was Emperor and he sent his son Titus to seize Jerusalem. The temple was stormed and burned. A sheet of fire covered the entire temple mount. Those huge beautiful stones carved and set in seemingly invincible beauty were pulled to the ground. Not one stone, not one stone left unturned upon another. The city was leveled to the ground. The high priesthood abolished. The temple and all that went with it had fallen in. Can you even begin to imagine the horror?
What’s going on here? It appears that Jesus is preparing his disciples for a time when they would have to live without the temple. And perhaps he was preparing us all for those days when our sacred temples fall in.
Which temples of yours have fallen in? When has the center of your life collapsed? When have you lost your faith? When have you seen your ideals crumble? Once high and bright and shining with the sun, now not one stone left upon another.
Which of your childhood temples have fallen in? A religion that perhaps said to you when you were growing up, “If you obey all the rules, everything will be okay.” And you’ve lived as moral and faithful a life as you can live, and now it’s all caved in around you.
What about your health temple? You’ve run hard into a truth that says your body has limits. You took your health for granted and now you find that you may be losing it.
What about your family temple? The family you thought would stay together forever is now torn apart by divorce or forever altered by disease or has been diminished by death.
Is it your career temple that has fallen in? All the goals and plans you had for your life have been wiped out by circumstance or failure. What do you do when your life and career crumble around you?
What about your church temple – the longing for the church that used to be, but is no more.
What do you do when your temples fall in? Well, you follow, we follow, one who said,“Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.” And this time Jesus was not talking about the Jewish temple. He was talking about his body and the resurrection of the body.
“For we know,” says Paul, “if our earthly house, this tent in which we live is destroyed, we have a home from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” A promise that will become reality when Jesus returns, a time for which Jesus tells us to watch and pray.
As difficult as it is to endure the crumbling of our temples, I do not know of any great faith that has not come from the ashes of temples that have fallen in. I do not know any great Christian who has not been brought through great suffering.
And when our temples crumble – the temples of childhood, career, health, family, and church – there is the opportunity to experience deep in our bones the gospel, the good news, as we hear God say to us through the prophet Isaiah, I have called you by name and you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you. And through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. For I am your God, your Savior.
Can you hear the good news of hope? The One who said, “There shall not be one stone left upon another,” also said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I shall raise it up.” In the face of so many fallen temples, resurrection is on the horizon.
The One strung up on a Roman cross said, “In this world you will have tribulation – the grinding of terrible tribulation of temples that fall in – but be of good courage, he said, for I have overcome the world.” It is only the crucified Messiah who can hold us up when our temples fall in. The idols of our temples crumbling and we are left with only God. The crucified and risen One is with us always, everywhere, even until the end of time, transforming the darkness, salvaging the wreckage of our lives. That is the One we follow, in whom we hope, when our temples fall in.