Sermon: Angry Eyes

Texts: Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-22

Date: March 19, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

There is a moment in Pixar’s Toy Story 2 that I loved. Mrs. Potato Head was helping Mr. Potato Head get packed up for his epic journey to rescue Woody from the toy collector who had stolen him. You know how the Potato Head toys have the flap in the back that opens up so the various facial features, ears, hats and so forth can be kept inside? She was busy tossing him things he might need in through the flap. At some point she says, “Oh, don’t forget your “Angry Eyes!” and throws them into the mix. He says, “Here I am, Mr. Angry Eyes,” and accidentally pops a pair of shoes into the place where the eyes should be instead. Later on, the angry eyes come in handy; Mr. Potato Head pops them in when they confront the toys trying to keep their friend Woody from coming home with them.

Don’t forget your “angry eyes.” Do you suppose that would be the advice offered to a Christian about to set out on the spiritual journey of following Jesus?

I doubt it—we’d be more likely to advise someone who was intent on following Jesus to leave those “angry eyes” behind. We imagine Jesus with kind eyes, with laughing eyes, with sympathetic eyes, with tear-filled, suffering eyes, but not so much with angry eyes. And yet here he is, in all four gospels, with angry eyes confronting what he sees in the temple.

What exactly was Jesus so bent out of shape about in the Jerusalem temple? He was so enraged that he made a whip out of cords and drove the sheep and the cattle and other sacrificial animals out of the temple, so furious that he turned over the tables of the money changers, sending their coins flying every which-way. Gentle Jesus made quite a little scene there, shouting at the sellers of doves, “Take those things out of here!”

Preacher Barbara Lundblad says that as a kid, she thought she had the story figured out. She knew what Jesus would have been angry about in her neighborhood—the Bingo game down at the Roman Catholic church. She and her Lutheran friends were pretty suspicious of Catholics anyway, and it was easy for her to picture Jesus busting into the social hall, turning over folding tables, sending Bingo cards and markers and the little rotating cage full of balls with letters and numbers on them skittering across the linoleum floor. “Take those things out of here!” she could imagine Jesus shrieking at the shocked Catholics. Somehow she thought their church’s Strawberry Festival and their Rummage Sale would not arouse the same anger.

Is that what this scene was about? The ancient Jewish equivalent of Bingo or a rummage sale going on in the temple courtyard? Would that it were that simple, that all you had to do to avoid Jesus’ angry eyes looking at you was avoid any church activities involving making change for a ten. But it’s not that simple.

There are at least two schools of thought about what was going on behind the angry eyes of Jesus in the temple. The first theory about what made Jesus so mad was that the people selling sacrificial animals and changing money in the temple courtyard were ripping people off and making it particularly difficult for the poor to participate in the rituals of the Jewish religion at the time. As odd as it may seem to us from this distance in history, the practice of Judaism at the time involved a complex system of sacrifices in which one “paid” for one’s sins or gave evidence of one’s gratitude through offering an animal at the temple, an animal which had to pass inspection as a flawless sacrifice. There were also financial gifts to be made, but you couldn’t use the coin of the realm because it had the emperor’s image on it, which was considered blasphemy in the temple coffers. So you had to change your money to temple currency, and the middle man took a cut in the exchange. Jerry Goebel writes in an article about these practices that the expense for a working person was staggering:

Temple tax = 2 days wages

Money Changer’s Share = 1 days wages

Sacrifice Inspector = ½ days wages

Sacrifice = (1 pair of doves outside the temple); 2 days wages

= (1 pair of doves purchased inside the temple—should your offering not be accepted); 40 days wages

In today’s economy, a day at the temple could cost about $3,000—$4,000 dollars and any Jew within 15 miles of temple was required to attend at least one of the three festivals each year. The Roman historian, Josephus, wrote that Passover visitors could number as many as two and a quarter million. This would put revenues from such gatherings at hundreds of millions of current dollars. It is indeed hard to imagine such wealth in the hands of so few. It is harder still to imagine the burden of poverty that it would place on so many. No wonder God’s blood boiled; no wonder Jesus chased these profiteers from the temple![1]

The sacrifice requirements put an undue burden on the poor, and in effect restricted access to God to those who could afford it. Some scholars think this accepted exploitation of the poor was what really cheesed off Jesus.

The other theory is that Jesus was distressed about the way religious ritual had gotten in the way of worshipping a living God. While the practices of sacrifice and tithing were supposed to enhance a person’s relationship to God, Jesus saw that in many instances the religious practice had taken the place of God rather than leading to God. His comments about the temple being raised up in three days, which the disciples later concluded was an oblique way of talking about the resurrection of his body, pointed to an announcement Jesus was making about the new age. In the old days, access to God was through the temple. Now, access to God would be through Jesus. Jesus in John’s gospel teaches over and over again about how God can be freely accessed through him, without religious gatekeepers trying to shut people out if they didn’t have the right stuff. Jesus wanted people to relate to God without any middle men getting in the way.

So according to this school of thought what made Jesus mad was allowing religious people or religious practices to become a barrier to God rather than a help in being in relationship with God. The tricky thing is that people often choose to devote themselves to practices or ideas or leaders that are less than God. Anything that becomes a substitute for being in a covenant with God is, in effect, idol worship. Jesus may well have thought that the system of sacrifices—carrying out sacrifices correctly—had the effect of replacing devotion to God with devotions about God. People were paying off God rather than paying homage to God and trying to live godly lives. And out come the angry eyes.

From this distance in history, there is no way to draw a final conclusion between these two schools of thought about what it was that made Jesus so angry that day in the temple. But it could well have been both things, and since the neglect and exploitation of the poor and the tendency toward idol worship (devoting ourselves to something less than God) are still very much a part of human life, we’d best pay attention. I don’t know about you, but I would very much prefer not to have Christ Jesus making use of his angry eyes when he looks my way.

The general guidance of the Judeo-Christian tradition when it comes to how people who are devoted to God should look upon the neglect and exploitation of the poor is overwhelmingly this: put on your angry eyes. Nothing gets God shouting, particularly in the prophetic books, like the neglect and exploitation of the poor. I could spend hours reading scripture to make this point, but the gospel of Matthew cuts to the chase in the parable of the sheep and goats, so I’ll just refresh your memory about the second half of that:

Matthew 25:32, 41-46
[Mt 25:32] “All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; [33] and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left….

[41] “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; [42] for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; [43] I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ [44] “Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ [45] “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ [46] “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (NAS)

Jim Wallis, commenting on this in his book God’s Politics, says that it has always been striking to him that the people gathered in front of the throne of Jesus all really believe they are among his followers. And they must be completely stunned to learn that they will be separated and judged by how they have treated the poor—the poor! “This judgment is not about right doctrine or good theology, not about personal piety or sexual ethics, not about church leadership or about success in ministry. It’s about how we treated the most vulnerable people in society, whom Jesus calls ‘the least of these.’”[2]

Remember how I told you that Mr. Potato Head initially says he’s going to put on his angry eyes and slaps a pair of shoes over where his eyes are supposed to be instead? We who are pretty darn comfortable need to be careful that we are not doing something like that when we consider how the most vulnerable people in our society are treated—shutting out all the light rather than looking with angry eyes at the neglect of the poor. Even when we reluctantly need to face into a mirror and look at our own selves with those angry eyes.

On to idol worship. The ten commandments make it abundantly clear that God wants us to have no other gods before the one God, the one Lord. “I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” Jealous. Not a pretty word. God will tolerate no rivals for our devotion.

We might think we have nothing to worry about as long as we avoid cooking up any golden calves over the campfire as Aaron and his compadres did in the Exodus story. But remember, anything to which we demonstrate more devotion than the living God becomes idol worship. We might say we are worshiping God, but an inventory of our time, energy, talent and other resources may reveal that we are in fact worshiping at the altar of success. We may say we are worshiping God, but we may instead be carrying on religious practices that shield us from God rather than opening us to living faith. Human beings have a great aptitude for the manufacture of idols. We can make an idol out of our bank accounts, out of the Bible, out of our ideology, out of our superior intellect, our loyalty to our nation, our intimate relationships, you name it. No human creation is immune from being a potential idol.

Now, why would God get so bent out of shape over this “no other gods before me” thing? Shouldn’t God be secure enough not to be jealous?

I am convinced this jealousy rises out of love. God know that nothing less than a covenant relationship with the living God will bring abundant life to us. God doesn’t want anyone or anything standing between God and us, getting in the way of us living a life of full love and grace. When money or rituals or heaps of stuff come between us and the goodness God wants for us, out come the angry eyes. No other gods!! No other puny god to which we mistakenly devote ourselves can liberate us from whatever house of slavery we have checked ourselves into. Listen again to the opening of the ten commandments: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

It’s not entirely comfortable to contemplate the anger of God, or the anger of Jesus who provides a window into the character of God. Couldn’t they have just left the angry eyes behind? Perhaps it will help to connect this divine anger with the moments parents are most angry with our children—those moments when they are worried that someone’s going to get hurt. That’s probably what Jesus’ anger boils down to in the gospel of John: someone’s getting hurt. Either the poor who are being exploited, who are, after all, God’s beloved children; or the people for whom some ritual or other minor-league devotion has gotten between them and the living God. Also God’s beloved children. So out come the angry eyes.

Look and see through the anger to the Divine love behind it.

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[1] Source: Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com.

[2] Wallis, Jim God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005, p. 218