Today we hear John’s account of Jesus throwing the traders out of the Temple area. We probably associate this incident with Jesus’ final arrival in Jerusalem shortly before his death. The other evangelists do indeed position it at that time. But John treats it differently – he sees a different significance in this event.
John places this event right at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, immediately after the wedding at Cana (when he is pushed, somewhat reluctantly, into action by his mother). By the time John was writing the Temple had been gone for a generation or more, so his readers would not have felt any connection with the specifics of Temple practices. For John this incident seems to show how Jesus was breaking decisively with traditional practices of the Jews. He is starting something new. His death and resurrection replace Temple worship as our link to God.
This message of a new start is further emphasized in the next story John tells, of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus, which is all about the need to be be reborn – with Nicodemus having a hard time getting his head around that idea.
For Paul the idea of starting over is also very strong. The new life of, or in, Christ is at the core of his teaching. And the starting point for that new life is the crucifixion. Why the crucifixion? It might seem more appropriate to treat the resurrection as the new beginning. Obviously the two go together, but Paul’s focus on Jesus’ death shows how he is firstly concerned to show how Jesus marks a complete break with the “old ways” – the old life, both metaphorically and practically. The link with the past has to be broken before a new life can start. You must die with Christ before you can be reborn with him.
It’s not so obvious but that is also the focus for the writer of Genesis when describing Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai. Yes, this is the setting chosen to formalize the commandments that are supposed to guide the lives of the people going forward – but the foundation for this is the new exclusive relationship that God is demanding with his people. “I, the Lord, am your God… You shall not have other gods besides me.”
This was not the first time God had established his relationship with the people of Israel – he had made his covenant with Abraham, and before that with Noah. But in the time of Moses the demand of exclusivity became absolute, and it really did set the Israelites apart from other people of that time. We also know, from both Biblical and archeological evidence, that it took a considerable time before the Israelites fully accepted the exclusive demands of their God.
So Moses’ encounter with God is also a decisive break from the past, a time to restart. Here we have a clear link to our Lenten practice.
For us, we are not just looking back into history to recognize these times when the old order is turned over and restarted. We know that the death that Jesus suffered is something we share – Paul hammers this point over and over. We share in that point of starting over in the relationship with God. This restart can happen again and again, whenever it is needed. Our relationship with God is not a ‘once and done’, and if we fail it’s over. It’s a relationship that starts with death, and then rebirth, and it gets fixed every time we go through Lent, every time we participate in the Eucharist, every time we turn to God and know that he is the one and only thing that makes sense of our lives.