“SO, YOU WANT TO BE LIKE JESUS?”
JOHN 2:13-25
13 The Passover of the Jews was near,
and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 In the temple he found people selling
cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.
15 Making a whip of cords, he drove
all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned
their tables.
16 He told those who were selling
the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
17 His disciples remembered that it
was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."
18 The Jews then said to him, "What
sign can you show us for doing this?"
19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
20 The Jews then said, "This temple
has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?"
21 But he was speaking of the temple
of his body.
22 After he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
23 When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs
that he was doing.
24 But Jesus on his part would not
entrust himself to them, because he knew all people
25 and needed no one to testify about
anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.
Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart, in my heart.
Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart.
Are you sure about that though? Are you sure you really want to be like Jesus?
I ask that question because sometimes when you try to be like Jesus instead of comforting you it challenges you; instead
of making your life easier it makes it harder. In fact, there will be times when
you end up feeling the same way a ten-year-old boy felt one day. This ten-year-old
boy lived out in the country and was being raised by his grandmother. Now the
grandmother was a very religious woman which created a problem for her grandson one Sunday afternoon. It all started when
his friends decided to get together to play a little baseball. When the grandson
asked his grandmother if he could join them her answer was unequivocal and firm. “Absolutely not,” she said. “No baseball on the Lord’s Day.”
With that the grandson walked down to the barn feeling dejected and a little sorry for himself. While he was standing there beside the fence a horse came up and started to nuzzle him with its nose. As the grandson stood there patting the horse he looked into its big sad eyes. “Poor
fellow,” he said. “You must be a Christian too.”
Sometimes it isn’t
easy to follow Jesus. It isn’t easy to be like Jesus; especially the Jesus who kicked the tables over in the Temple; especially the Jesus who sent the money changers and people selling those animals in the Temple running for cover. That’s
because sometimes when you’re like Jesus it means you’re going to have to do something that you know is going
to make you very unpopular.
The reason Jesus
did what he did that day in the Temple was simple. Jesus was angry. He was angry because the money changers and
the people selling animals in the Temple were fleecing people,
poor people, out of their hard earned money. There were two ways they did that.
One way was through the Temple tax that every adult male had to pay. The problem wasn’t the tax itself. The problem was the fee that the money changers charged you when
you turned your Roman coins in for the Jewish coins that you had to use in the Temple. That fee was almost equal to the Temple
tax itself. It cost you two days wages.
The other way they were fleecing people was through the animals that you had to buy from them to make your sacrifices
in the Temple. They
usually charged you up to 20 times what those animals were really worth.
Jesus was disgusted by the
greed that he saw at work in the Temple. He was disgusted
and he showed it with an outburst that put the fear of God into the money changers and the people selling the animals in the
Temple. Matthew,
Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus condemned them and said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of
prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” (Matthew 21:13)
Jesus really let them have
it. Now maybe that’s one way you wouldn’t mind being a little more like Jesus.
Maybe you’d like to let someone have it right now; someone at work or at school or someone in your family! It’s like the Quaker who woke up one night and found a burglar in his house.
The burglar was standing there with a sack full of valuables when he was suddenly confronted by the Quaker and his trusty
shotgun. “Friend,” the Quaker said very calmly, “because of my religion I am a pacifist and would not harm
thee for the world, but I must tell thee that thou art standing where I am about to shoot.”
Jesus took a stand that day
in the Temple. It
was a stand that didn’t make him very popular with the high priest and his followers, not to mention the money changers
and the people selling animals in the Temple. They weren’t
happy because Jesus was taking money out of their pockets. You can see that they
weren’t very happy by looking at the question that they threw at him after things settled down. They asked him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
In other words, “You better have a good explanation for all of this Jesus.”
By the way, Matthew, Mark and Luke make it clear in their gospels that the cleansing of the Temple was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It was the cleansing of the Temple that finally convinced
the high priest and his followers that they needed to get rid of Jesus.
If you’re
going to be like Jesus then you better brace yourself because. You better brace
yourself because there will be time when you won’t win any popularity contests.
If you’re a teenager I hope you’re listening. What are you
going to do when someone a school keeps encouraging you to get drunk with them or do drugs with them or fool around with them? What are you going to do when you see a kid who’s different being brutally ostracized
and criticized?
If you’re
a parent I also hope you’re listening. Are you willing to be the bad guy and say “no” to your children when
that’s what they need to hear? Are you willing to be the meanest mother
or the meanest father in the world and to hear your son or daughter tell you that they hate you? Many years ago Harry Emerson Fosdick, the famous pastor from Riverside
Church in New York City,
told a story that he remembered from his childhood. One morning as his father
was leaving for work he said to his wife, “Tell Harry that he can cut the grass today, if he feels like it.” Then just before he got to the door he turned around again and added, “And tell
Harry that he better feel like it.”
Now compare that with the
high school cheerleaders in Texas who were in the news this
past week. It seems that these cheerleaders were terrorizing their classmates
and their teachers. To give you an idea of what was going on one of the things
they did was steal their coach’s cell phone and then use it to send sexually explicit text messages to her husband. How were they able to do all the things they did?
They were able to do it because the mother of one of the cheerleaders happened to be the principal of the high school.
If you really want to be
like Jesus then there are going to be times when you’re not going to win any popularity contests. That’s true for the minister who takes a stand on global warming or affirmative action or abortion
or the death penalty or same gender marriage that rubs people the wrong way. It’s
true for the employee who sees something wrong at work and blows the whistle on his boss.
Just ask SPC solider Joseph Darby what’s happened to him since January
13, 2004. That’s the day he broke the code of silence
and told people what was going on at the Abu Graib Prison in Iraq. What was his reward for doing the right thing?
Since returning to this country he has received death threats and his home has been vandalized. He and his wife Bernadette are now living with military protection at an undisclosed location.
Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart, in my heart.
Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart.
So, I’ll ask the question
again. Are you sure you want to be like Jesus? As a parent, as a teenager, as
a person in the working world, are you sure you want to be like Jesus. Are you
sure you want to be like Jesus knowing that it really is a two way street. Sometimes it means you’ll find the comfort that you need when life isn’t
all that great. Sometimes though it means that you’re going to be challenged
to do something that is going to make you very uncomfortable. You’re going
to be challenged to do something that is going to make you very unpopular.
It all comes down to making
a decision like the one that Mike Delcavo had to make a few years ago. It happened during an NCAA Division II cross-country
race in Riverside, California. The race was for the national championship. Mike Delcavo and 127 of the best runners
in the country were battling for glory over a 10,000 meter course. Mid-way through
the race Mike Delvaco was somewhere in the middle of the pack. As he was running he watched in amazement as the runners in
front of him raced past a turn that they were supposed to take. He yelled to
them that they were going the wrong way, but they didn’t listen. In fact,
only 5 of the runners in the race followed him and went the way they were supposed to go.
Suddenly, Mike Delcavo found himself in the lead. That only last ed for
about a mile. It lasted until the other runners reappeared several hundred feet
in front of them. Because of their wrong turn they actually shaved about a half
a mile off of the course. When Mike Delcavo crossed the finish line they handed
him #123. What made it even worse is that because so many runners went the wrong
way the officials changed the official course route to accommodate their error.
It’s easy to follow
the crowd. It takes courage and conviction to follow Jesus. Sometimes when you do follow him you’re going to end up feeling pretty lonely, but here’s the
key. You’ll be alone in good company because after every thing is said
and done you’ll know that you’re right with God and right with yourself.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes
January 14, 2007
