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No More Mr. Nice Guy                        John 2: 13-22                   March 15, 2009

Vincent Furnier is an American rock singer. A rock music legend, some would say. As both a songwriter and musician, his career spans more than four decades. Furnier's stage show often features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, and boa constrictors. He is, most agree, the most famous example of the brand of rock music that has come to be known as shock rock. And his signature, his ghoulish, heavily mascaraed eyes, make him instantly recognizable as Alice Cooper - the name he legally adopted in 1973.

While I make no claims to be a music critic - particularly not a heavy metal rock music critic - I think Alice Cooper's best song is the one that comes to mind whenever I read the familiar passage that is our Gospel Lesson for this morning. The song is No More Mr. Nice Guy.

"No more Mister Nice Guy," Cooper sings.
"No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say he's sick, he's obscene.

I got no friends 'cause they read the papers
They can't be seen with me
And I'm feelin' real shot down
And I'm gettin' mean.

No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say he's sick, he's obscene."

The heading that most Bibles use for today's text from John's Gospel is "Jesus Cleanses the Temple." But it could just as easily be called "Jesus: No More Mr. Nice Guy."

The story is repeated in all four of the Gospels. John goes into a little more detail than the other writers, but his main points are pretty much the same as those recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus enters the Temple, finds some people selling sacrificial cattle, sheep and doves and others changing Roman coins into the currency of the Temple and at the sight of these money-changers and animal vendors he loses his temper. In a rage, whip in hand, he turns over the merchants' tables, pours coins out onto the floor and drives both men and animals out into the street.

One difference is that in the other Gospels, this incident occurs near the end of Jesus' ministry, contributing to his arrest and his death. John, unlike the others, presents it as a pivotal part of the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

John's decision to place this story where he did is significant, by the way, and I'll get back to that a bit later. But wherever we place the incident in the public life of Jesus, it stands out in dramatic contrast to most of the other pictures we have of the itinerant teacher and loving healer from Nazareth.

Jesus is portrayed, in other Gospel accounts, as blunt and verbally accusative - particularly of the Pharisees and other religious leaders - but nowhere else is there anything like this. His anger usually takes the form of indignation; but not this time. This time he acts on his outrage and gets physical.

No more Mr. Nice Guy, indeed.

You can imagine the Disciples' reaction to Jesus' outburst. It must have been terribly disconcerting to witness his becoming unhinged, throwing furniture, screaming at the top of his lungs, and flinging money into the air.

Perhaps the Disciples ran for cover with the crowd. And most likely they tossed and turned a long, sleepless night that evening. I would have. On both counts.

There is much to be learned from this dramatic incident in the life of Jesus. Two lessons, in my view, are particularly significant.

First, the story tells us that Jesus' intent was to be confrontational. He intended to confront the distortions of worship perpetrated by those who controlled the Temple-centered Jewish religion, he intended to free people for true worship, and, most importantly, he intended to challenge the whole social and political system that defined the lives of the people who lived in that time and place.

The world in which Jesus lived was "a world with sharp social boundaries between pure and impure, righteous and sinner, whole and not whole, male and female, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile," Marcus Borg points out in his important book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

The temple had come to symbolize - and perpetuate - this system of boundaries. The temple was the center of what Borg calls the "purity system." It was the center of a system which separated "us" from "them."

The animals that were sold in the courtyard were part of that system. They were sold for sacrificial purposes. And the moneychangers were also there to make the system work. Roman coins were considered impure and therefore couldn't be used to buy sacrifices. They had to be exchanged for "pure" temple tokens.

So Jesus' intent, in the striking and attention-grabbing action of his, is to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that he is committed to overthrowing the accepted system. To disrupting the status quo.

His intent was to break all of the boundaries that separate us from God and break through every barrier that separates us from one another.

The traditional notion that this story about Jesus is a reminder to his followers to be different - to be clean - is 180 degrees off the mark. Jesus sought to overthrow - literally - the system that created differences between people, not endorse those differences.

Secondly, in addition to suggesting that Jesus intended, with his outburst, to remind us that God desires to break down all of the barriers between us, the story also tells us that it's not enough to mean well.

The moneychangers probably meant well. The sacrificial-animal salesmen probably meant well. And the Temple leadership that allowed these merchants to set up shop most certainly meant well.

The history of the world - especially our religious history - suggests that sin can always pull us from our best intentions. It suggests that well-meaning church leaders often fail to follow the Gospel path.

Like Paul, we who make decisions about the direction of the church sometimes find ourselves saying, "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do."

Dan Clendenin, the founder of the "Journey With Jesus" foundation, puts it well: "The cleansing of the temple is a stark warning against any and every false sense of security," he writes. "Misplaced allegiances, religious presumption, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours."

"Church," he continues, "is more than a place to enjoy a night of bingo or to reinforce my many prejudices and illusions."

We need to examine all of the things that we do, in Jesus' name, to make sure they are consistent with his disruptive message. And remember that just "meaning well" is not enough.

As they did in Jesus' time, the ways of the world today invade the church gradually, subtly, never intentionally, always in service of the church and its mission. And before you know it, the church is full of cattle and sheep and turtledoves and money changers!

Christian faith communities must be willing to ask where and when the status quo needs to be challenged by the revelation of God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We need to be willing to ask which tables he would overturn if he came into our temple today.

I mentioned earlier that John is the only one of the four Gospel writers to place the text we've been examining today at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. The others place the scene after Palm Sunday: Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem, followed by crowds shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David!" He then goes to the temple and drives out the moneychangers. The temple cleansing is a confrontation that gives religious leaders and Roman authorities evidence that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed a troublemaker, perhaps part of the movement trying to overthrow Rome.

John, on the other hand, chooses to place this same story at a very different time. It is not a crisis-point at the end of Jesus' life, but a defining-point at the beginning.

John calls attention to the story. He places and exclamation point on it. He wants it to be one of his readers' first impressions of the one he believes is the Savior.

In the end, the "No More Mr. Nice Guy" story reminds us that faith is about doing things. It reminds us that if our faith doesn't cause us to do anything, maybe it's time to reevaluate our faith.

Rolling Stone Magazine described Alice Cooper as "the world's most beloved heavy metal entertainer".

Although he tends to shy away from speaking publicly of his faith, Cooper has confirmed in interviews that he is in fact a Christian. He's modest about it, however. "I'm a rock singer. I'm nothing more than that," Cooper is quoted as saying. "I'm not a philosopher. I consider myself low on the totem pole of knowledgeable Christians. So, don't look for answers from me."

When he was asked by the British Sunday Times newspaper in 2001 to explain how a rebellious shock-rocker could be a Christian, Cooper answered, "Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's real rebellion!"

I think he's on to something.

                                                                             AMEN

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