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Crushed Fruit
Constance Hastings April 22, 2024
This time it was different. Way different. Whether the change was in Jesus or in the setting, it’s hard to tell. Maybe he noticed something he’d not been aware of before, or maybe it was he that had changed, grown, realized something in himself.
Passover Remembrance
As a child, his family had made the yearly trip to the Temple for the Jewish Passover celebration. He must have loved it because there was this story of how one year he had stayed there for three extra days talking with the Temple teachers. While they were quite impressed with his questions, his precocious interests had given his parents a fit, thinking he was lost or worse. He excused himself by saying they should have known he’d be in his “Father’s house.” (Luke 2:41-52)
However, business as usual didn’t come close to that week’s hectic activity. To celebrate Passover, one had to bring the prescribed offering, a perfect animal specimen to sacrifice for one’s sins. Their history and heritage remembered the lamb whose blood had been painted on the doorposts of homes, signaling for the angel of death to pass over and not take the life of the home’s firstborn son.
It was the final plague that convinced Pharaoh to release the Israelites from the enslavement of Egypt to travel back to the land of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Blood was necessary for a life to be saved. Now, hundreds of years later, their faith told them to remember their deliverance from both sin and slavery by this yearly pilgrimage. Jerusalem and the Temple site was cram-crowded with pilgrim travelers from everywhere Jews lived or had been dispersed.
Commercial Reality
Actually, the scene was born of practical matters. People who came from long distances couldn’t bring with them an animal to sacrifice. Then there was the matter of paying the Temple tax. Hebrew law would not allow engraved images claiming to be a god inside the main gates. There needed to be an accessible way to exchange Roman currency for Jewish shekels. In short, for all surface appearances, the selling of animals and the exchange of money looked as if it was an accommodation for people to faithfully practice their religion.
Reactionary Passion
But something in the scene, likely almost deafening and even malodorous (in other words, it stunk like you know what), stopped Jesus from going inside. Maybe no one noticed a rage building within him as he twisted ropes into a whip. But in a volcanic eruption, he exploded on them, driving away the animals, turning over the tables of the exchange kiosks, coins of all kinds and values scattering and clanging on the floor. Strangely, he stopped at the dove sellers’ booth, but ordered them out saying, “Don’t turn my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
Ok, you’ve lost it with this one. Jesus, the one sent from God as the Son of God, goes ballistic right outside his church. In this day and age, he’d be taken in as a terrorist. Whatever happened to being the Light of the World and Love and all that kind of sweet, meek-and-mild Jesus? And he’s angry, raging-mad kind of angry? Are you saying this is ok with God? Sorry people, but this doesn’t seem like the right road we should follow here. Too many people are going to get hurt if you get behind this guy.
Abusive Ritual
Understood. But don’t act as if you haven’t seen this before and always disapproved. Still, there were things going on not obvious to contemporary reading but contextually understood by the early readers of John’s account.
Remember, as a child he’d known the Temple as his “Father’s house,” the same as he’d called it that very day. But as an adult, Jesus now knew of the systematic injustices the Temple inflicted upon the faithful, especially those who could least afford it. Religious robbery would sum up what was going on. The required unblemished animal sacrifice would cost you plenty. Besides that, another fleecing happened with exorbitant rates of exchange charged to get your cash converted for the Temple tax. If all of that didn’t get up your crawl, corruption was inherent in the status of the priests. It was supposed to be inherited as being part of the Levitical tribe of priests, but in reality, the appointment of the chief priest had to have the approval of the Roman government. Furthermore, kickbacks were necessary to keep happy them and allow the Jews to worship and even make a living. Would this infuriate you? To come at them slinging righteous anger and a whip may have let them off easy.
Twisted Teaching
Yet, another deeper, maybe even damning issue could have disturbed Jesus even more. The prophets had pleaded for it, but the Pharisees only acerbated it. As gatekeepers of the Law, they held their thumbs on the populace with ritualistic requirements that often were near impossible for the average person to meet. People learned from this that God cared more about the sacrifices needed for their infringements than their relationship with their Creator. How people washed their hands was elevated above Love of God and neighbor. Temple worship was a farce, and it raised the rile in Jesus.
The disciples were watching. They knew the prophetic words of Psalm 69:9. “Passion for God’s house burns within me.” That outburst of temper was seen as spilling over in a zeal that sought to not just destroy the system but restore the people to God. Yet another translation of that verse is also telling. “Concern for God’s house will be my undoing.”
Restorative Justice
Did anything change that day? In a word, No. After a scramble for livestock and spilled money, the next day the market opened for business as usual. But what would come was spelled out.
When confronted by the Jewish leaders, Jesus retorts with this incomprehensible statement: “Destroy this Temple, and three days later I will raise it up!” Everyone knew the Temple took forty-six years to erect. What ever could be going on in his head?
By this point, Jesus likely was shaking, visibly angry by any observation. Yet, there was an awareness of the connection between that day and what was to come. Whips would be cracked again, but the slashes would be across his own back. Injustice inflicted by every nation, the failings of priests and people, not to mention his own rigged trial and betrayal by friends, would be absorbed into himself. As Son of God, he would bear the worst the world could design on a cross and know fully what it means to be separated from God as Father. With that act, the divine would relinquish its anger in exchange for restoration.
Three days later, Jesus said, and he delivered. After that, no other sacrifice is required. Priests can point the way, but only a soul accepting of God’s love is necessary. No government or other human institution or system can interfere. He bore a fury that refused to let any injustice or dysfunction get in the way. In him resides the place of true worship.
Three days later Jesus’ temple-body rose from a zealousness centered in the power of love. Such was his passion.
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The Trouble with Jesus: His words grow like a vine,
thin trails of thought getting thicker with meaning.
Jesus kept talking. He’d just said it was time to go. But he kept talking. The tension in the room was a weighty blend of grief, some denial, maybe even suppressed anger at what he was saying held in place by the exhaustion of the week. Tonight was not how it had started, an exhilarating parade with the crowd calling him the new king, a king who would save. (Mark 11:1-11)
Deviating Thoughts
But he kept saying things like being lifted on a cross even as he almost desperately called to the people to believe he was sent from God. Those gathered in the city for the Passover festival had heard about his miracle of bringing a friend back to life after four days dead. (John 11:1-44) But most were not buying much more of his message than that. Still, he just kept talking.
Earlier in the evening, he had done something weird, uncharacteristic for one who would be king. He’d dressed like a servant and washed their dirty feet, calling upon them to serve others likewise. (John 13:1-17)
Then he’d said the unthinkable, that one of them, these who had followed and learned of him for three years, would betray him. Maybe that’s why he’d said to Judas, “Hurry. Do it now.” Judas was the treasurer who paid for their meals and gave money to the poor. (John 13:27-30) Do you think he left to pay off any threat to their Rabbi and themselves? Jesus kept talking.
In all the confusion, Peter had declared he’d die for his Lord. Jesus silenced the room when he stated Peter would do go so far as to three times deny he even knew Jesus before that very night was over. (John 13:38) Next came some kind of talk about going away somewhere and how he would send a Counselor to teach and remind them of what he had said. (John 14:26)
Restless, Weaving Thoughts
It was too much, how he kept talking even when he said they should be going. It was as if Jesus knew when they left that room he never would have again the chance to tell them all he wanted. So he weaved in his thoughts, let them creep out and hold on where they would, seemingly just talk but growing into so much more.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” Jesus kept talking but hold on to that thought. A vine. The image is one similar to what he is doing now. It grows, spreads out, weaves up into and among places to which it can grasp, wrap itself, become stable-tight, and then move out again. His words have been like that all night, thin trails of thought getting thicker with meaning.
Jesus fleshes it out. His Father, the one from whom he comes, is the gardener. The work of this Gardener-God is made clear from the beginning: to produce fruit. The gardener trains the branches on the vine, how to grow so light is available to all parts of it. The parts that impede ability to produce fruit are removed, pruned.
Such it has been with these friends of Jesus. The message he has given them has cut away at their ambitions, desires, misconceptions of God’s purpose in them. It’s pruning that can be severe but necessary for the fruit of the vine. Not all will accept being part of the vine. The separation leaves a wound on the vine like something nailed deep into flesh.
Severe, sometimes necessary pruning can also be a cleansing, yielding process, as if having feet or hands washed. The health of the vine and the expected fruit must be protected from disease. Yielding to the Gardener-God’s work maintains the well-being of the branches.
Roving, Winding Thoughts
From the True Vine come branches, and from the yielding of the branches is fruit. There is an interconnectedness in the image that belies the translations. Eight times Jesus states the importance of remaining, abiding, being joined to him. “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
You won’t know growth. You can’t be effective. You won’t have life in the abundance the Gardener-God would have for you. You won’t last because you won’t produce fruit. Abide, remain in, and be joined to the message Jesus brings.
To abide is to be not just a branch, an extra appendage, but an integral part of the vine. By an intimate conjoining of Love the True Vine connects with its branches. In this Christ-likeness, the branch is identified with The True Vine. Yet, this metaphor is not limited to individualism.
“You may ask any request you like, and it will be granted.” Not a blanket give-a-way is this. Throughout Jesus’ words the plural form of “you” is stated. You entails the interconnected, gathered believers who remain in, are joined to, and abide in the True Vine. In the altogether growing, cleansing, pruning of the branches is God’s desire in producing fruit.
Meandering, Heavy Thoughts
Jesus kept talking. His message is understood as the tenuous wisps of leaves sprouted from the tips of the branch connected to the True Vine. His discourse is cloudy in its first vision, requiring multiple re-examinations as the vine sends out more branches.
Jesus kept talking. Fruit is the desire of his Gardener-God. Fruit will be taken from the vine of Love and crushed into a cup from which Jesus soon will pour out his life. The True Vine stared into his fate.
He kept talking.
