John 2:13-16

It’s easy to miss the point of the story because it’s so shocking to see Jesus behaving this way.  Some theologians try to make it more acceptable by calling it “righteous indignation.”  But let’s tell it like it is:  Jesus was angry.  Jesus was as mad as a wet hen.  He was angry enough to shout.  He was angry enough to take a whip and snap it at animals and people alike in order to drive them out of the temple courts.  He was angry enough to overturn tables and scatter money all over the ground.

Why was Jesus so angry?  Because the those who ran the temple got it so wrong.  Most of what went on at the temple in Jerusalem was animal sacrifice.  There were sacrifices for all kinds of occasions: sin offerings, offerings when babies were born, offerings for ceremonial reasons, offerings at religious festivals.  And the animals offered at these sacrifices had to be perfect, without blemish.  Most of the people who came to offer sacrifices bought the animals at the temple.  But the catch was, they had to use special temple coins to buy the animals.  That meant that they had to exchange their regular coins for temple coins.  So there were money changers who set up booths near the stalls where the animals were for sale.  But they didn’t just exchange the money at face value; they charged a large fee for this service.  Then the people went to purchase the sacrificial animals and had to pay exorbitant amounts of money for these perfect animals, much more than the going rate for those animals anywhere else.  Jesus was angry because the people – most of them poor people – were being taken advantage of by the religious authorities.  Much of the Old Testament talks about how important it is to care for the poor and how seriously God will judge those who cheat the poor or take advantage of them.  That’s why Jesus drove the money changers and sellers of animals out of the temple courts; they were guilty of abusing the poor.  They had gotten it all wrong.

And let’s face it.  The church sometimes gets it wrong, too.  I’ve seen it many times.  In South Carolina, where I grew up and spent the first 15 years of my ministry, The United Methodist Church is still mostly divided racially: there are white churches and black churches, sometimes only a few blocks apart from each other.  A few months after I left the church I was serving in Timmonsville, SC, the black church two blocks from my church had to undergo major renovations that would keep them out of their sanctuary for about six months.  The District Superintendent asked my former church to extend an invitation to the black church to use their sanctuary in the interim.  The choir director emailed me about it and said the church council was going to vote on it and would stipulate that they have their own service later in the day from the regular service.  I emailed back that it was a good thing I wasn’t still there, because there would have been no vote taken and I would have issued an invitation for them to join us in worship.  She wrote back that, yes, it was a good thing I wasn’t still there!

Another way The United Methodist Church gets it wrong is in its treatment of women clergy.  It was more obvious in the South Carolina Annual Conference.  Most of the women pastors were serving small churches in rural areas of the conference and made much less than their male counterparts, who tended to serve the mid-size to large churches in suburban and urban settings.  I was sent mostly to very conservative rural churches who didn’t want a woman pastor and made me aware of that from day one.  In New England, things are not so hostile; I’ve never served a congregation that had any issue with having a woman pastor.  But still, the women in New England make less money than their male colleagues in the same size churches.  And that is true across the country.

The church as a whole, beyond just our denomination, gets it wrong on a number of issues.  For one thing, the church is often perceived as judgmental or hypocritical.  As many as 85% of younger Americans responded that way in a poll by the Barna group.  While we are supposed to be reflecting the love of Jesus, younger Americans see us as critical of their lifestyle.  Church members can seem to be more concerned with their poor choices than with extending hospitality to them.  Are they living together without being married?  Oh, no!  That’s not acceptable.  Can you see how that would make someone feel rejected? 

Another issue is that the church sometimes seems to align itself with one political party over another.  I went to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  It was the most “liberal” of the Baptist seminaries at the time, and I received a good education there.  But among my classmates I was made to feel that there was no way I could be a good Baptist unless I was also a good Republican.  There are churches that make their members feel the same way.  It isn’t the church’s place to be involved that directly in politics as to pressure members to vote for certain candidates.  Churches should address moral issues, but I don’t believe they should take the step of advising members on who to vote for.

I have to come back to The United Methodist Church and say that our denomination has gotten it wrong around the issue of homosexuality.  In fact, that issue has caused the current situation of disaffiliations across our denomination.  Because there are churches who are adamant that they will never accept GLBT clergy or same-sex marriage, there have been years of fighting within our denomination, many people who have left the church, countless people who have been deeply hurt by words and actions at General Conferences since 1972, and brokenness in our churches and our members over this issue.  I’d like you to hear how many churches in each annual conference have decided to leave The United Methodist Church rather than change the position stated in our Book of Discipline on homosexuality:

• Alabama-West Florida – 248

• Alaska – 2

• Arkansas – 169

• Baltimore-Washington – 25

• California-Pacific – 3

• California-Nevada – 6

• Central Texas – 124

• Dakotas – 58

• Desert Southwest – 0

• East Ohio – 250

• East Pennsylvania – 6

• Florida – 192

• Great Plains – 233

• Greater New Jersey – 8

• Holston – 289

• Illinois Great Rivers – 82

• Indiana – 317

• Iowa – 143

• Kentucky – 366

• Louisiana – 165

• Michigan – 128

• Minnesota – 23

• Mississippi – 386

• Missouri – 111

• Mountain Sky – 48

• New England – 18

• New Mexico – 42

• New York – 6

• North Alabama – 349

• North Carolina – 326

• North Georgia – 335

• North Texas – 53

• North Illinois – 8

• Northwest Texas – 163

• Oklahoma – 127

• Oklahoma Indian Missionary – 0

• Oregon – Idaho – 11

• Pacific Northwest – 16

• Peninsula-Delaware – 108

• Central Appalachian – 0

• Rio Texas – 85

• South Carolina – 115

• South Georgia – 289

• Susquehanna – 148

• Tennessee-W. Kentucky – 366

• Texas – 319

• Upper NY – 118

• Virginia – 227

• West Ohio – 348

• West Virginia – 24

• Western North Carolina – 346

• Western Pennsylvania – 298

• Wisconsin – 43

That is a total of 7,660 churches.  I don’t know how many church members that includes.  And that is a lot of pastors who are affected.  Some of them doubtless also left the denomination, but others remained United Methodist.  But the disaffiliations mean that there is a surplus of pastors and not enough churches to which to appoint them in those annual conferences.

This is a lot of pain to inflict based on 5 verses of scripture that relate to same-sex intimacy.  None of those verses have anything to do with the understanding of sexual orientation or committed same-sex relationships, but rather about heterosexual males having sexual relations with each other or with male prostitutes. 

The church is capable of and has gotten it wrong.  So what do we do when the church gets it wrong?  We get what is wrong out of the church.  We remove racism from the church.  We drive out unequal treatment of male and female clergy from the church.  We eliminate judgmentalism and hypocrisy from the church.  We push politics out of the church.  And we end our mistaken policies regarding sexuality by changing the Book of Discipline.  We must address the places where the church has gotten it wrong.  We must drive these things out of the church, turn over a few tables if we have to.  We may even have to get angry and use our outdoor voices to get the attention of the leadership in order to do it.  But to refuse to address the issues would be to say we agree with what is wrong in the church.