Third Sunday in Lent

by Crossings

Misreading Jesus
John 2:13-22
Third Sunday in Lent
analysis by Ed Schroeder

DIAGNOSIS: Temple personnel are missing out on the blessings of the passover and the temple itself.

STAGE 1: Mis-prioritizing Jesus. Misreading Jesus in his connection with passover, the temple. Demanding “signs” for his authority other than the signs of cross & resurrection (v. 19 & 20)

STAGE 2: Lightless, lifeless. At odds with the Father about the temple (and by extension about the passover too) and also at odds with Jesus (see vv. 24f.) in whom was “life and light,” ala Jn 1:4.

STAGE 3: Disinherited. Missing out on God’s own promise signaled in passover and temple, as it is now being “signed” over to them in the signs Jesus gives them.

GOOD NEWS: The blessings of temple and passover embodied in Jesus.

STAGE 4: God’s glory in the flesh is in this text, “the temple of his body.” Jesus fulfills both temple & passover in his body on the tree, and in his “bodied” resurrection, as John says so vividly in chapter 20.

STAGE 5: Believing Jesus is having both passover and temple promises as one’s own, and the life that is in Jesus’ name (v. 22).

STAGE 6: Witnessing. Not spelled out in detail in this text, but hinted at (vv. 17 & 22) in the disciples’ post-Easter “remembering” and “recalling.”

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  • Crossings is a community of welcoming, inquisitive people who want to explore how what we hear at church is useful and beneficial in our daily lives.

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In the early 1970s two seminary professors listened to the plea of some lay Christians. “Can you help us live out our faith in the world of daily work?” they asked. “Can you help us connect Sunday worship with our lives the other six days of the week?”  That is how Crossings was born.

 

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