The young girl lay bound on the altar. It was she who was chosen to be a sacrifice made to the gods on behalf of the people this year. She was terrified. She watched every movement that the priest made. At the climax of the ceremony he moved toward her with knife held high. Terror flooded her consciousness. And the knife came down. It plunged into her heart. She died in a moment. Her blood flowed over the altar. The major sacrifice of the year was now complete. The people breathed a great sigh of relief. Perhaps now, perhaps with this sacrifice, the gods would smile upon them at last.

This is a strange story to say the least. Strange, but true. Many different peoples in many different cultures in the course of human history have made use of a human sacrifice in order to please the gods. Human sacrifices have always been a part of our deeply human religious drive. Human beings are naturally religious. Religious expression in one form or another must be part of any definition of what it means to be a human being. To be a human being is to be a religious being. That is just the way it is.

Anthropologists, those who study the story of humankind, periodically discover tribes of people that were not previously known to exist. One of the realities of the life of these newly discovered tribes is their religious character. We have never found a tribe of people, no matter how primitive, for whom religion has not played a central role. And that is true on back to the very dawn of time. The very earliest cave paintings that we have discovered, for example, are usually expressions of the religious life of people. The ancient ruins of civilizations are occasionally discovered. Inevitably these ancient ruins, some very large in dimension, were built for religious reasons. To be human, so it seems, is to be religious. To be human means that we find ourselves accountable for our lives to Someone or Something larger than ourselves. That sense of life just seems to be built into our human nature.

Saint Paul seeks to explain this religious dimension of human life in his letter to the Romans. In chapter 2 of Romans he makes the point that every human being has sinned in the eyes of God, every human being has broken the law of God. His primarily Jewish audience would have understood that the law they broke was the law given to them by God through Moses on Mount Sinai. "But what law is it that non-Jewish people have broken?" they might have asked. Paul anticipates their question. He says that non-Jewish people, "... show that what the law requires is written on their hearts ..." (Romans 2:15). God has written the law on the hearts of every human being. That is what Paul says. That is how he, that is how the Bible, accounts for the universally present religious dimension of human life.

God has written the law on the heart of every person. We can, therefore, make the assumption that every human being knows two things by nature. In the first place, every human being knows he or she has broken God’s law. Every human being knows that he or she has failed in accountability to God. Every human being knows that he or she is estranged from God. I think that the word estrangement is the best possible word for describing the relation of people to their Creator God. We usually use this word to describe a partner to a failed marriage. We talk about his estranged wife or her estranged husband. Estrangement means that where a relation once existed, that relation now is severely strained. That is how it is with us and God. The relation that God intended for us in creation is now under a severe strain, the strain of our rebellion, the strain of our sin, the strain of our law-breaking ways.

Every human being knows in some deep corner of his or her being that he or she is estranged from God. That is the first thing that all people know by nature. And there is a second thing we know by nature. We know that it is up to us to do something about this estrangement. Our estrangement from God is our responsibility. We have got to do something about it. What we do about it, how we try to resolve our problem, is our religion. We are all religious. We know we need to do something, we know we need to make some kind of sacrifice in order to make God more happy with us. That is why religious people have sacrificed the lives of one of their number. A human sacrifice is the only sacrifice they can imagine that might truly satisfy God’s demand upon our lives. What kind of sacrifices have you made in order to bridge the chasm that stands between you and God?

This story from John’s Gospel, the story of the cleansing of the temple, is closely connected to the realities of human religion as we have been discussing them. It was Passover time in Israel. Passover was one of the major religious festivals of the Jewish religious calendar. Adult males were expected to attend these festivals at the Jerusalem temple if at all possible. Jesus attended this Passover. It was probably his custom to do so.

When he arrived at the temple, the usual commercial activity was taking place. People were purchasing the animals they needed in order to make their sacrifice to God. It was easier to buy an animal for sacrifice at the temple than to bring such an animal along on the temple journey. Rich men probably purchased sheep and oxen for their sacrifice. Poor men purchased pigeons. What they were about was part of the universal human practice of religion. They were about the business of sacrifice. They were about the business of doing something to overcome their sense of estrangement from God.

Suddenly, Jesus sprang into action. I don’t think we have any way of knowing how shocking his actions were. He made a whip of cords. With whip in hand he drove the animals out of the temple. The money-changers were there, too. They gave people local coins in place of their Roman coins so they could pay their temple tax. Jesus turned his whip and his wrath upon them as well. He poured out their coins. He overturned their tables. In righteous anger Jesus put an end to the whole commercial enterprise. He cleansed the temple of its commercial practices. "... you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade," he shouted.

Needless to say, the Jewish religious authorities went into a rage of their own. "What sign have you to show us for doing this?" they demanded. That is typical. The first century Jews always wanted a sign.

Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?" What they did not understand, John tells us, is that Jesus spoke of the temple of his body - a body that would rise from the dead after three days’ death.

Human beings, we have said, know themselves to be estranged from God. Human beings, we have said, know they need to do something to overcome their estrangement. That is the mainspring of all human religious activity. That is what was going on in the temple that day. Human beings came to do something about their relation to God. They came to make a sacrifice to put themselves right with God. And Jesus put a stop to it. People came to the holy place to do a holy thing and Jesus put a stop to it. Listen carefully: Jesus of Nazareth put a stop that day to human religious activity. Jesus of Nazareth put a stop to every human form of trying to do something to make our lives right with God.

"What will you put in the place of our temple?" the Jews of Jesus’ day might have asked him. You have already heard the answer. Jesus put his body in the place of the temple. "You are destroying the temple yourselves by what you are doing," Jesus told them. "But when the temple is destroyed, I will rise up on the third day. I will replace the temple. I will be the place where God and human beings meet each other. Your broken relationship will not be healed by what you do for God in the temple. Your relationship with God will be healed by what I do for you in my body. I have come to be the center of your relationship with God. To worship me is to worship God. This temple, this place, is no longer the place to worship God." "... those who worship (God) must worship in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). "True worship of God is worship of me."

"What will you put in place of our temple?" the Jews might have asked. "What will you put in the place of our sacrifices?" is the question we ought to ask. The answer to both questions is the same. Jesus puts his body in place of the Jewish temple. Jesus also puts his body in the place of human sacrifices. The author of Hebrews, in discussing the sacrifices religious people make, says that Jesus put an end to all sacrifices ... he did this once for all when he offered up himself" (Hebrews 7:27). Jesus gave his body unto death on a cross. Jesus has made, with his own body, the only sacrifice that is ever needed to set us right with God. And Jesus did this once for all! The day of making sacrifices, the day of doing something religious to make ourselves right with God, is over. God has healed our estrangement through the sacrifice of God’s Son. We have been healed, not by what we have done for God, but by what God, in the body of Jesus, has done for us.

"I am your temple," Jesus says to us through the story of the cleansing of the temple. "My body is the place where God comes to meet you. That means that your days of estrangement from God are over. That means that your days of being religious are over. I have given my temple, I have given my body, for you. I have made the only sacrifice that you ever need. You can live at peace now and forever. This is the gift I bring you through the temple of my body."