- Stourbridge Road
- Catshill
- Worcester
- Worcestershire
- B61 9LH
"Cleansing the temple"
What would you do if you saw how some people took a beautiful concept, born of human experience and vision which saw the divine as present in all life and turned it into a commodity, a market place for their own profit.
People at that time went to the temple to make a gift to God. They wanted to share their gifts that God had given them. Their harvest, their livestock. But now the religious laws had tightened and they could only offer a pure unmarked creature, which the temple supplied. But this creature couldn’t be bought with impure local currency it had to be bought with pure temple money. The exchange rate was extortionate, so many couldn’t afford to make their gift to God.
You’d probably be as insensed as Jesus was as you entered the temple that day and watched as the money men profiteered from the peoples helplessness to do anything about it. They had turned the tables on God so Jesus turned the tables on them.
By the time the writer of John wrote John’s gospel the temple had been destroyed, the priests and rabbis slaughtered and most of Jerusalem brought to the ground.
Life does not allow imbalance for long.
Imbalance is unsustainable. Today we are not looking at a temple but the whole world becoming unsustainable because of the greed and skewed values of a powerful minority. The natural balance of the whole of earth has reached a tipping point.
Human greed desecrates the seas and her creatures. Land animals are regarded as less than nothing and their habitats destroyed for cheap palm oil plantations. We consume, commodify and waste more in the northern hemisphere than anywhere on earth, growing obese while others starve. The institutions that were built for the health and welfare of all are being eroded by those hungry for profit.
Imbalance is unsustainable, as we have all witnessed this last twelve months. We as followers of Christs way have to think very deeply now about how we live in that way. We can start by imagining what he would do if he walked into our temples.
Amen
Music
Holy Ground.- Salt of the sound
Your ways. - “
The truth that sets us free. – wild goose
Bless the Lord – wild goose
Let the peace of the Father – Keith Duke
Lamb of God -Salt of the sound
Song of life – Libera
Ameni - John Bell