Introduction – Cleansing the Temple
When he enters Jerusalem, Jesus come to the Temple, the symbol and promise of God’s presence among his people. He finds merchants and money changers, who have made the Temple into an opportunity for personal gain. It was called to be a house of prayer for all nations and it has become a den of thieves. It was not just that they thieved from one another, but that they thieved from God and stole his glory for their own enrichment – they stole the offer of his glory in prayer for the nations.
- Matthew 21:12-13 Cleansing the Temple
- Matthew 21:18–19 Jesus curses the Fig Tree
A Reflection
The first thing that Jesus does after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem is to go to the Temple. And there, something extraordinary happens. The one who had patiently responded over three years, to every provocation of the pharisees and others, with words of grace and truth, seems to have lost it. Matthew’s version is brief, but John’s version (though he places it at a different point in the narrative, Jn 2:13) is more dramatic. Later, the Disciples remembered the scripture “zeal for your house has consumed me” (Ps 69:9)
And on the way to this, Jesus spots a Fig Tree. He is looking for fruit but finds none, so Jesus curses it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!”, and it withers.
As we start our Holy Week pilgrimage with Jesus, this ought to stun us., as genuinely shocking!
Shake up, Wake up
God has promised that in the last days he will shake the earth and the heavens, so much that nothing that can be shaken will stand. Only the one who cannot be shaken will remain. But now:
“… it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Pet 4:17)
What a blessing the virus is in God’s hands, that it shakes us up so! Just as Jesus shook the Temple, he is surely shaking us, his people; shaking out the dead branches that don’t belong, and shaking awake the sleeping that they may live as they are called to.
But we don’t like being shaken. We cling to familiar supports, even if they are the reason that God is shaking us; supports that have usurped Christ’s place. In our isolation, how quick we are to look for ways of maintaining church as we know it. But, perhaps, given time we may come to recognise something better that God is offering to us.
I have, over the years, come to see that questions are more important than answers. If you want answers, you can always ask easy questions. But if you are willing to live with questions that have no easy answers, though they may lead to more and harder questions, they hold the promise of the answer that we truly need.
So, I am asking:
- What is it that Jesus is trying to overturn and drive out in the way we live as Christians, individually and together as church? Some of it will be bad stuff that has no place in our lives or in church. But some may be seemingly good, though it holds us back from what God really wants in our lives and church.
There are no easy answers – as we pray and plead with him, some answers may become obvious to us, but I have a feeling that the answers we most need will not come until we seek him, persistently, with all or hearts, souls, mind and strength. The Good News is that God will not let up until he has us completely.
- Bound up with the first question is a second; what is it that God is looking for in us, that we have yet to embrace (individually and as church); what hungering and thirsting after righteousness; what pressing on and in to the upward call of God in Christ?
Paul’s calling and privilege was to preach the unfathomable riches of Christ (Eph 3:8). We are too content to paddle, when Jesus wants us to swim.
A House of Prayer
I can see a glimpse of what some of this might be, in Jesus’ complaint about the way the Temple was being used.
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ quoted from Isa 56:7
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Even before Jesus torn down the curtain separating the holy of holies in the temple, even before he poured out his Spirit on all flesh, there was an outer courtyard where the gentiles could approach God in the Temple. It seems likely that it was there that the moneychangers and merchants had set up their tables.
God’s plan in calling Abraham and creating the Jewish people was never meant to be an exclusive people. His promise to Abraham was that all the peoples (all nations) would be blessed in him. Likewise, the Temple, for all its divisions in holy and holier places was meant to be a place where all could come to seek God in prayer and worship.
“A house of prayer for all peoples”, does not mean that it was to be place for people to pray for the nations, but a place for all the nations to pray.
Now, God’s people (in Christ by faith and the gift of his Spirit) are the temple (read 1 Peter 1&2). And our mission is not to make conversions, but Disciples – living stones building up a new temple.
People sometimes worry about whether the church is relevant or accessible – i.e. open to all peoples. But Jesus criticism was not about the temple’s relevance or openness, but about its heart … as a place of prayer. That is where I feel his finger is upon us now.
The church that I glimpse (through a mirror dimly) has a low threshold – so all may come close – and a high heart. It is a church so committed, so seeking after God’s fullness and glory in Jesus, that its people live in every way for this glory (which is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus – Phil 3:14)
People are so hungry for this. So hungry that they will seek it in every form of spirituality that the world can offer. How is it that they see so little of what they hunger for in the church?
The Fig Tree
Alongside the shock of Jesus violently overturning the merchant’s tables and hounding them out of the temple with a whip is the message of the fig tree. It was not the season for figs, but this fig tree was a message. God, who has lavished his grace and truth upon generations of his people looks for some evidence of its good effect in their lives. Where no fruit was found, the fruitless fig tree was made to wither.
I do believe in God’s purposes for his people. That’s why the present shaking is a sign of grace and love. But there are some things in our lives and church that are all green leaves and will never bear fruit. We must expect some things to wither, while we pray for new green shoots of life and fruit.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. (Jer 29:11-13)