A Congregational Letter to Morgan’s Point and Forks Road East United Churches
Today, as we journey more deeply into the Lenten Season, God calls us to continue to take time to understand who we are individually as God’s beloved children, who we are with others in community, and who we are in relationship with God.
This Sunday, which is Lent 3, focusses on the Gospel of John 2:13-22, and is entitled “The Temple – Our Body”. In our lesson from John’s Gospel, Jesus goes to the Temple, today, and turns over the tables of the moneychangers, and throws out the animals being purchased.
In a very real way, Jesus is overturning business as usual. There are times when we need the tables of our life overturned, and the animals thrown out. It is just so easy to fall into the trap of business as usual. Yet, Jesus understands that business as usual is born of forgetfulness. He understands that while we are practicing business as usual, we are forgetting that we really are the Temple of God’s presence. We are forgetting that all of creation is the residence of God. We are forgetting that in whatever direction we might turn, there is the face of God gazing upon us. As soon as we forget these things about ourselves, one other, or the world, life becomes business as usual.
I think that is what happened, today, in the Temple. The lenders and buyers did not see themselves, or one another, as the true Temple of God. It was all about the human built temple, the animals, and the coins. They had forgotten that God was more interested in them, than in their festivals, and that God wanted them more than their offerings. When we forget that we are the Temple of God, life can easily become a series of transactions. Relationships and intimacy are lost. Priorities get rearranged. Making a living replaces living a life. Life becomes a market place, rather than a place for meeting the Holy in ourselves and one another, and it is business as usual. That’s what Jesus is overturning, and driving out of the temple.
Over and over, again, Jesus is interrupting, disrupting, overturning, and throwing out business as usual in our lives. Business as usual is destructive to our lives, and relationships. It destroys our ability to see, and participate, in the Holy that is already present in and among us.
Regardless, of who we are, what we’ve done, or left undone, or, how we see or judge our life, we are the Temple of God, and there is One who stands in the Temple of our life interrupting business as usual. What does the Temple of your life need today? What tables in your life need to be overturned? What animals need to be driven out? We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Let us live this wisdom and understanding.
Let us continue to pray for one another every morning at 10:30, remembering that God grants us wisdom, love, and peace as we hold each other in God’s tender keeping. Much love and care to you all. Keep well and safe.
God’s Blessings, Pastor Laura
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