The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was within the human person.
We have a challenging set of readings on this Third Sunday of Lent ….
So, to help us understand them, perhaps we can take a few minutes to set the stage for the events that John records in his Gospel. I’ll make it easy for you. It revolves around one word. Shekinah. [shuh·kai·nuh]
Shekinah – It means the Glory of the Presence of God. And it helps us to understand the significance of the Temple in Jewish worship.
You see, the temple was where the Shekinah, the glory of the presence of God, was to be found. The Temple was the place where God was most present in the world, where God lived within the Holy of Holies. It was the place where God was worshipped and honoured by a people who had been through so much …. through deserts and pain and wars and terrible conditions, to finally get to a little place, a chosen land, and build a temple, a beautiful temple, a temple where the Shekinah of God could blaze in glory to all the visitors that would come from far, far away to see this wonderful temple where God was most present in the whole world.
Yet when Jesus arrives at the temple, he sees that the court of the Gentiles, where the rest of the world outside Judaism could come and worship God, had been turned into a shopping mall, a marketplace where people were sold the items that ritual dictated they must have in order to worship God. Jesus had traveled throughout the land and saw how injustice and oppression were present, especially to the poor and disenfranchised. And here again was injustice and oppression of the poor. In the temple. In the Shekinah of God. The rituals of worship had become occasions for abuse and oppression against the poor. The Temple became a place where greed, corruption, deceit and cheating took place.
And Jesus says, “You have taken my Father’s house, my Father’s house, and you’ve turned it into a cattle market. How could you do that? How could you do that?” And then John says that Jesus takes up a whip and drives the vendors out. Our mind tells us that these are just people trying to make money and who don’t care where they try to make it. And our sensibilities tell us that the ones who really deserve the whip or the driving out. Is those who are in charge, the high priests who allowed this to take place in their temple, they should have known better.
But when the priests confront Jesus for his actions, rather than him driving them out too, we get an enigmatic answer ….an answer that was deeply troubling for the Jews, and much more powerful than just driving them out too. Because he talks about tearing down the temple and rebuilding it in three days.
For the Jewish people the Temple wasn’t just a building. It was where the Shekinah, the glory of the presence of God, was to be found. To speak of it being destroyed wasn’t so much the equivalent of suggesting taking a bulldozer to St Peter’s. Rather, it was the equivalent of suggesting to a Catholic that we should do away with the Mass.
Millions of men, tadalafil cheapest these days, suffer from the difficulty of getting it up or keeping it up during intercourse. People can be unsure of where to buy appalachianmagazine.com sildenafil generic from canada Kamagra. It is imperative that strict testing be in place to ensure that people can get help with their levitra professional online appalachianmagazine.com kidney problems early. It took Pfizer’s tadalafil order seven years to reach Indian shores.It is important for us to remember that, for most of the defining moments of the history of God’s people, there was no one special place as such where God was to be found, and the Commandments spelled out that all of life was a place for the Holy to be found and celebrated. There was not one dimension which was the Holy and another one which was the everyday:
God’s revelation was of God as Emmanuel – God in the midst of us. And Jesus was the manifestation of that. Jesus the Emmanuel was the Shekinah of God. But there is an even more profound teaching here.
The temple has Disappeared. Jesus has returned to the Father. And so, You and I are the Shekinah – You and I are the Glory of the presence of God
As we change our behaviour so as to keep others safe during this pandemic, we make real the Shekinah – the glory of the presence of God.
As our hands reach out to help others who are struggling, we make real the Shekinah – the glory of the presence of God.
As we lend a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen; As we share of the abundances in our lives with those who have little – we make real the Shekinah – the glory of the presence of God.
As we speak out against prejudice, injustice, oppression; and especially as we work on the fears and prejudices that we carry within ourselves; we make real the Shekinah – the glory of the presence of God.
You and I are called to be the Shekinah of God. Seems like this Lent might be a good time to start …