Reflecting on clearing our Temples

There is nothing like a good clear out at home. We keep far too much “stuff”! It is therapeutic to have a tidy up. There are periods when my study is a mess, piles of paper everywhere. It feels good when I make the effort to do some sorting and then I feel in control. What about spiritual spring cleaning and the priorities of the church today?  

Jesus was angry with a place of prayer and worship being overtaken with commercial activity and financial reward and profit being more important than God – a danger for us today where we need to fund raise, but fund raise for what? But there is more to this cleaning up of the Temple in John’s Gospel than in other Gospels where this story appears. It is right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in John, and it says well actually you don’t need the Temple you need me. To defile worship of me to neglect prayer to me, is to desecrate me. Put me first. We must note John’s Gospel is all about us reflecting on who Jesus is, primarily, it is a commentary on him rather than a series of events. To destroy the Temple for orthodox Jews was blasphemy, no wonder Jesus went to a cross. But they failed to understand that worship of God can never be dependent on physical properties alone, but on Jesus’ love and life in the believer. One commentary I read this week says, “if these are absent when we engage in worship, we talk to ourselves rather than communicate with God.”

We must note also that John wrote his Gospel after the Temple had indeed been destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, that event was huge in the Jewish calendar, and with no Temple the people had to completely rethink their spiritual life. Imagine coming to a place of worship since birth and suddenly it was no more. What would you do? Methodism today has too many buildings, our headquarters are saying, some of them are in the wrong place, and are not doing very much, but if you’ve been to a church which closed, that is hard, and to have your church criticised by someone, or ruined from within sometimes, is really painful. The General Secretary of our church, Martyn Atkins, was at Ministerial Synod in Canterbury with us on Wednesday. He said the aim of our church over the next few years is to say less “I belong to that church” and more “I am a disciple of Christ.” Perhaps buildings will become less important and perhaps we will be church where people are, more. I don’t know. It is a frightening yet also exciting time to be a Christian.

I wonder reflecting on this passage, and most of the passages in Lent are really hard – what do we need to clear out in order to be better Christians? Are there things we need to stop doing? What in our lives needs a good scrub and a good deep clean in order for us to feel better? Jesus simply today asks us to think and maybe reassess what is important.