Cleansing the Temple

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the day in the Christian year marking the start of Holy Week and on which Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem as the Messiah is celebrated. The next day, the Monday of Holy Week, Jesus visited the temple complex in Jerusalem and drove out the money changers and merchants who were turning the house of God into a marketplace for trading ordinary money for the special temple currency (at profitable rates of exchange) and selling animals for sacrifice (at inflated prices).

The incident is recorded in the three Synoptic Gospels at Matthew 21, Mark 11 and Luke 19. Interestingly John's Gospel records a similar event right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry (some believe this is the same incident with the story told out of chronological order, but I think this was likely a different event as the chronology is completely different). This could mean Jesus had to do the same thing at the beginning and end of his public ministry.

What seemed to anger Jesus was two things. First, people exploiting those who wanted to worship God for financial gain. Secondly, God's house being for purposes it was not intended for.

I was thinking about what would be the equivalent to this in our churches today. 

Are there churches that exploit people financially? I am sure that there are organisations calling themselves churches that are more like businesses run for profit. At the obvious end of the spectrum are those who preach "the prosperity gospel". In crude terms, give money to the church and you will receive even more back from God. What a travesty of the truth! It can be dressed up in more subtle ways, but that's the basic message. I am sure Jesus is angry now with those who would directly pervert the gospel for financial ends.

Maybe there are more subtle ways though in which we can set up barriers to worship for people, even if financial gain is not the motive. If we send out a signal that only those with the right kind of education or job, or those with the right accent, or the right hobbies and interests are welcome, we can be putting up barriers to people who don't fit the expected mould. That's why I think those who welcome people to church on a Sunday are absolutely vital in outreach work. All the effort to invite new people to church can be wasted if the welcome people receive is not genuine, warm and friendly when they actually step inside the church building. I believe the skill of welcoming people is vastly underrated as a talent. Churches should treasure those who do it well.

The second aspect to the cleansing of the temple is using our buildings in ways they were not intended for. The situation in the Jerusalem temple seems to have been that the merchants had set up in the "Court of the Gentiles" - the outer precinct of the temple provided by God for non-Jews to come and pray. There is an important point being made here about the extent of the Messiah's mission to take the gospel to all the nations. But what about our church buildings? Does any of this have anything to say about how we use them?

I think it is important to point out that this is not a criticism of churches who make a wide use of their buildings for various purposes. I know that some churches let out halls or rooms to outside groups. That's not really what I'm criticising, at least it is not automatically covered by Jesus' criticism, depending on the circumstances.

The key question is whether some activity the church should be doing or would like to do is being prevented by the building being used for some other purpose. To give an example, suppose a church would like to run an evening service on a Sunday or a prayer meeting on a Wednesday but they decide they can't because that's when some other group has a let to use the church. I would argue that the priorities of the church should always to be a church and any other activities should come far behind if they take place at all. Never should the church's key tasks of worshipping God, prayer, discipling believers and evangelising non-believers be prevented because the church building is being used for something else. How that plays out in practice is for church leadership to wrestle with and sometimes there will be difficult cases that need prayer and wisdom to sort out. 

 Yet the general principle is clear. The church building exists to let the church better be the church first and foremost in its tasks of worship, nurturing the people of God and reaching out to those outside with the gospel. If something is preventing that, it has to go. When we have it any other way, our "temple" needs to be cleansed.

 

(Image: Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple by Theodoor Rombouts)

The King Rises

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

With these words, Christians all over the world will begin the celebration of Easter.

Please read Luke 24:1–12

Most Jews in New Testament times probably believed in resurrection, which is the concept that the dead will rise in their bodies from the grave to have a new life with God. But what they believed in was a general resurrection of all the dead at the end of time. No one expected that for one man the resurrection would happen, not at the end of the world, but right in the middle of human history.

But early on the Sunday morning, on the third day after Jesus was crucified, died and was buried, that's exactly what happened. When it did, nothing would ever be the same again.

In the evangelical tradition, the focus tends to be on the cross rather the resurrection. Yes we believe in the resurrection and we focus on the bodily resurrection in contrast with the liberals who deny it. But I don't think we actually grasp the importance of the resurrection all that well. If we're not careful the resurrection can become merely the happy ending after Good Friday, the evidence that the sacrifice of the cross worked. Yet in New Testament terms the cross and resurrection go together as parts of Christ's saving work.

We need to really take hold of this: Christ's death took our sins away, but Christ's resurrection brings us new life. Salvation in biblical terms is about far more than sin management or sin removal, it is about transformation from what we were to what we will be. For that we need more than pardon or forgiveness, amazing though these blessings are. We need to draw new kind of life, eternal life, from Christ's own resurrection life. That's what happens when enter into a living relationship with the risen Christ. When we believe in him, we enter into union with him, so that his death becomes ours and takes our sins away, and his resurrection life becomes ours as well. When that life flows into us, it begins a process of changing us from the inside out. We start to become the kind of people God always wanted us to be. We need more than for the slate to be wiped clean. We need to replace the slate altogether with a new iPad. And that's what the resurrection means in spiritual terms for us.

Paul wrote in Romans 4:25 (Good News Bible): "Because of our sins he was given over to die, and he was raised to life in order to put us right with God."

Happy Easter to all my readers!

The King's Tomb

Please read Mark 15:42–47
 
The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is very much the forgotten day of Holy Week. In Christian tradition it is usually called either "Holy Saturday," "Easter Eve," or sometimes "Black Saturday." It is the day when the body of Jesus lay in the tomb after his burial late on the Friday afternoon and the earth-shattering events of the Sunday morning.

The Gospels tell us the tomb where Jesus was buried belonged to a wealthy and influential citizen of Jerusalem called Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. He had been a secret disciple of Jesus, yet after Jesus had died, when the other disciples fled, it is Joseph of Arimathea who "comes out" as one of Jesus' followers and he went to Pontius Pilate to take custody of the dead body. Joseph then used the tomb he had presumably purchased for his own use when the time came and laid Jesus to rest in it instead. This in itself is an extraordinary act of service and love that Joseph showed to his Saviour.

The question often asked is what happened to Jesus in between his death and resurrection while his body was in the tomb. What was going on when his body lay in the tomb? The traditional version of the Apostles' Creed says that after being "crucified, dead and buried, He descended into hell." There is no real biblical evidence for this credal statement however. Modern versions of the Creed sometimes change this to "He descended to the dead" or "to the realm of the dead" which ties in with the idea of Hades as simply the place where the dead go, rather than a place where they go to be punished as Hell (or Gehenna) suggests.

This raises the whole question of what theologians call "the intermediate state" between death and resurrection for all of us. It is too big a subject to go into in any detail here, but I think the correct view is that for us when a Christian dies their soul goes at once to a part of heaven and they are consciously in the presence of Jesus. When non-Christians die their souls go to a place usually called Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek. It is not "Hell" as we think of it, but a sort of shadowy waiting place where their souls dwell until the last judgment. Hell, whatever it is, is only entered into after the judgment at the end of time.

But what about Jesus when he died? One biblical piece of evidence is that on the cross, Jesus said the thief, "Today, you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). This would suggest that Jesus went to "Paradise" after he died. So what is Paradise? Well if we look at 2 Corinthians 12 we see that Paul calls the same place "heaven" and "paradise" so it would seem that Paradise is another word for heaven or at least a part of heaven. So after he died, Christ both in a part of heaven and in the realm of the dead, but not hell according to Scripture.

My own view, tentatively held, is that all the dead go to Hades, but part of Hades somehow overlaps with and is touched by heaven and is this place is called Paradise. Only those who are right with God can go there and they are in God's presence there. The word "paradise" comes from the Persian language and means a "walled garden" - which could mean it is both in Hades, but separated from the main part of Hades. If this is the case, then it is possible to affirm both that Christ was in Paradise while he was dead, but also that he descended to the realm of the dead or descended to Hades. He may even have been able to visit all parts of Hades, not just Paradise as 1 Peter 4:6 suggests.

But all this is not something I would be at all dogmatic about!

The important point is that Jesus was really dead, really buried, and really went to the realm where the dead go to show it. But only until the third day came...

The King Dies

Please read Matthew 27:33–53
 
Today is Good Friday, the most solemn day in the Christian year when we mark the crucifixion and death of Jesus. At a purely human level, the cross remains a shocking and sad event. The death of a young man, murdered by his powerful enemies, convicted of a crime he didn't commit, tortured to death, an idealist who paid the ultimate price for this principles of love, justice and freedom. Because of all this I hesitated to say that Christians "celebrate" Good Friday. We commemorate it and we are profoundly moved by it, but it is hard to celebrate a man's bloody and brutal murder. These are what we might call the "human interest" elements to the story and they tend to be the focus of dramatic treatments of Christ's death whether in paintings or in cinema.

Yet the Bible's focus is not so much on the human interest elements as on the theological meaning of the death of Jesus. It is in the profound spiritual truths of what Christ's death accomplished as atonement or reconciliation with God, expiation of sin, propitiation of wrath, redemption from slavery, victory over Satan, release from punishment and deliverance from death (to name just some things that the New Testament says the cross of Jesus Christ has done for us) that the death of Jesus finds its true meaning. It is because of what the cross means for broken and guilty humanity that it is transformed from the waste of a good life to the greatest use of a good life that has ever or could ever happen.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.

The question the death of Jesus poses to you today is this: will his death have been in vain for you or not? Because the true meaning of the death of Jesus can only be fulfilled in the lives of those who are in spiritual union with him, and the benefits of what Christ has achieved on the cross are only shared with those who want them. Do you want forgiveness for your past and transformation for your future? Do you want a relationship with God through Jesus? That's what Christ is even now offering you through the cross. To accept it he only looks for you to trust and follow him in faith. This Good Friday, let the King's death change your life forever.

The King's Feast

Please read Mark 14:12–26
 
The Thursday of Holy Week is often known as "Maundy Thursday." Maundy is an old word for the ritual of footwashing. It was on the Thursday of Jesus' last week that he washed the disciples feet to show the need for Christians to serve each other. Some Christian traditions still have footwashing as a ritual to show our humility and duty of service to others, especially our duty to the poor. (This is the origin of the monarch distributing "Maundy Money" today.)

But this post is about another rite that Christ introduced on the same day; one which is observed by almost all Christians - the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, also known as the Eucharist (Thanksgiving) or Holy Communion, or as we might also call it "The King's Feast."

Imagine the scene in the upper room that Thursday night. The disciples have gathered with Jesus to celebrate the Passover meal, just as they had every year since boyhood. They had probably eaten this special meal twenty, thirty or forty times before on previous Passovers. It's as traditional to them as Christmas dinner is to us. Then, in the middle of the meal, Jesus does something totally new and unexpected. He switches from commemorating, through the meal of roast lamb, the exodus from Egypt in Moses' time and now looks forward to a new exodus - a new deliverance for God's people - through his own death as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

The meal is as simple as possible. Bread and wine. Bread symbolising Christ's body broken for us on the cross; wine symbolising Christ's red blood poured out to seal a new covenant between God and his people. The eating and drinking of the bread and wine symbolising the living relationship of faith and obedience that depends on Christ and draws on Christ for spiritual nourishment and life. And the sharing of the loaf and cup with fellow believers symbolising our unity and comradeship as Christian pilgrims on the Way together.

A simple meal of bread and wine and yet the greatest feast this world affords and the foretaste of the great King's feast to come when Christ returns in glory.

The King's Enemies

Please read Luke 22:1–6
 
The Wednesday of Holy Week is sometimes known as "Spy Wednesday" in the Christian calendar because it probably on this day that Judas Iscariot went in secret to the Sanhedrin to begin the dark negotiations that would lead to him agreeing to betray Jesus the next night to them for thirty pieces of silver.

We may never know what motivated Judas to do what he did. Perhaps it was that by his actions Judas realised Jesus was not going to conform to his image of what the Messiah should be?  Judas may have felt betrayed himself because he expected Jesus to lead an armed rebellion against Rome and could not come to terms with his master's message of peace and non-violence? Whatever the reason, the time is now right for Judas to make his move and try to salvage something for his time "wasted" with Jesus and he agrees to give Jesus up for a payoff of thirty pieces of silver, which was roughly four month's wages at that time. A large amount of money, but by no means a fortune in return for selling out a close friend.

What is obvious is that Jesus was surrounded by enemies by this point. Not only the temple leadership but also the Pharisees are all looking for a way to have Jesus killed. Yet behind them all is Christ's archenemy, Satan himself. It was this enemy - the devil - that Christ came to earth to defeat and destroy as prophesied all the way back in Genesis 3:15. And it was this enemy that Christ did crush in the victory of the cross and the triumph of the resurrection.

The King's Wisdom

Please read Luke 20:1–8
 
The Tuesday of Holy Week is sometimes known as the day of questions because the Gospels record a number of questions that people asked Jesus on that day and the replies Jesus gave.

The questions were mainly hostile on that day. There were questions about who he was, what he was doing and what his authority was for doing them. As ever, Jesus’ answers are striking and supremely wise. When the questioner is trying to trap him he doesn't avoid answering but gives answers that can be interpreted in more than one way. He also turns the tables on the questioners and leaves them looking foolish. That tends to be the way when people come to Christ without faith and with hostility.

The situation is very different if we come with genuine, honest questions. If we come with the attitude of "I believe, help Thou my unbelief" then Christ is very patient and compassionate with us.

Paul wrote that Christ is the very wisdom of God. He gives the answers to life's most fundamental questions about who we are, what we're here for, and where are we going. Christ can answer all the questions in your heart. He asks you only one question in return: "Will you trust and follow me?"

The King Visits

Please read Matthew 21:12–17
 
The Monday of Holy Week is often used as a day to reflect on Christ's visit to the temple in Jerusalem. The Gospels tell us that when Jesus saw all the merchants and money-changers doing business in the temple courts he was angry. Jesus' words are sharp and to the point. "My Father's house will be called a house of prayer but you have turned it into a den of thieves."

Doing business in the temple this way was symptomatic of the corruption of the whole temple system that had crept in over the years. The area where the traders met was called the court of the Gentiles. It was an area that symbolised Israel's responsibility to draw the Gentile nations into covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Instead it had been turned into a holy market place.

But not only was Israel failing in its calling to be the light for the world, the traders themselves were exploiting temple worshippers. Most people coming to the temple would come to make some kind of sacrifice in accordance with the Torah laid down in the first five books of the Bible. The traders sold animals that were acceptable for use, without blemish, but they sold them at inflated prices. They also operated currency changing facilities as only temple currency could be used in the temple (not Roman coinage). Again, sharp exchange rates operated to rip off worshippers and pilgrims.

It is this kind of "religion" where people are exploited and robbed of money that makes Jesus angry. One can only wonder what he would make of TV evangelists and certain Christian "ministries" in our day who seem to be more interested in the financial giving of people above all else.

In our churches we need to be constantly on our guard that no corruption enters into our practice and more likely perhaps that we do not put up needless barriers that stop people coming to worship God or enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The King Arrives

As we approach Easter, I plan to post a short reflection each day about the events in Christ's life during the final "holy week" before his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection.

Please read Matthew 21:1–11

Today is Palm Sunday, marking the beginning of Holy Week in the Christian calendar. The Gospels tell us that it was on the equivalent Sunday in about AD 30 that Jesus of Nazareth began the last week of his earthly life and the culmination of the three years of his public ministry as an itinerant rabbi in Palestine. On that day, Jesus rode into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey and receiving the acclaim of a large crowd of thousands of people as the long awaited King of Israel, the Messiah.

As he rode into the holy city, the crowd threw down their cloaks and waved palm branches in praise to God (hence the name Palm Sunday). Children as well as adults sang his praises. For many people this was going to be the beginning of a holy revolution that would throw the occupying Romans out of Palestine and restore the nation of Israel to its former glory. It was the dawning realisation that Jesus wasn't going to be that kind of Messiah that led to the crowds turning against him and demanding his death only five days later.

What Christ's mission involved was far greater than defeating the Roman armies. Christ rode into Jerusalem knowing he was coming to die. And so courageously and resolutely he rode into the jaws of hell to win salvation for sinners. He was a victorious Messiah, but the enemies he defeated were sin, death and the devil. And rescued not just one nation but the whole world. He came as God's king to set up the Kingdom of God, but he came to do that through making peace, not through hatred and war. He was a king utterly unlike any before or since. He is a king who does not create subjects by force or by political guile; his "subjects" are regarded as his friends and their loyalty is won only by the king's love for them and their trust and love for him in return.

The Resurrection Body

I heard an excellent sermon yesterday on the resurrection body (based on 1 Corinthians 15:35–58) by our minister, Jonathan de Groot. You will soon be able to find it on our church's website here.

It might come as a surprise to some people that the Christian teaching on life after death is NOT that we go to heaven forever as disembodied spirits or that we end up us angels, complete with white robes, halos and dove-like wings, but that we will ultimately have bodies again. New, improved, unfailing, perfect bodies fit to live in a new, improved, unfailing and perfect world, yet still the world: a physical reality, not just a spiritual one.

While most Christians do believe that the faithful do go straight to heaven when we die and enter God's presence there, that is not our ultimate destination or state of being. As N. T. Wright has put it memorably, Christians believe in "life after life after death." The final chapter of the Christian's story is not our soul going to heaven, but the resurrection of our bodies to spend eternity in a renewed heaven and earth where there is no separation between the two places, where God and humanity live together in love and peace forever.

And it is important, I think, to note that this is not some "extreme" position nor is it the "party line" of any one tradition or denomination within the church. It is a central truth, arguably one of the defining truths of the Christian faith contra almost every other faith and world view, which is why we find it expressed in the ancient creeds, accepted by all Christians. In the Apostles' Creed, we confess "I believe in...the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting."

The passage in 1 Corinthians 15 says this is exactly what we are to believe as Christians. One day we will be raised to a new kind of life, with a new kind of body, just like Jesus Christ was raised at Easter. In that sense, he was the first fruits, the pioneer, of what will one day happen to every believer - resurrection in a new physical and spiritual body.

One thing Jonathan didn't mention in his sermon particularly was what these new resurrection bodies will be like. He did mention, following Paul's words, that they will be glorious, sinless, incorruptible, imperishable and perfect. But what will they look like and what will we be able to do with them that we cannot do in our current earthly bodies?

While much of this remains a mystery, the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus give us some idea of what our resurrection bodies will be like.

1. Recognisably the Same

The first thing to note is that whatever our new bodies will be like they will still be recognisably us. They are new but they are not completely different from what we were before. His disciples could still tell even after the resurrection that the risen Jesus was still Jesus. He still had the holes from the nails in his hands and feet. Thomas could still  touch him. He was still a physical being, who cooked meals and ate food with other people. He was still a human being of substance, not a ghost or spirit.

2. Undoubtedly Different

Yet although he was still recognisably Jesus, the risen Christ was also a very different human being. His face would seem to have been somehow different from it had been - the disciples on the Emmaus road did not recognise him when they first saw him - yet not completely different. Maybe after the resurrection Jesus became somehow "ageless"? But there were other differences as well. He was able to enter into a locked room without opening the doors. He was apparently able to move at superhuman speed between different locations. And he seems to have been able to disappear from view when he wanted to.

Taking these two aspects of the risen Jesus' body it seems reasonable to conclude that after the resurrection we too will remain ourselves, rather than becoming something completely different. We will have our own personalities and memories intact and though our physical appearance will be changed, other people will still recognise us. Yet at the same time, we will have many of the limitations that are currently part of our physicality removed. In short, we will be perfected, super versions of ourselves, the best of what we are now combined with everything we will need to be to inherit and inhabit the new earth in eternity.

It sounds unimaginable, even as I write about these things. But we have God's word assuring us it is the truth, and we have the risen Jesus showing us the truth. And what would I say to someone who claims this is all too good to be true and couldn't possibly happen? I'd say: tell that to a beautiful butterfly who was once a wriggly green hairy caterpillar.