In todays daily reading (and I really should start referencing these, so here )John has Jesus cleansing the Temple at the beginning of the Gospel. The synoptics put this narrative towards the end - linking Jesus figurative destruction of the Temple with the actual crucifixion.
John sets the scene with this story - yesterday the Wedding at Cana alerted us to change, new wine, better ways. Today the cleansing of the Temple lets us know that this new covenant will not just rest in the person of Jesus but will extend into the whole of the Old Covenant people and the establishment which they rely on - including the Temple.
This news of letting go would have been shocking and devastating to the Jewish thinker - but remember John is writing after the fact - the Romans have leveled Jerusalem and the Jews have been dispersed throughout the Empire. There is no longer a thought of the establishment in a place as anymore as a distant dream.
So in one sense, there is not shock value in starting with this story, but on the other there is. It is about taking away the heart of a people and replacing it with the heart of God - or putting their heart back where it should have been.
Perhaps there are two things to think about. It is a fearful thing to remove the sacred cows but sometimes we have to - both individually and as community (and even society) - the second is more sobering - that when we do remove sacred cows there will be some who cling to them and will refuse the better way - God will never let go of anyone but for the sake of our sanity, sometimes we may need to move away.
Jesus, in John, begins new relationship by dismantling the old - this is an aggressive action but then the cross is at the end of this road and that is hardly an easy choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment