Monday, March 30, 2015

Monday, Holy Week: Are cursing and cleansing acts of God? (Devotions for Lent from the Gospel of Mark)

Yesterday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem triumphant. He ascended the Temple Mount, looked all around at the courtyard and the inner courts, and saying nothing, left the area. What Mark doesn’t say is that he left disgusted.

The courtyard of the Temple is a bustle of activity. The moneychangers are there, exchanging the every day currency of the empire for temple currency so visitors can offer their annual temple tax. There are booths where acceptable sacrifices are sold: unblemished doves, the highest quality grains, freshly baked loaves of bread, and first-press olive oil. Perhaps worst of all, the Temple courtyard is a shortcut from the heart of the city to the road that leads to the Mount of Olives and on to Jericho, giving access to the road alongside the Jordan River leading north to Galilee and south toward Egypt. People are dressed for their journeys, carrying supplies and provisions of every kind through the courtyard. 

The scribes and Pharisees, Temple regulars and regulators, walk the perimeter, making sure everything is as it should be. Voices fill the space as people haggle, question, study, advise, joke, and ask for travel tips.

What should one find in this courtyard, if not this? It is the center of the city!

That’s what Jesus saw yesterday. Today, he yells aloud, tosses over the tables of those doing business, and closes the highway through the heart of the sanctuary. He quotes the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 56:7), reminding everyone that this place is consecrated to be a house of prayer for all the nations. For many, this courtyard is the closest they can get to the Holy of Holies. (The Holy of Holies is the place where the stone tablets of the ten commandments lie in the gilded ark of the covenant and the place where God’s pillar of fire and cloud finally rests.)

If the Temple courtyard is not a place of awe, wonder, holiness, preparation, and prayer for everyone who ascends its steps, there is no such place anywhere. The aura of God’s greatness and the call to reverence for all people either exist here, or they don’t exist at all.

Text for the day:

Things to think about:
Why do people need holy places? What obligation do we have to the people of the world to maintain holy places?

Things to do:
Spend some time in the sanctuary. Bring your prayers and petitions with you.

Jesus, cleanse our holy places.

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