Dawn is coming: Temple visits 3 and 4

This Advent I'm exploring ways in which Jesus came to his Temple and he was not what people expected. Jesus came to the Temple twice in the last week of his life. In Matthew 21:12-15 we find Jesus indignant at the way the temple had become a place of changing money and selling goods, albeit in the name of religion. He turns the stalls over and chases the money lenders and others out crying out 'my house will be called a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers'.

Just as the Jews had been waiting for a long time, so too we can be waiting, but in our waiting things can drift. There were (semi) good reasons for the money changers and the sellers of doves to be there, to facilitate the sacrifices and offerings of people. Over time though a religious habit had become so entrenched that it actually took away from what worship of Yahweh was about.

It could be time for us to look at ways that some of our religious habits as individuals and corporately have become ends in themselves. They may actually make it difficult for us to encounter Jesus when he comes to us in ways that don't support the status quo, or the established patterns in our churches. There are two clues in the passage in Matthew that tells us how to spot when he may be coming. An increased desire to pray and an increased care for others.

The final time Jesus visits the temple is when he breathes his last on the cross and as Matthew 27: 51 describes: At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. His death opened a new way to God and replaced the temple worship and sacrificial system with a more immediate and intimate relationship with God. The Hebrew word hesed is the word most used by God to describe himself in the the Old Testament. It has been translated in numerous ways but at the heart of it is the idea of loving kindness. Or as someone said He from whom I expect nothing, gives me everything.

This is the dawn that breaks into our darkness time and time again just as it did that first Advent for the people of Israel. Our giving of gifts reflects in a very very dim way God giving of his Son. as a vulnerable baby with his young poor parents, then as a curious teenager, chasing out the money changers and finally dying on the cross and the temple veil being torn in two.

Happy Christmas.

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