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When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. \xa0\u201cIt is written,\u201d he said to them, \u201c\u2018My house will be a house of prayer\u2019; but you have made it \u2018a den of robbers.\u2019\u201d Every day he was teaching at the temple.\xa0But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him.\xa0Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. (Luke 19:45-48)

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Immediately following Jesus\u2019 triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Luke tells us that he went to the Temple and began to drive out those who were selling.\xa0 Matthew tells us that Jesus started flipping over the tables of money changers and the benches of those selling doves.\xa0 John goes even further, telling us that Jesus made a whip out of chords to help speed the cattle and merchants out of the Temple courts.\xa0

In the tradition of the church, this scene has been referred to as Jesus\u2019 \u201ccleansing the Temple.\u201d\xa0 The center point of Jewish worship and the place God caused his name to dwell, the Temple was to be a place of prayer and a witness to all nations.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

Instead, it had become a good place to fleece the sheep and cash in on the foreign currencies brought by the nations.\xa0 The religious establishment had become quite a lucrative enterprise, driving the economic wheels of commerce.\xa0

Jesus, invoking the prophet Jeremiah, called it a \u201cDen of Robbers.\u201d\xa0 The Executive Management of the Temple called Jesus bad for business and were looking for any opportunity to kill him off.\xa0

Today we in Hamilton go back to gray in the colour-coded pandemic restriction regime.\xa0 We\u2019re quite done with this whole business of being restricted and long for the day when we can go back to normal.\xa0 In our lives, but also at church.

But what if \u201cnormal\u201d as we knew it in 2019 isn\u2019t what Jesus is hoping for for our church?\xa0 If he arrived at Immanuel CRC in 2019, what tables might he have overturned?\xa0 What kind of \u201ccleansing\u201d might he have he worked to restore the vision of a house of prayer among us?\xa0

In fact, our pews have been overturned (tables sit in their place!), and our worshiping community on a Sunday, decimated.\xa0 We won\u2019t get into wondering if God meant to bring some kind of judgement or cleansing through the pandemic, that\u2019s not terribly helpful.\xa0 But it may be worth wondering what kind of \u201cnormal\u201d should mark the life of the church after this.\xa0 How might Jesus be calling our church to live differently coming out of this pandemic than when we went into it?\xa0 In what areas might he ask for our repentance?\xa0 In what areas might he offer a commendation and an invitation to continue or go deeper?

Of course, you can ponder those questions for your own life too.

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