Worship at Home - Sunday 7th March 2021

 

Gathering:

Hymn StF 88 – Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation! -

 Prayer of Praise:

Great and mighty God,
you reign over all Creation.

We praise you for the colours of sunrise
that fill each new day with a reminder of your beauty.

We stand in wonder at the power of the wind
shaking us out of our temptation to resist the movement of your Spirit

We are refreshed when the rains come
to soften our hearts to new seasons of growth

We are warmed by the noonday sun
opening us to receive your great love

Great and mighty God,
you reign over all Creation
and we praise you for all that your hand has made.  Amen

Prayer of Confession

Lord, I’m sorry for the things I have done
and shouldn’t have done,
for the things I have said
and now wish I hadn’t
the things I thought and now regret.
The damage has been done, the time has passed
and its too late now to apologise.
Thank you that I can turn to you and say, “Sorry”
knowing that you will forgive me
and I can start again
in a new relationship with you.  Amen

Hilary Jeffries taken from The Earth is the Lord’s – Prayer Handbook 2020/21 – The Methodist Church

 

The Lord’s Prayer

The Word of God

Reading 1 – 1 Corinthians 1.18–25

¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

StF 111 – Lord of the Boundless Curves of Space - 

Reading 2 – John 2.13–22

¹³ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

²⁰ They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” ²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.'

Reflection

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (v19)

Our readings this morning present us with two spectacles and two scandals.

The first spectacle is the Great Temple of Jerusalem – and Jesus’ scandalous hint that it will be the action of the temple authorities that will eventually expose the corruption of the status-quo and bring about the destruction of the temple and of Judaism as they knew it. 

John records Jesus’ visit to the temple.  The scene he describes bears more resemblance to a farmer’s market than a place of worship.  (But we mustn’t forget that John sometimes exaggerates his perception of the religious authorities’ errors in order to highlight the importance paying attention to the difference we see in Jesus)  He asks us to imagine the temple courtyards filled with the noise of the traders and their animals as they engaged in the sale of sacrifices and the money-changers making profit buying the hated Roman coin and exchanging it for the more acceptable temple-currency. 

We might argue that all of this has some legitimacy.  The offering of animals for sacrifice was central to the worship of the temple and buying your animal at the temple was doubly convenient: it saved having to bring it with you and you could be sure it would be of an approved quality.   So it may also have made sense for the coin exchange to take place in the temple courts; the money spent their was worthless to the pilgrims from the different realms where different coins were used.   

However, through the eyes of John, we see Jesus taking exception to the way the temple’s courts have been given over to this trade when they should be a place of prayer for all who come seeking God.  The outer courts of this grand building that is intended to represent God’s glory, were supposed to be a place of access for those that the ritual law marginalised: that is the non Jews, women, the poor and disabled.  But these spaces were now so busy with the temple-trade, aimed at Jewish worshippers, that those on the edges had virtually been shut out and left with no space in the temple to worship God.  Jesus’ charge is that the “House of prayer for all peoples” (Isa 56.7) had been turned into a market. (John 2.16)

It is no surprise that the religious authorities (who see a threat to the useful income for the temple that comes from all this trade) take exception to Jesus’ direct action against this distortion of the temple’s purpose.  “Who gives you the authority to disrupt the market?” they ask.  And Jesus’ answer with its reference to the destruction of a temple is scandalous.  They misunderstand him, thinking he is referring to the physical temple, but even so the idea that this grand building which has taken the best part of half a century to build could be destroyed horrifies them. 

John hints that if they had understood Jesus’ true meaning then they would have been even more scandalised since Jesus’ words point forward to the action they will eventually take to silence him and protect the religious and political status quo.

John never intends his Gospel to be chronological and so we cannot really say how long after Jesus’ clash with the authorities in the temple it is until they finally have him arrested and executed.  (Matthew, Mark and Luke put the clearing of the temple together with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and, thus, it could have been a matter of days.[1])  It is probably fair for us to assume that Jesus’ protest had no immediate effect on temple activity.  After the ‘fuss’ had settled, the temple authorities would, almost certainly, have ensured that business went back to usual. 

Let us just pause then and consider the consequences of this.  In the temple, business just returned to normal.  The sellers sold, the exchangers exchanged, the religious authorities carried on the same religious activities.  Sacrifices were offered, prayers were prayed and the temple songs were sung.  The poor and disabled, the women and the non-Jews were left, just as they had been before, which meant that if, as the priests did, you had made it all about the temple, they had no-where to pray, nowhere to approach God and with no hope that anything would change.

Meanwhile, outside of the city wall, the man who had dared to speak out was being dragged to the place of execution on the say of those religious authorities who had become convinced that “it is better if one person dies for all the people.” (John 18.14 Good News Translation) 

Elsewhere in John’s gospel, he records Jesus saying,  “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John 12.32  Paul, in our reading from 1 Corinthians, makes the scandalous claim that it is the rejected, beaten and dying Jesus on the cross who displays the power of God rather than the temple and its religion.  As Jesus died outside the city wall, there was no barrier.  Those who were denied access to God in the temple, had full access to Jesus on the cross.  Some mocked him and considered his execution as a punishment not just from the authorities but from God.  Whereas others, saw God’s power on display and indeed it was a non-Jew, who in response to Jesus’ dying breath, spoke of the scandal that had taken place:

And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” Mark 15:39

The second spectacle is our Crucified Lord – and Paul’s scandalous suggestion that the Cross is not just a demonstration of God’s power at work in the world but it is the greatest evidence that God’s plan for the salvation embraces the whole of humanity and goes beyond the religion of the temple. 

Hymn StF 273 – Here Hangs a Man Discarded - 

Prayers of Intercession

In penitence and faith let us make our prayer to the Father
and ask for his mercy and grace.

For your holy people,
that they may triumph over evil and grow in grace,
we pray to you, O Lord: 

For those waiting for baptism, confirmation or reception into membership
that they may live by every word that proceeds from your mouth,
we pray to you, O Lord: 

For the leaders of the nations,
that you will guide them in the ways of mercy and truth,
we pray to you, O Lord: 

For the needy,
that they may not be forgotten,
nor the hope of the poor be taken away,
we pray to you, O Lord: 

For the sick in body, mind and spirit,
that they may know your power to heal,
we pray to you, O Lord: 

For the poor in spirit,
that they may inherit the kingdom of heaven
and see you face to face,
we pray to you, O Lord: 

Let us commend the world, for which Christ suffered,
to the mercy and protection of God.

Common Worship – Prayers of Intercession for Lent (adapted)

Hymn StF 287 – When I Survey the Wondrous Cross 

 

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[1] Biblical scholars do not all agree on whether the clearing of the temple in Holy Week recorded by Matthew &c. is the same incident as that recorded by John or another occasion of direct action by Jesus in the temple.  Nonetheless, all four Gospel writers, either by the way they tell the story or by its placement and timing lead us to make the link between Jesus’ actions and the authorities’ murderous response.  For those in authority, with vested interests in keeping things ‘as they are’ Jesus is a trouble-maker who must, at the least, be silenced if not removed.