Trinity Blog

¹⁵ Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; ¹⁶ and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written,

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
            But you have made it a den of robbers.’

¹⁸ And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. ¹⁹ And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. 
Mark 11:15-19

Many people have campers in my neighborhood.  Whether they enjoy parking their campers in a campground for a summer or an evening.  The Winnebago transports people and their possessions from place to place.  Going to see the Grand Canyon?  Your camper can take you there and cook your meals, keep you cool and wash the dirt and sweat off.  But what happens when you purchase a Winnebago and park it on your driveway and never use it?  The camper becomes a status symbol or perhaps even something to brag about: my camper is bigger and better than yours.  The point of a camper is to travel and deliver people and possessions to their destination.  When you buy it to show off, something needs to change.

Just as it can be with campers parked in driveways instead of campgrounds, so too is it with Churches or Temples.  The Temple of Herod was meant to be a vehicle for connecting with God by prayer.  Every symbol from the Exodus, the law and the sacrifices, were meant to be the vehicle for delivering the people to God and God to the people.  A Winnebago is a vehicle that can get someone from Ohio to California, the Temple was the vehicle to get the people to God, through prayer.  The Temple was not god, but a vehicle or a symbol to transport the people to God, to close the distance between Heaven and Earth, from Creator to creature. 

The great dilemma for Jesus was the purpose of the Temple to be the vehicle for faithfulness and covenant between God and Creation and finding the temple to be for a different purpose.  “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”  But you have made it a den of robbers.’  The point of a Winnebago is to be a vehicle for transportation, not to sit as an object of pride in the driveway.  The point of the Temple is to be a vehicle for transportation to God, not to sit as an object of pride and greed.   The people were to connect with God in the building, not to stare at the building and earn a fortune.  Instead of using the temple, they park it in the driveway and to brag to the neighbors and to fleece a fortune.

Now we can understand why Jesus cleaned house.  The point of the Temple buildings was to be a vehicle moving the people to God and Jesus reinstates or rededicates the building to that purpose.  Instead of being used unfaithfully, Jesus cleans the temple to be faithful to why God created it in the first place.  Not to park the vehicle in the driveway, but to be a vehicle moving the people to God.  To be a house of prayer connecting with God inside the covenant, not to be a house of thievery, connecting the leaders with mammon or money inside greed.

What then is the purpose of our buildings?  To be a vehicle moving us to God, or to be a vehicle parked in the driveway to brag about to our neighbors, or to be a source of income increasing our cash flow.  We need a building, but that building needs to serve God’s purpose and serve our needs as a community.  We need a space to worship God, but it doesn’t need to be gilded in gold, to connect with God.  We need spaces to study and learn, but it doesn’t need to be the lecture hall of Harvard.  We need spaces to cook, eat and fellowship together, but those spaces do not need to be a 5-star restaurant, limiting the clientele.  We need spaces to store goods for our neighborhoods and to serve the physical and emotional needs of our neighborhoods, but those spaces do not need to be the Waldorf-Astoria.  We have needs as a community, but to what end, God’s or ours: a vehicle to connect us with God, or to park in the driveway to gather fortune and fame?

As we begin the process this month of discerning what we need from our building spaces, I will repeat Ad Nauseum, that our buildings need to serve the purpose of connecting us to God not filling our checking accounts or our egos.  Perhaps this is the golden opportunity to clean house, literally and metaphorically.  Are our sanctuaries about worship or entertainment or competition?  Are our kitchens and dining rooms about fellowship and camaraderie or snobbery in the form of gilded plates and professional kitchens?  Are our rooms about learning, and nurturing faith, or are they about status and showing off?  What changes can we make to make our buildings to change them into the vehicle they were supposed to be, to bring us closer to God, not to become gods that deliver us further from God.  Jesus cleaned house, maybe the time is now for us too also.  Amen