Luke 19:41-48
Even though this passage in Luke and Matthew occurs the same day as Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, it happens the following day in Mark, and the historical church has assigned this as the main scripture for the day. Commonly known as the "Cleansing of the Temple", this passage is full of both grief and anger, violence and supplication, dire prophetic predictions and murderous plotting.
We are forced to confront our culture's portrayal of "Holy Jesus, Meek and Mild" in the short space of these seven verses. We like our Jesus as the Good Shepherd, holding small children on his lap, kindly touching lepers and raising little girls from the dead. We don't like the hard Jesus we get in the Gospels - the grieving over Jerusalem and its coming destruction, the difficult sayings on family relationships he instructs us in, the violence of turning over tables and swinging a whip around.
As we being this Holy Week, one that is filled with violence, hard sayings, and grief, how does this passage work in your heart? What is your wish and desire out of this week's journey? Where do you need to be confronted by the whole Jesus, not the sanitized, selected Jesus we usually offer ourselves?
Blessings,
Wendy
We all try to be like Jesus right? But the idea of him being violent is not something I aim for. You do not say "I want to be as irate as Jesus" and go into the church down the street and flip over tables at their bingo night. In my opinion I see myself challenged to be bolder. To challenge authority and the media... but not by flipping tables over.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this insight - and thanks for reading! I agree that we don't aim for violence - Jesus said something about being peacemakers, I believe - but we can't ignore the totality of who Jesus was. Our culture has so sanitized Jesus to make him containable and malleable to fit into a nice, safe box, that it's helpful to meditate on these harder to hear passages. Boldness is certainly a wonderful way to be led!
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