How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market?”

The picture is "Jesus cleanses the temple", a banner by the Benedictine Sisters of Turvey Abbey.

 Yet another transformation follows in John chapter 2.

From a happy event in Cana, Jesus turns his steps towards Jerusalem to participate in the festival of Pesach/Passover. A feast of celebration and remembrance of the end of slavery in Egypt and the passing through the Red Sea to freedom. A freedom that didn’t work out exactly as was intended.

For 40 years the children of Israel moved around in the desert until they were allowed to enter the Promised Land. During these 40 years they learned how to worship God, perform the various sacrifices in the Tabernacle and how to live by the Law as God’s own people; set apart from other nations and tribes and most of all apart from their gods. 

But time after time they lapsed into idolatry by compromising and abandoning the living God who had rescued them.  They were meant to be worshippers of the Most High, the one and true living God; the Creator of heaven and earth because he had chosen them to be his own people. The purpose for their existence was to show the rest of the world the way to the one and only Living God, different from the foreign gods of wood and stone.

So when Jesus comes to the Temple he knows the whole story from the beginning of time. And what does he find now? A marketplace right in front of the face of God

First the Tabernacle and then the Temple with the altar of sacrifices in the center were through the time of the Old Testament a sign of God’s presence. It was the place where God met man and where God’s holiness, grace and protection were found.

What took place in the Temple that made Jesus so angry? The animals were required to be sacrificed there. There were rules and many regulations to make everything work both in the holy services and the many different offerings. It had to run like clockwork. What had happened?

Might I suggest; it was a change of attitude?  When you sense the presence of God the immediate response would be to humble yourself and bow down before the Most High. A “broken heart God will not resist” and in James 4:6 it says “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”

From a humble approach to an attitude of indifference and making the holy place into a business; how did that happen? 

I think one major cause  then and today is pride and next, as I see it “cold love” where the love of Jesus is replaces by a worldly attitude that has very little to do with faith or the word of God. You have a knowledge about God but not the heart of God. The compassion and mercy for your fellow man is gone and everything turns into “business”.

Then comes something that can creep up on every believer; carelessness. Compromising and neglecting what God has decided and making new rules for the sake of selfishness and pride.

Remember the Seven Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in Matthew 23? Jesus unmasked selfishness and self-serving traditions that  turned the focus to man and what man could profit from and it became the model for righteousness; that is self-righteousness.

A transformation from the love of God and putting him in the center, to a routine that is performed with no heart can also happen in our time and is not a rare occasion for the time of the Temple.

I think what Jesus found in the Temple can also be found  in my own heart as well as in churches and congregations. To grow a cold heart and cold love isn’t that difficult to become trapped in, and sometimes it takes the “fury of the Lord” and a very hands-on intervention from him to bring things back in order in the spiritual temple I'm supposed to be.

I think Jesus wasn’t just angry that day but also very sad for his children. For what they missed out.

He really want us to draw near him and we can do that without hesitation because the ultimate sacrifice was made on Golgotha so that there would be no more enmity between man and God and there would never be a  need for an animal sacrifice ever again to atone for sin. 

I’m grateful that “the blood of Jesus covers a multitude of mistakes and transgressions”. Without him I would be lost forever.

Names of God

John chapter 2 ... Transformation.

(Painting by Susan-Angelo DeBay http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/susan-debay.html)

This is not a fast lane; traveling through the Gospel of John.

Chapter 2, is to me about transformations; one happy occasion and one not so happy … at least for some.

As the video says in the previous entry marriage is about transforming from two separate individuals to one unit where a man and a woman will work with and for each other and for each other’s best. In the best of worlds that is what we want but in this broken world millions of people find themselves with a broken relationship and a broken heart, So marriage is about  transformation that needs a lot of work and attention.

I couldn’t let go of the thought that there must be more to the story about the wedding feast in Cana; and I stopped and looked at the jars that were used in the purification ritual. That led me to an article I read years ago about the Mikvah/Mikveh. (depending how you decide to spell it)

Wikipedia  says:

“Mikvah = is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism. The word "mikveh", as used in the Hebrew Bible, literally means a "collection" – generally, a collection of water.^[3] Ancient mikvehs dating from before the late first century can be found throughout the land of Israel as well as in historic communities of the Jewish diaspora”

“A mikveh must, according to the classical regulations, contain enough water to cover the entire body of an average-sized person; based on a mikveh with the dimensions of 3 cubits long, 1 cubit wide, and 1 cubit deep, the necessary volume of water was estimated as being 40 seah of water.^[8][9] The exact volume referred to by a seah is debated, and classical rabbinical literature specifies only that it is enough to fit 144 eggs;^[10] most Orthodox Jews use the stringent ruling of the Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, according to which one seah is 14.3 litres, and therefore a mikveh must contain approximately 575 litres.” ^[

There are rules about how and when you make these immersions in a Mikvah and I’m not going to dwell on that because you can read more about if you like, on the Internet.

The purpose of the immersion was to cleanse impurity of the soul and stepping down into the Mikvah and stepping up from the water was a symbol of being “born again” The transformation from impurity to purity had taken place in the water.

It was not a happenstance that Jesus chose the jars of purification for the “water-to-wine-miracle”. The detail about how many jars there were and how much water each jar could contain wasn’t a happenstance either. 

To the Messianic Jews who heard/read the gospel of John it had a special meaning and it pointed to the purification not by water but through the blood of Jesus the Messiah.

Yesterday I came across a book written by Max Lucado. It’s title is “In the grip of Grace” and in one chapter he asks a question that puts some light on the impossibility for man to purify himself through a ritual.  The question was: “How much does a sin cost?”

Free translation from Swedish:

“If we do a good deed for every bad will the account then break even? If I can even out my curses with compliments, my desires with loyalty, my complaints with the sacrifices my bad habits with self-conquest - will not my account be leveled out?

It would be, if it were not for two things. Firstly, I do not know the price of every sin. Secondly, I do not always know when I commit a sin. There are times when I sin without having a clue about it. What about the sins I commit today without knowing it? What if someone discovers that it is actually a sin to play golf? Then I'd be in trouble! And what about our secret sins? What then should we do?

Listen to the apostle Paul in Romans 3

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵ God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,^[i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— ²⁶ he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

Simply put; the price for my sin is so high that I cannot pay for it and the gift of God is greater than I can imagine ... Rom.3:28 says …. a man is justified by faith.”

(end of translation)

What I want to emphasize from the story of the wedding in Cana, is not only that Jesus makes a miracle with water but that he also does a miracle in my life when he cleanses my sins.

1 John 1:7

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

John 2:11 

What Jesus did  in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Jesus could do whatever he liked with water. Remember he was there when earth was created:

“And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good”…

....  he walked on water ….  he slept through a storm on water …  but the water wasn’t the whole point …

He was the whole point and he had authority to do whatever he wanted and He chose to save the world.

Now  … going on to another more turbulent place …