The proof this is not so is … wait for it … Pharisees. Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking hey wait a minute, we don’t
have any Pharisees in our church. They
are a part of the Jewish religion long since abandoned by Jesus after His death
and resurrection. You are thinking the
Pharisees got it all wrong which is why they are no longer a thing. So how could they be proof of what might be
wrong in your church, which is likely a “Christian” church that holds its faith
in Jesus? Well lets go back in time a
bit to examine this idea. In the time up
to Christ, and in fact the time during Christ, the Jewish faith, the Jewish
religion, was the “right one”. Lots of
modern Christians like to forget that Jesus Himself was Jewish of the lineage
of David, tracing back to Abraham, further to Noah, and eventually back to
Adam. But the world was blessed to have
Jesus from the bloodline of Abraham, not of the Chinese, or native Americans,
or Indians. Jesus comes to us from
people of Jewish bloodline, and Jewish faith.
All the other competing “gods” were no competition at all. They were all fake news. The only real God was the Jewish God. And Jesus was a key part of that Trinity.
So if you lived in the time of Christ, you would find Jesus
going to synagogue on Sabbath, keeping His own holy day, reading “the”
scriptures to the people who came to learn of God. The religion was the right one. The faith was the right one. So they had perfect doctrines, or perfect
beliefs, or so you would think. The
misperception about the role of the Messiah, that He would come as conquering
King, instead of the Lamb of God to be sacrificed for our sin. That misperception was not actually
wrong. It was just not timed
properly. Jesus will come back again,
the next time, not as the Lamb to be sacrificed, but as the conquering King the
Jewish people had been waiting to see. So
even the doctrine we think they got wrong, was not actually wrong, it was just
out of time and sequence. It will be
right. But it took the coming as Lamb in
order to later have the coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. What the Jewish folks got wrong was the
timing and the sequence. And of course
they also got wrong “who” the Messiah was and will forever be.
But in the day of Jesus the right church, with the right
scriptures, and right faith … still managed to get it wrong. Pharisees (or church leaders of the day)
managed to get it wrong. The believers
also got it wrong. A good many of those
who understood the need for sacrifice as symbols to point forward to the
ultimate Lamb of God, figured out a great way to facilitate that need, and make
a healthy economic profit in the process.
These lay people, met a need worshippers would have, and in the process
made themselves quite rich. They engaged
in currency manipulation (even if only on a local level). They engaged in profiteering, holding the demands
of scripture as the basis for buying and selling what must be bought and
sold. They also had a pretty good kick
back ring going with enterprising priests who supplied the meat market with a
constant flow of excess sacrifice goods.
After all how much meat could any one priest eat with all the sacrifices
going on in Jerusalem on any one given day.
So not only the Pharisees got it wrong, the believers engaged in
practices that led them down a dark pathway, until they lost all sight of
obedience, or love, of what God truly wanted.
Church needed to change.
It was too far off the path God had intended. Now the Pharisees would have categorically
disagreed with that prognosis. In fact
they became willing to kill God to maintain the status quo. And frankly the lay folks who occupied the
Temple positions where money changed hands moving one currency to another, and
buying just the right sacrifice at 4 or 5 times the going rate, or the
resulting meat at even higher rates with kick backs to the priesthood – those
folks had no desire to see church change.
Do we? Are we content with the
status quo? Are we perhaps so content to
the point of killing any messenger that challenges our notions of our church
being the right one, or done the right way, or perhaps that we have found some
modern economy that comes from modern worship where we thrive on partitioners
offerings? I look at Papal cathedrals
and see wealth beyond most folks imagining.
I see mega churches like the ones pastored by Joel Osteen, or others like
him, that preach a gospel of success.
And I wonder, is our modern Christian economy based on wealth as the
certain sign of God’s favor? That is
precisely what the Pharisees believed as well.
Luke writes about the need to change church, even the right
one, as God sees fit from time to time.
No church is immune. No church
exempt. No church without the need to
shake it up, sometimes even with significant force, to get it back on the
path. This is not just big church thing,
or something for “those people’s” denominations, it can be for everyone at
different times. Is it time again? Luke picks up the original story back in
chapter 19 and verse 45 saying … “And he went into the temple, and began to cast out
them that sold therein, and them that bought; [verse 46] Saying unto
them, It is written, My house is the house of
prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.” My house should be a
house of prayer according to Jesus. Is
ours? How much do we really pray in our
worship services? We do some. But as a percentage of the time we spend
there is it really even significant? We
sing quite a bit. You would think Jesus
marched in there demanding to see the choir, and the band, and the retinue of
worship music that can take as much as 30-45 minutes of a weekly service. He didn’t.
He never even mentioned music at all.
Does that mean Jesus hates music?
No. It just means His house is
not supposed to be known as the concert hall.
And His worship not known as the “music experience”. But instead to be known as the “prayer
place”.
Further Jesus goes on to say the entire “worship economy”
the folks of His day had set up, was nothing more than the theft of blessing from
the hearts of the people, while at the same time, the theft of their wallets
and purses. The right faith does not
protect you from greed. The right
scriptures no insulation from corruption that goes unchallenged. An unreformed heart will steal without even
acknowledging it is doing so. How many
“ministers” of the church are well paid for services that many do for free in
small churches, or have volunteered to do in times past, as a gift back to
God. And these modern ministers think
nothing of being paid now for what they do, quoting Paul as the minister is
worth his pay. We see nothing wrong with
it. We have setup a modern economy from
the worship of God. We sell CD’s and
make DVD’s of religious content in order that musical and video ministries can
be paid for and maintained. Donors think
nothing of it. And those who are paid by
those donations worry only that there is enough of them to be paid, perhaps
paid well. We too have a “worship
economy”. Are we ready to be shaken up
by Jesus over it? Will we respond any
different than the Pharisees did?
Luke continues in verse 47 saying … “And he taught daily in the
temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people
sought to destroy him, [verse 48] And could not find what they might do: for all the
people were very attentive to hear him.”
What was the result of what Jesus did?
The leaders seeking to preserve the status quo, to preserve their own
version of a worship economy, were ready to kill Jesus to keep it going. But the people wanted to hear their own
scriptures taught with a new lens of love upon them. For the first time, scripture is taught
without corruption. Jesus asks them for
no money. He does not offer to sing for
hours on end. Nor to spend His time
doing the hundred other traditional things we do at weekly services to fill the
time, and order the service. Instead He
teaches right out of the Bible, but right through what God the Father intended
to show, uninfluenced by money, or power, or greed of any kind. Jesus did not teach a gospel of success, nor
of hardship, but only of love and longsuffering. He taught the people what they needed to
hear, to believe, and to see for their own salvation. How God and now He alone could save them from
themselves. And the people could not get
enough of it. They craved this new truth
coming from old scriptures they had heard recited a number of times before but
never with this message of total love.
So where does this leave us.
What if we changed the nature of our church buildings to be mere places
where prayer to God could be offered, privately, or in tandem? That might destroy our worship economy
entirely. It does not mean we stop
singing, but it might change where we do it, and why. What if worship services became more like
classes teaching scripture through the lens of Jesus in small groups, perhaps
in the homes of folks who wanted to learn, and by fellow believers, or deacons,
or elders, or deaconesses? What if those
classes happened well outside of the Sabbath time constraints, but as often as
time allowed, or better stated, as often as we prioritized it. What if offering was no longer a part of that
equation. Or what if offering was truly
repurposed to give only to the poor, or those victims of disaster, or those in
need right next to us. What if we sang
at the top of our lungs … in our cars … not the latest pop song, but the
worship music we enjoy whatever genre that happens to be in. What if we broke down the mega church concept
into the small community concept where believers truly get to know each other
and begin to meet each others needs because we want to, in fact, we cannot stop
ourselves from doing it. We are just too
driven to love others, all others, those in “church”, and those who would not
be caught dead in “church”.
Jesus took church to the people where they were. He ate with hookers, tax collectors, and
folks of public ill repute. He took
healing to those in need of every disease, even the lethal ones, through the
power of God the Father. He took it for
free. He healed folks who had no faith
before that event in their lives. Faith
came from the encounters with Jesus, it was not demanded first. Jesus focused church on people, not on
buildings. Jesus did not worry about
“working for a living” or being paid for His ministerial work. Time for another shake up. A shake up of who we are and how we think
worship is supposed to be. I hope we
don’t try to kill Him for this realization.
I hope we cant get enough of it.
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