We’ve all heard of the pace-setting mega-churches, with coffee bars, food courts, gift shops, athletic programs, day care, auto repair and convenience banking, in buildings that look like shopping malls; with “worship” that consists of soft rock praise choruses, ‘special music’, videos, and upbeat, entertaining ‘messages’ that pander to the felt needs of those who have come.
Mega-churches are doing this partly because they have decided to package, market, and sell a form of religion to the religious consumers of America, using every tool that management theory and social science provide. The danger in this strategy is that they are turning the bread of eternal life into fast food for the soul, complete with empty calories.
The gospel lesson begins with Jesus approaching Jerusalem for the last time. Looking down from the Mount of Olives he saw the holy city; and the Temple itself, where God dwelt among his people surrounded by a massive complex of buildings, glittering in white marble and gilt bronze.
Its courts were thronged with worshippers from around the world, and armies of priests and levites attended to its sacrifices; its treasury overflowed with wealth, and its officials walked in the corridors of power. The Temple was the heart of Israel, the center around which all Jewish life was organized. No mega-church of today could rival it.
Jesus loved the temple of God, and the holy city; but the sight of it filled his eyes with tears; and he said, in grief: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes”.
Jesus wept, because this city of peace did not actually know the things which belonged to its peace. Deluded by a false sense of security, it was in fact headed for disaster, as Jesus foresaw: (vv 43-44) This prophecy of Jesus was fulfilled within a generation, in the year 70, when the legions of Rome destroyed the city and its temple, and deported its people into slavery.
Jerusalem’s problem was ignorance and rebellion, a refusal to know “the time of its visitation”, and “the things which belong to its peace.” It is not that they were not told of these things. In his gospel of the Kingdom, Jesus proclaimed the time of their visitation by God’s mercy; and taught them the will of God for their peace; but his words fell on deaf ears. They did not want to know. Willful ignorance of the truth, then as now, has dire consequences: rejecting the knowledge and means of salvation, Jerusalem drew judgment upon itself.
How could this happen, in God’s own city, the place of the Temple? In fact, the Temple was the heart of the problem, the center of resistance to God’s saving will. The corruption of every nation always begins in the corruption of its religion – it happened in Rome, in Russia, it is happening here, and it happened in Jerusalem. The temple was a perfect hive of “religious” activity: but there was no room in it for the Word of God; no place for repentance.
Jesus found its courts, meant for prayer, filled with the buying and selling of animals to be offered in sacrifice: a sign of the corruption of Israel’s religion, its pandering to worldly agendas and ambitions at the expense of the service of God. So with divine authority, “Jesus … began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying, It is written, ‘My house is the house of prayer’: but ye have made it the den of thieves”. But then, as St. Luke tells us, “he taught daily in the temple”.
Where buyers and sellers had done their business, the Word of God, un-adulterated, un-packaged, un-marketed, was now proclaimed instead.
What Jesus drove out of the temple was one kind of commerce. What he put in its place, was another kind of commerce, a holy commerce between God and man, transacted in the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, a commerce in teaching and prayer. In Jesus Christ, the Word of God comes from above, teaching us the Father’s will, in which lies our peace. And through Jesus Christ, our word of prayer ascends on high, seeking peace according to God’s will, all transacted in the Spirit of God.
In today’s epistle lesson we find ourselves in another city, Greek Corinth, one of the great commercial cities of the pagan empire, notorious for its wealth, its luxurious lifestyles, and its sexual decadence. Yet in this unlikely place, the gospel of Jesus Christ had been preached and believed. In the gospel of Jesus Christ they heard the word of the living God, teaching them the knowledge of the way of salvation; by his Spirit they had believed that word, and confessed Jesus as Lord. And they had been richly endowed with gifts of the Spirit, certain capacities for knowing, speaking, and doing that bore witness to the truth and power of the Word of God. The gifts come from the same Spirit, and contribute, each in its own specific way, to the common good, and to the glory of the one who gave them. Every gift is different; and no one has the capacity to receive them all, but each is given for all.
It is only in and through the shared life of a community, with its diversity of gifts and vocations, that we are able to possess a measure of the truth, and a measure of the good. Therefore, the life of the church is a life of holy commerce, a communion of saints in spiritual gifts and goods. In the unity of the Spirit what is given to one becomes the common possession of all; and what is done by one becomes profitable to all, through charity, “which seeketh not her own”. For no one receives any gift of the Spirit purely for his own sake, but the sake of the whole Church.
Today’s lessons show us, that there is not only a vertical commerce between God and man through Jesus Christ, a commerce in teaching and prayer; but also a horizontal commerce between the members of the Body of Christ, a commerce in spiritual gifts. The eternal good which we know by faith in God’s word, and which we hope for in prayer, we must also will for one another, and share with one another, in love and charity.
Without this commerce the Church is impoverished and dies, and ‘her children within her’; but where this commerce flourishes, the church grows rich in the things which belong to her peace. And so for the sake of holy commerce, the Church must drive out all other trade in worldly appetites and ambitions; it must reserve the house of God for the sharing of the gifts of the Word and Spirit, and not allow it to become a den of thieves.