Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
July 1, 2024
Invitatory
I lie down and go to sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen
Matthew 21:12-22
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
Meditation-Rebecca Northington
I have always loved this passage. It is the closest we ever come to seeing Jesus lead the revolt that the Jews have been hoping and praying for; a Messiah who will fight for them. Ironically his ire is not directed at the occupying Romans, or the pagans-it is against the Jews themselves. Those who would subvert the holiest place on earth for their own gain, turning the sacred temple into a marketplace full of money handling and sin. Some commentators feel it is critical to the story of Jesus that his rage would be aimed at his own people. We defile ourselves, we allow sin to overwhelm our goodness-we cannot blame outside sources. It is not what the Jewish leadership wants to hear.
There are many instances throughout the Gospels where we find Jesus more subtly pointing to this truth: we are our own worst enemies. He asks us to focus on forgiveness not retribution, unconditional love over justice, the new law over the old. Yet we allow fear and hate to creep in, when it is we who have the power to liberate ourselves from these toxic temptations. This moment in the temple is a culmination of all of those lessons not getting through to us. The various sellers and money handlers have probably found loopholes to do what they are doing within the law. We do this every day, we manipulate our own truths and narratives in order to accomplish what we want-not what God wants. Jesus is calling us out. We all know better. We know what is good and right, and how to treat people, we do not need to hide behind explanations or validations. We know.
Hariet Beacher Stowe is commemorated today, July 1 on the anniversary of her death in 1896. She was a tiny woman in stature, but had a large voice and is purported to have started the war with her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe herself attended Seminary, receiving a “male” education and spoke vehemently for what she knew to be right: abolition. Like Jesus, she rebuked those who would pretend their business aligned with humanity or religion. She figuratively overturned the tables and “the seats of those who sold doves”.
While the temple was, and is, the sacred space for Jews, Jesus taught us to build the kingdom of Heaven everywhere, in effect saying there is no place outside the realm of God. Our behavior is always visible to God, and there are no loopholes or deviations from the true law. Stowe helped her readers to understand that none of us can turn a blind eye to the evil done in this world but must be vigilant and active in our efforts to hold ourselves accountable to the role that sin plays in our lives, as well as those around us.
I always wonder what I would have done had I lived in the antebellum era. I hope and believe I would have been actively engaged as Stowe was, but how many instances in history do we reflect and regret our own complacency. I believe Jesus and Stowe are asking us all to be better, and to be more acutely aware of the small and large ways we deceive ourselves. This passage demands we consider the sin that creeps in.
Prayer
Gracious God, we thank you for the witness of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose fiction inspired thousands with compassion for the shame and sufferings of enslaved peoples, and who enriched her writings with the cadences of The Book of Common Prayer. Help us, like her, to strive for your justice, that our eyes may see the glory of your Son, Jesus Christ, when he comes to reign with you and the Holy Spirit in reconciliation and peace, one God, now and always. Amen.
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