Christ has come not only to cleanse the Temple of Jerusalem, but the temple of your own body, your own life. The Lord Jesus comes into your life expecting to find a place ordered to the worship of the one true God, but what he finds is a marketplace. What does this mean? It means that Christ finds a place where things other than God have become primary. To bring such idolatry closer to our cultural experience, how much of your life is given over to materialism, commercialism or the accumulation of things? What rivals to the one true God have you allowed to invade the sacred space of your soul? How might wealth, pleasure, power and honor be enshrined in the sanctuary of your own heart?
The temple-cleansing Christ is a memorable image with enduring power. We shouldn’t relegate that image or the Lord himself to merely a statement about our impatience with the corruptions of religious institutions and miss the point that strikes closer to home: Christ comes to each of us to rid the temple of our own body of the idols to which we have foolishly given power and pride of place.
Image source: Luca Giordano, Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple (mid-1670s), https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/01.+Paintings/31947
Quotation source
No comments:
Post a Comment