HELLO!

Five local ecumenical clergy gathered today to plan our upcoming Good Friday service, 130-230 pm at St. Luke’s Anglican Church. Each of us will offer a short reflection on a word that comes to our mind as we ponder the Cross. As I was sitting in the choir pews, I noticed a stained-glass window of the sower scattering seeds. My eyes noted the inclusion of a blue jay, not a creature I tend to associate with this story, nor the place where the story was likely written. The rector also showed me another window in the church, this one with a tiny golf ball in the background.

I was reminded of the one Gospel story I have never seen captured on a stained-glass window, the cleaning of the temple. Typically, these church windows either reveal a Jesus passively moving to the Cross or piously embracing children, sheep, or those in need of forgiveness. Missing is Jesus the prophet, the one challenging the way people think or act. Jesus is either faithful to his destiny or sweetly embracing his flock.

But with some research I have located a stained-glass widow that depicts the cleaning of the temple. Note in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, the incident comes at the end of Jesus' ministry and is usually considered the action by Jesus that led to his arrest and ultimate execution. Often Western European churches, far removed from the revolutionary spirit of Jesus, interpret the story: God's Temple is holy and should only be used for prayer and worship. Yet that deflects from the likely reason for Jesus’ wrath, how moneychangers marked up the temple coins needed to buy the animals for sacrifice, thus creating barriers for the poor to be in the temple. When we overlook the cleansing of the temple, we underplay the role of anger, tension and confrontation in Jesus’ ministry – and especially in his journey to the cross. The priest-poet Malcolm Guite has written a poem on the cleansing of the Temple, which is a powerful reflection on its call to personal conversion: “Come to your Temple here with liberation, And overturn these tables of exchange, Restore in me my lost imagination, Begin in me for good, the pure change…Break down in me the barricades of death, And tear the veil in two with your last breath”. What do we need to “overturn” that prevents all God’s people from access to God’s great and enduring love?

If you want to hear more, here is a 22 minute meditation of this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T88Rg3ykTA

Peace, Kevin