I believe we must be in constant communication with God, not just in church, or around the dinner table, or by our beds at night, but throughout our day. Those who bear the best fruits are the ones that are daily being nurture by God’s Word and shares the most with Him. If you stop talking to God, then maybe he will have to cut you off.

Good topic. I like the title of Jesus being the “riding on the donkey king”, I never thought of him like that, despite being familiar with Palm Sunday. I think that name says a lot about who Jesus is and what makes him different from the rest.

This post got my attention. (Today, most folks don’t view women as prophets, but as I was named after one, I have always been mindful of certain, ummm, leanings towards that direction.) Apologies for this wandering epistle.

On Monday, I spoke to the Mothers’ Union group here (the traditional Anglican Ladies Bible Group), together with their ‘sister’ group from the Baptist church in our village, with regards to the constancy of God’s companionship by our side along the journey He has devised for each of us. Part what I said was:
‘Jesus was fond of using metaphors and parables to communicate his message of a new life to people who had been asleep or perhaps become too comfortable, in their spiritual life. Dogma and religion had been creeping like garden weeds onto their pathways, obscuring their journey, rearranging the directions God in His ultimate wisdom had intended for them all along, instead leaving them to wander in confusion, chaos, despair, and loneliness.’
(I know, you probably think that sounds pretty naff, eh?)

His model of behaviour in the Temple that day has always strongly resonated with me – in American churches that have installed bookstores, recreation centres, ice cream parlours, and MacDonald’s inside the boundaries of their church property. (I become physically ill now whenever we go back to the US and walk into a Mardels or Family Christian Bookstore.) And in the UK, most often, especially true of our village life, the entire community – Believers and non – view our big stone church in the centre of the village as the place to go not only for hatching, matching, and dispatching (baptisms, weddings, funerals), but also as the place for Fair Trade stalls, flower shows, fetes, charity bazaars, rental space for ballet classes – you name it. The church in Southeast London where we worshipped at for 3 years sits in the middle of its community, and is redesigning its space to allow for a practice for 2-3 new GPs. In other words, a lot of the space which either lies just outside the designated ‘sacred space’ or even inside and close by, is taken up with activity which places God and holy worship to Him on the peripheral edges. Devotion to God is not in minds or on lips. He’s getting crowded out by people who could care less, and by those Believers who pander to exclusivity and fail to point Him out to others.

We all know the Temple in Jerusalem was the same: it served as a hotbed of activity for the entire community. And the un-Godly activities had become more important than the Godly activities. Jesus was about to make the ultimate sacrifice, and people who were supposed to be devoted to God were instead more engaged and interested in the bottom line. He had to compete with dung and scum. Old market habits were well established, and He needed to get their attention. Social politeness wasn’t going to wake them up.

The ‘rottenness of first century Judaism’ is still worming its way today In the Christian communities of the West. As to your question, ‘How much of a ‘prophet’ should the preacher be when he teaches from this text?’ My answer, although I’m a ‘she’, would be this:
As transparent as Jesus was on that day, we who teach this passage need to convey as much of His transparency as possible. While we might not demonstrate the total rage of Jesus in its entirety (difficult for me to totally let loose in our buttoned-up British society), we can still be honest and, hopefully, compelling in the examples we offer to those we teach.

It is great when non-Believers come to our sacred space – and we crave their presence in the UK! But admittedly there is a challenge in finding the right balance. When they come to us, we must remember to introduce (or RE-introduce) them to the majesty of our loving Father, who extends His ultimate gift of grace and redemption to all. As ‘keepers’ of the divine sacred space that reaches out beyond any walls, He has charged us with a great responsibility.

He is not just a Fair Trade stall.

Hi Deb: Thanks for dropping by. Good to see you back. First, I had to look up NAFF. Not used much in Switzerland…

Your comment makes me think about the lack of sacred in European society. One could be disappointed that a “sacred place” invites the “commercial” into its confines, even if the motives are good (and no doubt, they are). Perhaps it is to reach out to those who are not yet Christians… At the same time, I would cheer the sacred that invades the commercial place, i.e. a church that rents property in a mall or a train station (which has happened recently in Switzerland). My question for the modern-day preacher: When dealing with texts like this one, do you tell all with a prophetic voice or do you gently encourage, etc., which seems to be the mode in today’s “religious” world? Brady