Religious exclusivity

We were looking at Matthew 21:12-19 yesterday and it is a striking passage. As “Jesus entered the temple courts”(12) the King is coming to his house. It’s a fulfilment of Malachi 3:1 where the people of Israel are asking where is the God of Justice and God’s answer is; “Then the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple…” And what does he find? Jesus finds that there is a gulf between God’s expectations and the Jerusalem reality.

It’s a bit like the Queen returning to Buckingham Palace expecting tea in the gardens only to find a car boot sale in full swing. Things are not as they should be.

Jesus stands in the courtyard of the Gentiles and the expectation is that it should be a place of prayer. That doesn’t mean a nice quiet meditative space with just the right ambiance. It means a place where Gentile God fearers can come and call on God. Jesus expects to find a place where the nations can come, where they can see God worshipped rightly, where they are welcomed and where they can enjoy relationship with God. That’s what the quotation from Isaiah 56 tells us(13).

Isaiah 56 is a call for Israel to worship God rightly and for Gentiles to be able to do likewise, for all those who choose to follow God to be able to do so. But the reality Jesus finds is a million miles away from that. He finds dove sellers and money changes clogging up the court of the Gentiles, it is more like a market than a place of prayer. And Jesus rebukes them in the words of Jeremiah, partially because of the oppression of the poor that is going on but mainly because the temple has once again become the sole preserve of the Jews.

Jeremiah rebuked the people of his day from the gate of the temple for trusting in the temple for their security. Their reasoning went like this we have the temple therefore we enjoy God’s favour. They gave no thought to living rightly or to obeying God. The temple which was meant to be a place of inclusiveness and a place the nations were drawn to became a symbol of Jewish elitism, exclusivity and discrimination and an idol in itself. So much so that God removed it.

God is disappointed with the worship he finds in the temple. Jesus anger is because it has become once again a symbol of elitism and religious rigmarole rather than a place where true worship takes place. Jesus anger shows us the gap between God’s expectation and reality.

What counts is relationship not religion. That’s what the temple was designed for, it was to be a place of access, it was to be a place the nations looked to, flocked to when they realised the goodness of God and instead it had become the very opposite.

Do you see the gulf between Jesus expectations and the worshipping reality? I wonder what would Jesus say about our worship? What would Jesus say to our churches, if he walked in through that door what emotions would we see cross his face? Would he find religious rigmarole, would he find us going through the motions?

What about in terms of those we exclude? Are we as inclusive with the gospel as he is? Do we welcome everyone, do we take the gospel to everyone? Or are there people we right off, does the way we do worship exclude some just as the Jews were doing? It may not be Gentiles but have we in Britain made it the gospel of the middle class for the middle class? Have we abandoned sharing the gospel with those of other faiths? Who do we exclude by the way we deliver the gospel, by the way we conduct our worship, by our venues?

Easter is about inclusion, it is about the possibility of salvation for the world. Do we dare limit who we take the gospel too?