Where should they begin, these leaders of Israel’s spiritual life? Jesus, in his tirade at the temple, offended in so many ways. There was his attack on the system of sacrifice and the economic engine that drove it along. There was his lack of respect and decorum. Yet these transgressions likely paled in comparison to his words: “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace!”
His father’s house? This was the holy temple where God resided on earth. It was for everybody. In fact, it had become the only place where holy rituals were allowed to be enacted, where ordinary people could come into contact with the Holy God. And this itinerant teacher presumed to refer to it as his father’s house? This was blasphemy.
When Jesus called the temple in Jerusalem "his father's house," he may have been referencing Israel’s history, in particular the tradition of King David who wanted to “build a house for God.” God’s response was that it was not David who would build a house for God, but God who would establish a house, a lineage for him, from whose line would come the Redeemer. Was Jesus was referring to his Davidic heritage when he called it “my father’s house?” It wouldn’t have sounded any less blasphemous to his listeners than calling God his father, but it’s an interesting notion.
Are places of worship meant to be houses for God? Is that what they are? And is that how we treat them? Or are they spaces for us, places we set apart for us, hoping to find in them a moment of holy presence? Buildings in which we enact rituals that have sometimes mediated the divine for us, in which we offer prayers and praises and portions of our wealth in hopes of encountering God. Is that what a sanctuary is for?
Or is a sanctuary a place to make welcome people who don’t yet know the living God, and yet know they are missing a connection they crave? Should we decorate and arrange our churches for God – who likely doesn’t care where we meet, as long as we come in love and openness, or for outsiders who are hungry for God? How would it change the way we arrange and decorate them, and how we conduct ourselves in them, if we saw them as houses for God’s hungry people rather than as houses for God?
In the next exchange in our passage, Jesus refers to his body as the temple that cannot be destroyed. Peter refers to the people of God as a holy temple built of living stones. I suggest that God’s house is anywhere God’s name and power and love are invoked – every heart, every relationship, every place of prayer and desperate hope can be “my father’s house.”
What if we began to treat our street corners as holy spaces? Our living rooms? Doctor’s offices? Shelters? Police stations? Even our marketplaces, to flip Jesus' words?
Where do you pray? Where do you invite Jesus to make himself known?
That is his father’s house now.
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