Marketing God

John 2.13-22 All Age Sermon

Part 1 – At the Market

• ·         Who came to the Church Clothes Fair yesterday? Look at the bargains I found! Isn’t it great when we turn the church into a market for the day?
• ·         Bible reading…
• ·         So Jesus was really angry because the Temple had been … turned into a market. Oops! Do you think he’s angry with us too? WWJD if he’d come here yesterday? Would he have tipped over all the tables and chased us out with a whip?

Part 2 – What was Wrong?

• ·         The pilgrims arriving in Jerusalem for Passover were being sold the things they needed to be allowed to approach God for forgiveness/healing/love.
• ·         In other words, people’s desire for God was being used as a money making opportunity. A kind of Pay as you Pray scheme which made some people rich and many people poor and resentful.
• ·         Making money had even become more important than helping people meet God, so that the Courtyard of the Gentiles, which was meant to be a “house of prayer for all nations” had become a busy shopping mall – prayer couldn’t be allowed to get in the way of profit, so it was simply crowded out.
• ·         Jesus challenged what was wrong in dramatic actions, reminding people what the Temple was meant to be for – in Matthew’s version of the story he made the point even clearer by healing a load of blind and disabled people while he was there.
• ·         Jesus was effectively saying – “This Temple isn’t working any more – you’ve ruined it. You need a new Temple.”

Part 3 – Jesus’s Answer

• ·         Jesus didn’t just HAVE the answer, he claimed to BE the answer. When he said “Tear down this Temple, and in three days I will build it again” he wasn’t talking about a building, he was talking about himself.
• ·         So now it’s by meeting Jesus rather than going to the Temple that people receive God’s forgiveness and healing and love.
• ·         Jesus also predicted that his followers would continue to do the same things he did, being his body in the world, taking on that Temple role of connecting people to God to receive forgiveness, healing and love.

Part 4 – Conclusions

• ·         So St George’s church building is not a Temple, which means it might be OK to have a market here! Having a market here can actually be a way of showing kindness, loving our neighbours, helping people buy good things they need for a low price. But it mustn’t just be about making money for the church.
• ·         You see, this building is not the Temple but we, the followers of Jesus, ARE the Temple.
• ·         What I mean is that our purpose in life is to connect people to God. Money might play a part in that, but the money must never become more important than connecting people to God.
• ·         We, the followers of Jesus, are to be the community, the family where people meet God and are welcomed and forgiven and healed and loved.
• ·         That’s what the original Temple was supposed to be for and it is what we are supposed to be for. May God help us to become what he has called us to be.