The Gospel of John

Scourge of the Pharisees

Through a link on a friend's Blog, I found a Blog devoted to leadership. One of the recent stories there got me to thinking about leadership, and it became the subject of thought on the bus ride home.

This scares me. Any time God brings up a subject like this I know I'm in for a rough ride. I don't want to be a leader; I'd rather be left alone in the quiet. Leaders don't have quiet lives.

God sort of helped me through this, showing me that everyone is a leader sometimes and knowing how to do it well makes a difference. "All right," I said. "You'll have to make me able to do this." In a way, this is even more audacious of him than teaching me how to love.

Jesus cleansing the temple is one example of appropriate leadership. All these vendors had turned God's house into a commercial enterprise. Holiness had disappeared under piles of dove guano and squabbling animals. The Pharisees had stood by, not just letting it happen but probably taking their cut of the profits. The temple was no longer a temple to God.

This fit the rest of the practices of the Pharisees. They had no real idea of what holiness was any more. As long as they had their fancy clothes on, were well groomed and had their phylacteries in place everything was fine. If you looked at the temple from the outside it still looked like the dwelling place of their Lord.

Inside was a different story. Filth all over the place. It needed to be cleaned. Jesus, with the authority and leadership that came from being perfectly connected to his Father, drove all of the vendors out of the place.

Jesus' action was appropriate. He took the leadership role that had been abdicated by the formal priests. They should have kept the temple holy. They had full instructions on how to keep the place clean and smelling sweet to their God.

Instructions don't work. Jesus proved that. Not only that but he took on the leadership role and provided a way for us to become clean. He moves in and starts cleaning house.

We have generations of dove-dung equivalent clogging our spirits. Sometimes Jesus has to be very forceful in removing it. A life-threatening problem will be cleared up fast. Others will take more time as old patterns gradually dissolve under the tender ministry of the Holy Spirit.

In one way the result of admitting Jesus to the temple is immediate. Instantly, God the Father sees the person through Jesus, as completely clean. Sins are forgotten. God's love shines, reflected by Jesus' white raiment. The rest of the process is life-long, the cleaning gradually moving throughout each follower's soul. It's delicate too, as the Holy Spirit separates what's life-overlay from what God put in us. Each soul-strand has to be cleansed and then put back where it belongs. Only the Holy Spirit can do this. No self-help book provides a shovel large enough, strong enough and delicate enough to clean our temples.

posted by Larry @ 7:38 AM