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St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Birmingham, AL is a welcoming and affirming congregation of diverse Christians who are committed to Jesus' command to love and care for our neighbors, whoever they may be. You'll find posts on this blog by our Rector, and also by our parishioners. During the season of Lent, there will be daily meditations on the readings. At other seasons of the year, there will be sporadic postings. Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Old Testament: Deuteronomy 9: 4-12
Psalm 45 * 47, 48 
Epistle: Hebrews 3: 1-11
Gospel: John 2: 13-22
John 2:13 “The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”
The Gospel of John places the cleansing of the temple just after the miracle at Cana, at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) place this incident only a week before His crucifixion. Biblical scholars believe that John moved this incident forward in time to establish important themes at the outset of his Gospel to emphasize the theology behind the life of Jesus rather than the chronological history presented in the Synoptics. Regardless, this passage has always stuck with me. So much is revealed about Jesus in only a few words. When I was a child, the image of Jesus cracking a whip and toppling tables was disturbing — and exciting! It conflicted with the gentle, peace-loving Jesus that I’d been taught about by the nuns in religion class. It was shocking to learn that Jesus could get mad and lose His temper. This is when I understood that He truly was a human being with all the shortcomings that come along with the title. Another revelation was that Jesus knew He would be put to death in the not too distant future and probably knew how awful His death was going to be. It made me feel profoundly sad for Him. And yet, according to John, in the two years following this incident in the temple, and despite this terrible knowledge hanging over Jesus, He would go on to teach the lessons and perform the miracles that would imprint Him indelibly on history. What I eventually came to take from this passage is that we have to do the most we can with the time we have. Even if our time is short, we can still do great good.
Tom Patchen
The cleansing of the temple shows us the humanity of Jesus; the darker side that is within all of us. Anger and violence are not something we normally associate with Jesus, but he was a man, and he struggled with his emotions as we all do. However, to be fair, Jesus’s anger in this situation was justified because the temple was being defiled by the greed of the merchants and money changers who were taking advantage of the people coming to worship. John’s account of the incident in the temple teaches us that there are situations when righteous anger towards injustice is called for and action is necessary to correct wrongs.

John Vintson

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