Wednesday, March 6

Mark 11:15-19

In today’s passage Jesus was enraged to find that the temple had become a place of exclusion and exploitation. Not only was there a fundamental misunderstanding regarding sacrifice, but what we had conjured up was a system that bred greed and corruption and oppression. Sacrifice was to serve as an expression of our obedience, but it was one small piece of an obedient life. For some sacrifices became a channel to make amends for wrongful living in lieu of changing everyday behaviors. It became a manipulative system that distanced and tamed God and took advantage of others in the process.

The Biblical narrative communicates over and over God’s desire for relationship and our desire for something more transactional. God’s desire involves the entirety of our being, moment by ordinary moment. Our desire often involves our own betterment and improved circumstance, a faith that serves as a means to an end and as efficiently as possible.

In some ways, the sheer existence of a temple creates conceptual limitations for the sacred and the ordinary. A distinction is drawn between the sacred places and the common places, the sacred work and the common work. And a subtle message is conveyed that God exists there instead of with us in our everyday lives. But our hearts and our relationship with God were never intended to be reduced to a compartment of our lives. And Jesus came to reawaken us to God’s presence everywhere.

May we share Jesus’ passion for the systems that take advantage of the poor and that further contribute to greed and corruption. May we allow God to cultivate within us trust and right relatedness and generosity. And as we recall the torn temple curtain, may we remember that God’s presence is not something for us to manipulate or a place from which we come and go, but a grace that is awaiting discovery in every facet of our lives.

Holly Yinger