Dirty Glory by Pete Greig

Author:Pete Greig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Inspirational, RELIGION / Christian Ministry / Discipleship
ISBN: 9781631466168
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 2016-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

A House of Prayer for the Nations

When Jesus denounced the temple for its inadequacy as “a house of prayer for all nations,” he was not condemning it so much for a lack of prayer (there were regular times of prayer in the temple each day), but rather for failing to turn those prayers outwards to be a missional and hospitable blessing to “the nations.” His message was unequivocal: A house of prayer that is inaccessible, unwelcoming, and disengaged from the lost is failing to be a true house of prayer, no matter how many hours of intercession and worship it might clock up along the way. Those who pray continually without engaging missionally are simply missing the point, “like someone running aimlessly,” like those Australian tourists caught up in the hype of Pamplona without any real sense of direction or purpose. If we claim to have our eyes fixed on Jesus and yet fail to focus on the profound needs that break his heart, we are hypocrites.

When King Herod rebuilt the temple in the years just before Jesus’ birth, he enlarged and enclosed its outer court, creating a vast, cloistered plaza, paved with marble and surrounded by Corinthian pillars thirty-seven feet high. Anyone from any nation was permitted to enter this part of the temple. Significantly it was here, in the “Court of the Gentiles,” that Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers. He was enraged by two particular violations of the temple’s true purpose: the scandalous way in which pilgrims were being exploited in the Gentile courts, and the way the Gentiles were being excluded from the rest of the temple.

Exploitation. Ancient records reveal that 226,000 animals were sold and slaughtered in the Court of the Gentiles during a single Passover festival in AD 66. It was little more than a noisy slaughterhouse. And in the middle of this chaos, hundreds of traders were overcharging the crowds of earnest pilgrims—Jew and Gentile alike—as they purchased animals for sacrifice. The authorities may well have been complicit in the racket (more on this later), so Jesus had good reason to be furious at the way honest pilgrims from many nations were being exploited in his Father’s house.

Exclusion. The temple architecture was laid out a bit like a Russian doll: Every area enclosed another. Within the Court of the Gentiles stood the Court of the Women, within which lay the Court of the Israelites, open only to Jewish men. Within that stood the Court of the Priests, which in turn enclosed the Holy of Holies, accessible only to one specially selected priest just once a year. This brutal hierarchy of progressive exclusion—on the basis of ethnicity, gender, and ordination—seems to have enraged Jesus just as much as the commercial exploitation and corruption of the temple trade. Pilgrim foreigners coming from afar to worship the King of Kings were being excluded from God’s presence in the very place intended for their blessing.

In 1871 an archaeologist dug up a stone plaque from the Court of the Gentiles.

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