Jesus appears to me to be the most non-religious person who has ever lived. In fact, he challenged the accepted religion of his day at every turn. He got into trouble with religious authorities who were convinced of the rightness of their practices. He questioned the legitimacy of traditions and rituals. He challenged the towering edifaces and exposed them as nothing more than high places to human greed and avarice. "Destroy this temple!" "Woe to you, Pharisees, you hypocrites!" "Repent! The Kingdom of God is here!"
It's often said that Jesus sought to reform the accepted religion. I disagree. He sought to demolish it. If there was anything to be reformed, it was the people and their propensity to invent religions and enshrine their pride in faith systems that ultimately oppress those who didn't quite fit in, for whatever reason. This is exactly what Israel did. That's what everyone does.
Throughout the Gospels I see this pattern of Jesus drawing people away from their religion-- religion that had become a slavish substitute for God. And what did we do with this? We took what Jesus accomplished and, you guessed it, made a religion out of it! Silly human race!! We built cathedrals and churches, formulated rituals, invented liturgies, systematized theology (notice the word "system"), wrote sermons, collected money, drew swords, legislated morality, peddled Je$u$ junk, entertained the masses, and served ourselves. Somewhere along the line we crowned ourselves the distributors of God's grace and convinced ourselves that God's forgiveness can only be obtained through carefully orchestrated rituals.
We just might need to start destroying our temples.
Douglas Hoag
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About this blog
Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, New Lenox, Illinois.
I'm married with two children.
My MBTI type is E/INFP, in case that means anything to you.
My prayer: Lord, help me finish everything I sta
Most importantly, I believe that the reality and personage of God was uniquely and fully realized in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. No one else comes close.
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for the seizures and/or convulsions you may experience while reading this blog.
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I'm married with two children.
My MBTI type is E/INFP, in case that means anything to you.
My prayer: Lord, help me finish everything I sta
Most importantly, I believe that the reality and personage of God was uniquely and fully realized in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. No one else comes close.
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for the seizures and/or convulsions you may experience while reading this blog.
Doug Hoag's Profile
Create Your Badge
6 comments:
Again, you're exactly right. This is exactly what's going on inthe book of Luke, where the theme of reversal is quite prevalent.
Essentially, Christ says to the elite of his day (and ours), "You think you have it right. But you don't."
For us in the LCMS (and others), Christ's words should scare the hell out of us. Literally.
Rev. Hoag, Thanks for the blog, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
The religion of Jesus's day was a total bastardization of the true religion God had set up after the fall into sin. God made a covenant with His people and they couldn't keep it, so they added things to it to try to cover up their utter failure. But God was still faithful to His promise. His promise was fulfilled when Jesus died and rose again from the dead. Jesus was fulfilling the old covenant and replacing all of the added man made junk with His new Covenant.
Jesus instituted certain religious practices like baptism. He Himself received the waters of baptism perfectly for us, leading the way so that we could know we belong to Him through that same water, Word and Sacrament.
He did the same thing with His Holy Supper, he gave to us His body and blood so that we could still today be assured that we are forgiven children of God and have our faith in Him strengthened.
He also gave us a Church, His body to be a member of, through the work of the Holy Spirit so that we can be connected to Him on earth by His Word until we can see Him face to face in heaven.
He gave us His Church to hold the office of keys and confession, that our sins may be forgiven.
He gave us the Word, the Law and the Good News about Him to be preached and taught by pastors He sends us, that we may remain alive in Him.
Jesus still read Scripture and taught in the synagogues. He still had zeal for His Father's house as he threw the businessmen out of the Temple for doing their business there. Jesus still preached and prayed and taught and worshiped.
Jesus said "Destroy this temple" and He ultimately was that Temple. That place where God meets us. He, God, had to be destroyed for and with us on account of our sin which He took the guilt for and He and we were raised up again in order for us to be allowed in His presence. He died for our idolatry and gave us an eternal idol-less life instead.
Man always wants to add to what Jesus has given us and handed down to us, and you are right that those added beliefs and practices need to be destroyed, but we still have been given a lot of true 'religion' that Jesus has established and blessed. We are better off in His religion than we are out walking in the woods alone just thinking about Jesus. We are to be pitied if we are not gathered around his Word and Sacraments, hearing, singing, praying and giving thanks to Him.
Nobody is ever going to truly fit in when it comes to this world. The devil makes sure of that. But in Christ we fit in with and fit into His kingdom.
For Christians our temples have already been destroyed just as our Temple has already been destroyed. But our new Temple has been rebuilt. Jesus is now with us as that Temple and He will be with us even more perfectly once our old Adams are gone, done away with and totally out of the way.
Chris,
Obeying the covenant to the letter was the modus operandi of 1st century Judaism. They thought they had all of the i's dotted and t's crossed, but they didn't. Jesus called them on it.
Ross,
I appreciate your comments. I think you and I are saying much the same things, with a couple of exceptions. When Jesus threw out the moneychangers in the temple, he quoted Jeremiah 7, which was about the temple's destruction. Jesus was acting out what was going to come upon the whole system permanently by shutting it down for a couple of hours during Passover. In doing this he was fulfilling the role of the true temple whose architect and builder is God. He was "destroyed" on the cross, but raised again on Easter. Jesus' entire ministry was vindicated in that event!
I know I keep bringing up AD 70, but that's only because of the immensity of that event. It was huge! Our theology seems to gloss over that event and we aren't accustomed to talking about it. We never talked about it at seminary. For us future pastors, everything ended at the cross and the empty tomb. But those events pointed forward to something much bigger. They do not stand alone as total fulfillment of the Scriptures. There was more to come--the destruction of the temple made with human hands. In reference to that, Jesus said that "these are the days of vengeance,to fulfill all that is written."--Luke 21:22.
The fulfillment of all that is written?! That's big! After this discovery, things began to click for me. The NT started to make so much more sense. I now know why they were so desperate to get the message out to as many as possible-- man-made religion was heading out the window! So, yes, we are better off in Jesus' religion. Word and Sacrament are concrete, tangible tokens of his presence, remembering that Jesus did not come to show us himself, but the Father. That's what Israel was ultimately supposed to do, but failed. I sometimes wonder if some of our religious practices have resulted in the same thing. As someone once said, "We have far too many churches and far too few fellowships."
Rev Hoag,
Thanks again. I find your arguments very compelling and a lot of this makes sense to me. As I have said before, I have a lot to learn.
I guess some red flags go up for me whenever I hear about the Temple destruction in 70 A.D. because right away it reminds me about people I have heard talk about Zionism. I have to admit I don't remember a lot about the teachings of Zionism, but when I hear people talking about Jerusalem and the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple I think it is misguided. I am not saying you are equating the destruction with a modern day rebuild. I am just trying to explain to you why this subject makes me nervous.
With regard to the Church, I agree that the Church has a lot of extra baggage it needs to get rid of, but if I get too negative about all of the added sinful human junk that goes on within the Church, I seem to be left wondering if I should just join the ranks of Harold Camping of Family Radio who says come out of the Church. He seems to have come out of Church and started a fellowship which appears to be nothing more than a church without Jesus' clearly proclaimed Gospel and sacraments. Once again, I am not saying you are suggesting one should do this. I am only trying to explain my feeble way of thinking to you. I, in my frustration with the Church, have just had to come to grips with the fact that like me, the Church is very sinful (full of sinners), but it is the only place I know of where I can receive God's gifts. And as Jesus embodies the Church, it is the only place I can go to be in Him. He takes His sinful body of people and makes us pure and holy in the blood and water He shed on the cross.
Ross,
I understand your hesitancy with Zionism, a movement which I also believe is horribly misguided and even dangerous. The Christian brand of it is even worse! I cringe when I listen to John Hagee.
I'm glad you brought up Harold Camping. When I was on vicarage in '91-'92, a member of the congregation I served gave me a copy of Camping's "1994". He was convinced that Camping's thesis was absolutely correct, that the end of the world would happen anywhere between September 1 and November 31, 1994. It was nothing but mental gymnastics as far as I was concerned, and it proved to be false anyway. I can't believe that people are still listening to him after the fiasco he started in the early 90's.
I, in my frustration with the Church, have just had to come to grips with the fact that like me, the Church is very sinful (full of sinners), but it is the only place I know of where I can receive God's gifts. And as Jesus embodies the Church, it is the only place I can go to be in Him. He takes His sinful body of people and makes us pure and holy in the blood and water He shed on the cross.
Excellent point! We really are all in the same circle. The trouble I see in the church today is a culture of leaving Jesus in the sanctuary. I've even sarcastically called the end of the service the "Bye-Bye Jesus Time". I'm not suggesting that you are doing this. It doesn't sound like you do. But worship has another dimension to it, and that is, Jesus goes with us to live his life through us that others may also see the Father. "Love one another as I have loved you." This is our vocation and it is lived out in our many dimensions of life.
"Bye, Bye Jesus Time" I LOL when I read that.
I probably shouldn't laugh though, because I am constantly guilty of it. My sinful nature always wants to say bye, bye to Jesus. Fortunately, He keeps calling me back through His Word and Spirit and I am reassured of the forgiveness of my sins through His absolution and Sacraments.
In the past I have found, reciting Scripture and catechism while I go about my daily life, have helped me stay more focussed on my Father in heaven as I live out my vocation in His Son Jesus.
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