In our gospel today, Luke 19:45-48, Jesus enters the temple and drives out those who are selling things, saying they have turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves. This angered the temple leaders so much they wanted to kill Jesus, but they couldn’t because he had many followers that were hanging on his words.
Jesus was trying to honor his father’s house by teaching them God’s will and what proper worship looked like, and it was not what he saw with these leaders, or in the temple.
Sadly, today, over 2000 years later, we continue to hear of leaders using our church for their own purposes, not God’s. However, we have hope knowing that Jesus tells us in Matthew 18, when speaking about the Church, that “the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it.”
It was Jesus’ followers that kept these leaders from destroying Jesus in the temple that day.
Are we being the followers that are hanging on his every word that will keep the same from happening today?
De Colores, Deacon Kevin
