Rights of Ownership [part one] ...

Americans are keen on the idea of our rights.  We often revert back to quoting from our famous “Bill of Rights”.  We assert that our “rights” are God given, though I am not certain that scripture would back us up on that.  But today I would like to focus in on rights we associate with ownership.  If you “own” something, it is only natural to make certain assumptions about the item you own.  You can move it from here to there.  You can alter it.  You can sell or transfer it to someone else.  You could even consume or destroy it.  All these actions presume that you are the item’s owner, and that in doing them, you do not present a risk to the safety of the public in doing so.  The item you own, is of course, your property.  But what happens when people are considered property?  Or beyond our bodies, what happens when the soul is considered property?

Slavery comes to mind when we discuss people being considered as property, and rightly so.  For this word is a good description of the condition of the property when others think it so.  Would we extend this terminology into a marriage however, when one spouse considers the other, as his/her property?  In that context, it might depend on how they are treated, before we would resort to such a word as slavery.  Perhaps in the context of marriage, ownership is more about belonging, and home, than it is about a condition of being forced to do anything.  So if we extended the idea of an intimate relationship just a bit further … what if we are “owned” by God.  What if we have given ourselves to God?  Does this make us His slaves?  To answer that one need only examine how God has treated even His enemies.  God never treats His property like anything other than royal, honored, guests and treasure.  God values the gift of our ownership more than anything else we could offer.  And He treats us accordingly.

Where it comes to the soul, our minds quickly picture a battle, between the supernatural forces of good and of evil.  For what is unseen, can only be obtained by those forces that are unseen.  This one is a battle of influence.  The forces of the enemy of souls, do everything in their power, to seduce us.  They battle to change our desires away from God, and only to self, that we may indulge ourselves with abandon.  They settle for only partial indulging, for partial victory keeps God from getting the whole of us.  In contrast, God shows us His love for us.  His love is unending, without limits, without preconditions.  He loves His creations and wants to free them from the downward spirals the enemy would ensnare them in.  God defends His children with fierce tenacity that no other being could offer.  For the souls who have given themselves to God, are in the palm of His hand, under His eagle’s wings, and will NOT be plucked asunder.

The difference between slavery, and belonging, comes from the perspective of the item, of the property, of you.  No one can make you believe slavery is not slavery, if that is how you see it for yourself.  No one can take away the idea of belonging and home from you, if that is what you believe.  Therefore, who you give yourself to, who you want to be a part of, must be a gift if it is not to be slavery.  But once God is given your heart, He is going to fight to keep it.  He does not fight you.  But He will fight the enemy of souls.  The incident Peter recalls to John Mark nestled in chapter eleven between the verses of the death of figs (our last study) is traditionally called the Cleansing of the Temple.  We have all read the story, we all know the basics.  But what if, in our second look, we re-examine this story in the context of ownership.  For if ownership is being asserted, then the authority that comes with it is also being asserted.  The rights of ownership by our King are also being demonstrated, the question remains, why.

Peter begins the recollection picking right up in verse 15 saying … “And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;”  First understand the context, only a day earlier, the triumphant procession entered Jerusalem with Jesus on a colt who had never been ridden.  The crowd was intent on making Him king.  Jesus avoided this fate.  He went all the way to the Temple, then disappeared back out to Bethany for the evening, no doubt with Lazarus and his family.  Today is the very next day.  Today it is only Him and His disciples traveling alone into Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Pharisees and Sadducees who rule the Sanhedrin, are beyond furious.  Jesus took that procession all the way to the Temple yesterday, and if the people had not been there in numbers, they would have taken Jesus and killed Him as was their plan.  But Jesus escaped, and so their plans were thwarted once again.  But to have Jesus return the very next day was in the words of the Princess Bride … inconceivable.  To have Jesus volunteer to return, this time without the crowds of people to protect Him, was just beyond the realm of their imagination.  If Jesus had entered quietly, if He had kept His head down (in reverence), and kept it covered (in reverence), He might have gone unnoticed by those bent on killing Him.  But Jesus’ idea of reverence was different from that of the Sanhedrin.  And Jesus was not attempting to keep quiet or go unnoticed, He was there to worship, and something stood in His way.

This Temple belonged to God.  Notice, this Temple was not taken in conquest, forced to act in its current capacity by a conquered people of another nation who once used it for something else (i.e. slavery).  Instead this Temple was built by a people who were offering it to God, to be used only as a Temple, and who unfortunately had developed quite a sense of pride in having done so.  None the less, this Temple belonged to God.  The person entering it on that day, was God.  This was no ordinary worshipper, or pilgrim from the outer regions.  Jesus Christ was in fact, the God who the Israelites had offered this Temple to.  It was Jesus on that mountain top of Sinai those many years ago with Moses, as it was Jesus who traveled with 2 angels through the camp of Abraham on the way to rescue Lot from Sodom.  The heritage of their very bloodline (in which they took so much pride), combined with the laws of Moses (another source of pride) had been witnessed by the God who now entered the Temple they had offered to God.

And in His first act of entering the Temple He owned, was to destroy commerce and profit.  What an object lesson for the countless number of Christian churches and faiths of our day.  The goal of organized religion, is NOT to produce commerce and profit, it is to have NONE.  Jesus did not make this lesson to insure our organizations are considered non-profits on the IRS tax forms we file every year.  The lesson was to tear at the very core of owning assets, investment funds, priceless art, and the trappings of this world, built off the commerce of Christian religion.  The Sanhedrin would gladly have argued they needed this source of income to maintain the Temple, and its many ministries for the poor.  I have heard so many modern members of the Sanhedrin argue just the same thing.  But Jesus, the owner of our faith, and of our structures dedicated to His worship, has definitively other ideas.  To have no commerce in association with His name, or His worship, was what our owner demonstrated on this day.

Jesus, did not simply ask these hardened business people to leave, he began overthrowing the tables on which they counted their profits.  He began disrupting and destroying the assets they used to make money.  The sin was not just being in the wrong place on the wrong day, it was in making His religion a thing of profit for ministry at all.  This Temple, owned by God as it was given to Him for this purpose, was to be a place where one could come and find God, no matter his socio-economic status.  Drunks were welcome here, as were the homeless, as were the widows or the prostitutes.  Bill Gates was intended to worship right next to the homeless man from down the street, both united in the glad joy of finding freedom that God alone offers for free.

It did not stop there.  Peter continues recalling to John Mark in verse 16 saying … “And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.”  Jesus not only strongly encouraged the money changers to exit the premises, anyone carrying any assets or supplies, or additional money to be used in these endeavors, was also encouraged to leave the building as well; to come back when they had left their burdens outside, or freed themselves of them altogether.  There would be no supply line for commerce still allowed to run uninterrupted in the Temple God owned.  But Jesus was not just there to remove what should have never been in His Temple.  He was there to counsel the people as to what should be there.

John Mark continues in verse 17 saying … “And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.”  Ouch!  The Temple we gave to God, the one in Israel, and the one we attend services in each weekend (yes that one); is supposed to be known “of all nations” as “the house of prayer”.  Wow!  The whole program of weekly services just got turned on its head.  Instead of a 2-3 hour block of routines that have become so rigorous that church memberships argue and split up over a proposed change in just one of them; His idea of worship was a house known for nothing but prayer.  We don’t go to church for the children’s story.  The children’s story is something our kids should be getting every night and day at home from their parents about the Bible’ many lessons of love.  We don’t go to church for the sermon.  The sermon is something we get when small groups of believers meet in His name, and share what is going on with the faith among them.

And what is more, we do NOT go to church for a few hours once a week.  Instead we go to church as often as we would like to pray throughout the week.  Anytime, open to anyone.  This turns our ideas of worship services on their heads.  But it also turns our ideas of our faith on its head.  We reserve our worship for the Sabbath, and intend the other 6 days for me.  If I pray, I do it in the car, or at the dinner table, or right before bedtime, or right as I get up.  I do not make time to drive down to church, go inside, and take my burdens to the Lord there.  That is not worship to us, that is crazy to us.  We only go to church when it is organized after all church is a huge structure with massive overhead to maintain, that requires a great deal of commerce to support it.  Yup.  And that is why the buildings we pick, and dedicate, are perhaps too large for the job, or too ornate.  Perhaps we should pick more modest structures, in the middle of a strip center where lots of foot traffic walks by, where a few staff could take shifts to really make a ministry where the poor are fed, clothed, and prayer occurs at all times of the day.  Perhaps our missions should become our churches.

But this idea is too radical.  I must be nuts.  Jesus could not mean that really.  So what is the response of the Sanhedrin (both then and now) … Mark continues in verse 18 saying … “And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.”  Kill the messenger.  Kill the owner.  Kill what is too radical for us to adopt.  Kill what would destroy our commerce, and ruin our profit.  Modern churches are ready to hate the person who suggests they move services up by an hour, or omit some long standing part of what they do. 

Today there is a quiet war between worship houses that offer long stents of modern worship music with modern instruments who repeat religious slogans ad nauseam; and those who sing hymns like traditional dirges with the passion of a turnip.  They each believe each other to be the death of modern Christianity; one because it will bring the church down by introducing the techniques of Satan, the other because it will not adapt to reach the masses of the future.  Both are focused on the wrong thing.  It is not our music that is the core of our worship, it is our prayer.  Why are we not passionate about our prayer?  Why is it prayer is only offered for minutes in our services, lest any longer we will all fall asleep.  Our worship houses are rightly defined by what kind of music we offer in them, because this is the only real distinction. 

We both pray the same; briefly.  What would it take to turn our reputations around, to have a place that is open to prayer anytime?  What would it take to turn our reputations around, to be a people who are known for their prayers, instead of their music, or their doctrines?  To give away the wealth of our church, and find a systemic way to continue to do that, just sounds too communistic, or too socialistic.  To have faith in Christ to provide, because we have given our all to Him, sounds too presumptuous.  So we focus on filling our pews, and let our hearts remained unburdened from His ideas.  We offer Him instead, a pre-planned worship program He is welcome to attend … or not.  But when to comes to ownership, there would be more to say …