5th Tuesday of Lent (April 8). A HOUSE OF PRAYER

Prepare to Listen.  The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
 
Prayerfully Read Luke 19:45-48
45Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46and he said, ‘It is written, “My house shall be a house of prayer”; but you have made it a den of robbers.’  47Every day he was teaching in the temple.  The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; 48but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.
 
Prayerfully Wonder and Reflect
All four Gospels tell this story.  Like’s is the briefest and least dramatic.  What stood out to you as you read it?
 
Jesus, writes Luke, “began to drive out those who were selling things there.”  How and what things is left unsaid.  Two things matter to Luke: what Jesus said as he drove people out, and what he did afterwards.
 
First, because of Luke’s low-key, undramatic account, our attention is drawn, not to what Jesus did, but what he said, quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah[1]: “‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.”  From the beginning, prayer was central in Jesus’ ministry.  He’d “withdraw to deserted places and pray”, he taught about and urged his disciples to pray.[2]  Unlike the visual drama of the ‘den of robbers’ in the temple, prayer is hidden, less visible.  It rejects outward symbols of religion used only to attract attention to ourselves.  Prayer is about the heart, which is what God looks at.  As an unceasing practice (1 Thes. 5:17), prayer trains our heart, shaping how we live.  Since our body is the temple of the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), we ought to make it a ‘house of prayer.’
 
Second, having cleansed the temple, Jesus spent everyday teaching there, his last great act before his arrest.  What he taught, Luke doesn’t say.  It was his teaching, not the temple cleansing, that made the chief priests and scribes determined to kill him.  But the people, those on the margins, with little power, were spellbound and this made the chief priests and scribes hesitate to arrest Jesus.
 
What do you think Jesus taught about that upset the Rulers?  How can you make your body “a house of prayer”?
 
Prayerfully Respond
Lord Jesus, help me avoid meaningless outward symbols.  Help me keep praying so that my heart and my life is shaped to be more like you.  Amen.
 
Live obediently.  Be a house of prayer.
[1] Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 17:11.
[2] Luke 5:15; 11:1-13; 18:1-8.