Bright Friday
Acts 3:1-8; John 2:12-22
No fasting or abstention from foods
Read John 2:12-22
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Our Lord’s cleansing of the temple of those things which defiled it reveals many things to us. Firstly, and perhaps most simply and at the most human level, our Lord in His earthly ministry got angry. But as in all the ways in which he acted in His life in this world he did so without sin. In angrily driving out the money changers and those who did business in the temple, He acted righteously and justly to restore the temple to its rightful purpose: the worship of God. When we are angry we are frequently motivated by pride or vengeance or avarice. This is what makes anger sinful. We can be rightfully angry when we are confronted by evil such as abortion or persecution, but that righteous anger can be twisted into something prideful, even all-consuming, which is unjust if we are not careful.
Secondly, our Lord in cleansing the temple and restoring it to its rightful purpose tells us something about worship. The temple was established for the highest form of Jewish liturgical worship of God, as distinct from private devotional prayer or the teaching and prayer of the synagogue. Through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ and His establishment of the new covenant in His Body and Blood, the Church becomes the new temple and our individual churches are where we now encounter the right worship of God. Imagine if you came into the church on Sunday morning and saw people with stalls set up in the main body of the church selling things. You would be scandalized, even a little angry. This is not to say that parish bazaars are bad things, but they are held in parish halls, not in the body of the church. The nave and sanctuary of the church is a sacred space proper to the most ordered and highest of all human action: worship of God. Let us always be mindful of this when we serve the liturgy, laity and clergy alike, and beautify our churches by the right worship of God and that alone.