A LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN ON EARTH
Exodus 20:1-17 ; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25
In Culture Shift, Wayne Cordeiro tells of a parishioner who worked six days a week and volunteered to be a receptionist at church on her day off.
He asked her: “Why do you come here and do this?” She replied: “Being here is like a breath of fresh air.”
He asked: “Don’t you want to take a day off?” She said: “This is a day off. This is a little slice of heaven on earth.”
Cordeiro reflects: “She feels valued. This is the kind of love we want to show… which comes from learning to recognize evidence of God’s presence.”
The Ten Commandments were meant to put God’s people into a covenantal relationship with him and into a right relationship with one another… so that they became a sign of God’s presence and all experienced a “little slice of heaven on earth”.
Gradually, these became 613 dos and don’ts which focused on externals and became a burden!
The Jerusalem temple was meant to be a sign of God’s presence, another “little slice of heaven”.
At Jesus’ time, it had become “a marketplace”: moneychangers and animal sellers extorted pilgrims in the name of religion. Further, the “marketplace” was in the Court of the Gentiles, the only place where a Gentile could pray; but the noise from the animals and people precluded any prayer.
In cleansing the temple, Jesus wished to restore it as a sign of God’s presence. In his confrontation with the Jews, he indicated another sign (and reality) of God’s presence: his body!
We are God’s people and the Body of Christ.
Am I a sign of God’s presence? Do people experience a “little slice of heaven on earth” and “a breath of fresh air” around me?
What do I need to cleanse in myself to become a true “temple”?
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