Tuesday 25th March 2025
St Luke 19: 45 – 48
Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’
Every 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; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.
Reflection
I was down in London recently, at a conference (on powerful mediaeval women, should you be curious, however irrelevant here!). With some early Christmas purchases in mind, I strolled along Piccadilly and dropped by St James’s Church, a 17th century Wren building, Lucy Winkett of Radio 4 fame the current rector. (Many years ago I found myself companioning a group from that parish visiting Russia for celebrations of the millennium of Christianity there, so I feel still a tangential connection!), and I am occasionally in the audience for the regular lunchtime concerts it holds).
The connection to today’s Daily Devotions passage, at least in my mind, is that around the building, in the green-space churchyard, are hosted commercial and other stalls, a market for food, crafts, complementary therapy, clothing and collectibles. The church has its own on-site cafe, operated by Redemption Roasters, a speciality coffee company with barista training and potentially employment for prisoners, ex-prisoners, people at risk of offending. Money changes hands!
Veritably, in another sense from Jesus’ words, a “den of robbers” (and other former offenders). Some church folk might be wary of hybrid religious/commercial enterprises; others thankful for any financial share that comes our way.
The institution, and (it would seem increasingly many of its leadership), are focused often on reputation management. There is a companion form called “scandal management”, in the Biblical and conventional usage of the term “scandal”.
What might our Lord have made of it? It is evident that the life and person of Jesus was itself rejected by many, particularly the religious rulers and the respectable, as being disreputable: his teachings, his hanging around with social outcasts, his lifestyle, and (ultimately) his death (“a stumbling block [scandal] to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles”[1 Cor. 1:23, RSV]. And obstacles are risks, and it would seem, to be swerved. It is safer that way, apparently.
Prayer
Jesus, our brother,
we were taught from our early years,
to be careful about the company we kept.
It could blacken our reputations.
Folk might think ill of us.
Yet, we cannot avoid the truth
that this is where we find you,
eating and drinking and talking and laughing
with the socially and spiritually marginalised.
May we open our hearts and our embrace
to those whom others reject,
and may we embrace our own outsiderness. Amen.