Good Churches Gone Bad

As we make our way through the Lenten season, I have been reflecting on the final days leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. This morning - when I admittedly wasn't paying attention to the meeting I was in - I gave some thought to the encounter between an angry Jesus and the temple moneychangers. There was a time in my life when I really liked that story because it seemed like an easy defense and justification of my own occasional outbursts. I hope I've matured beyond that misguided notion. The reality is, this event was a vivid demonstration of Jesus' authority and a prophetic indictment of what the institutional religion had become.

One would certainly hope that religious leaders take seriously the call to come alongside others to serve, help, and encourage them in their walk with God. Unfortunately, that call was somehow lost in the religious machinery of Jerusalem. Through a corrupt system of currency exchange and sacrifice sales, those in power manipulated and distorted the system of temple worship into a self-serving mockery. Those who came to worship found themselves exploited, hindered, and abused for the sake of profit. The very things intended to bless and encourage people in their relationship with God were hijacked by insiders for a selfish purpose. It was religion gone bad, an ugly picture of self placed before God and others.

To assume that this episode has nothing to say to us, that somehow we are above the same temptations, is either arrogant or naive. We don't have to look far or hard to find a good church that has gone bad, a place of worship that has been taken captive by the selfish desires of those who believe they are in charge. Like moneychangers, they twist the church into an object of self-interest, serving the wishes and preferences of those inside while those outside are ignored or despised. The very community called to be an instrument of grace, connecting people with the God who loves them, can all too easily take a heartbreaking slide into self-absorbed isolation.

In this season of reflection, humility confronts us with the painful reality that those in the temple courts of Jerusalem were not the last to lose sight of their purpose and call. Sometimes the tables still need to be overturned.