Friday 28 May 2021
Day of penance
Ecclesiasticus 44:1, 9-13. The Lord takes delight in his people – Psalm 149:1-6, 9. Mark 11:11-26.
‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.’
King Solomon built the temple over 1200 years after the Exodus. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE and again by the Romans in 70 CE and never rebuilt.
Once it was built it became the focal point of Jewish worship. Nowhere else could sacrifice be offered to God! This was a constraint on the worship of a God whose presence ‘filled the whole earth’. ‘Believe me’, Jesus told the Samaritan woman, ‘the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem . . . God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth’ (John 4:20-24) What is called the ‘cleansing’ was rather perhaps the ‘decommissioning’ of the Temple.
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