Scripture: Matthew 21:1–11; 22:34–40
God will not be mocked; you hypocrites, be not sayers, but doers. And you talk of the Scriptures being a golden Rule, but your ways prove, how little you are ruled by it; Do ye seek to be perfect? for God is perfect, holy as he is holy? Do ye love God above all, and your neighbours as yourself, when you make them your footstool? Do you to all as you would be done by. —James Nayler
Questions: Imagine yourself among the crowd as Jesus enters Jerusalem. Imagine the shouts, the flashing green of the branches, the smell of the dust. Where do your eyes go? What details can you pick out? Can you see Jesus? Can he see you? Sit with this scene for a while. Who is your neighbor? Who is the person, or what is the category of persons, that you struggle to treat with charity? Whether it’s an impossible family member or a political faction, where might God be calling you into deeper love in the form of love for your neighbor?
I think often about the cleansing of the temple (Matthew 21:12–17). I’m a naturally critical person, and I’ve found it easy to criticize almost every church I’ve ever been in. “Ugh, so self-satisfied and complacent—I’d love to turn over some tables here!” or, “I hate how they’re profiting off the gospel. Just like the moneylenders in the temple.” I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using this passage to criticize our all-too-human institutions. But over and over, I find that this passage more closely applies to my own heart.
This section of Matthew is violent and apocalyptic—it’s the “breaking and entering” portion of the gospel. Jesus enters Jerusalem, crashes about in the temple, and tells terrifying stories of tenants being beaten and stoned. This violence can be frightening and overwhelming—“all your waves and your billows have gone over me” (Psalm 42:7)—but I also find myself longing for it. In Matthew, as in our lives, this inbreaking of God portends the dawn of a new day.
O Jesus, come to me. Overturn the tables in my heart, upon which I am selling you for gold. Love me; possess me; overtake me.
Batter My Heart
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
—John Donne
–Rosemary Zimmerman in “Friendly Perspective” from Matthew: The Life of Jesus