Is Jesus Angry with Your Church?

So, is Jesus angry with your church?

Now I know this seems like a strange question, after all many people say that Jesus is gentle, meek and mild, so it must be true?

After Jesus entered Jerusalem, he went to the temple courts where he smashed up the stalls of the people selling animals and of the money changers and as he did so, he called them robbers.

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (Picture source).

Jesus was angry that the poor were being exploited and that people were choosing to make it overly expensive to get to God.Y ou can read more about this in Trashing the Temple Courts: What was that all about?

If people couldn’t pay the exorbitant amounts then they couldn’t worship and this made Jesus furious!

Access to God should be free and we certainly shouldn’t put barriers in the way of people!

Are there ways that we make it difficult for people who don’t know Jesus yet to worship and to find out more about him through our church community?

If we do, then we need to realize that Jesus is angry with us!

Jesus died to save the world and if we are running his church in such a way that we end up excluding people then we need to repent and make Jesus’ church accessible and open to all again.

• We need to give up on expecting people to behave in certain ways before we allow them to seek within our church communities.
• We need to give up all judgmental attitudes.
• We need to ditch the jargon filled services which people need a degree in Christianese to follow and rediscover the Jesus approach to sharing profound truths using everyday language and parables.
• We need to learn to be more honest about our faith because people will never hear the good news unless we tell them!

Are there ways that we exploit the poor through our choices?

If we do, then we need to realize that Jesus is angry with us!

• We need to think about how ethical that the way that we spend our money is. Are we willing to invest in and see the importance of things like the Fairtrade scheme when we make purchases?
• We need to consider if we are good customers. Do we wait until the last possible minute to pay invoices? Do we squeeze everything we can out of tradespeople or do we bless them and treat them well?
• Are we willing to give generously to the poor out of all that we have and not just what we have left over?
• Are we willing to give to and to help the poor in such a way that they can find freedom rather than them being beholden to us for more handouts? (Throwing money at the problem of poverty isn’t the answer! Any money has to be used to allow people to help themselves rather than it being out into projects that make the givers feel better).
• Will we welcome people in to our churches no matter how they are dressed or what money they have. (The poor long for acceptance but often they encounter rejection and judgement. The church is one of the places that should welcome and accept all people.).

Okay, so it turns out that the gentle Jesus, meek and mild thing is a myth!

Perhaps Jesus is angry with us and the churches we are part of, but if he is the good news is that it is not to late to change! The Bible says that God is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love.

As we rediscover Jesus’ priories of leading everyone to the Father and not hindering them and of welcoming, loving and helping the poor then we know that he will be pleased with us as he sees us joining him in his work.

Let’s help Jesus to build his church rather than us turning it into our exclusive club!

I am hoping to write something each day this week to explore something that happened during the lead up to the first Easter Sunday. If you are interested in finding out more then you might find the posts I have written during this and previous years about this helpful.

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