The temple is a house of prayer

Fr Paul reads the Gospel from Luke (19: 45-48) in which Jesus drives the merchants out of the temple.

Fr Paul says Luke’s account of Jesus in the temple is much tamer than that which we hear in Mark’s.  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus just begins to drive out the sellers; there is no mention of turning over the moneychangers’ tables; there is no mention of making a whip out of some cord and of using that to get rid of the merchants from the temple.

The writer of Luke emphasises that Jesus wants to use the temple to teach and brings in the prophetic teaching that the temple would be cleansed of merchants.

We hear in this Gospel that Jesus’s enemies want him dead but they do not respond to his actions. They listen and search his teachings looking for something with which to destroy him. They are not ready to move yet but they are actively looking for something.

Fr Paul asks, ‘When we read or hear the scriptures, when we read and hear the teachings of Jesus, are we like the people in the Gospel and hang on every word, listening intently or are we distracted by more worldly interests?’