Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 65 verse 10:
Zeal for your house has eaten me up;
the scorn of those who scorn you has fallen upon me.
Sunday the Lectionary gives us the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple, and this psalm this morning is a precursor:
"Zeal for your house has consumed me."
Jesus was not impressed with religion which extorted, and robbed, and prayed upon people's fears and sense of sacred duty. When he came into Jerusalem and saw all the buying and selling of sacrificial animals in the emporium, and how rich all the priests had gotten off of it while the people were so poor, it made him sick.
It was extortion; and he wasn't buying it! It was a blasphemy of the House of God; and his zeal for the house consumed him. In other words, it ate him up. Thus, his prophetic demonstration and nonviolent, direct action.
Jesus was just not okay with business as usual. He was not okay with big business as usual, not when it came at the expense of people. And thus his words there at the Temple in Jerusalem about the Temple of His body.
For the human body is the sacred Temple of God; and anything which impoverishes, or exploits a human person is a desecration. And when its done in the name of God, then it's bad religion.
Bad religion consumed Jesus. It ate him up.
It still does.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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