I’ll admit it, I like order.

Ok, I’ll be totally honest…..I LOVE order.

I love it when things are organised. I love to have my technology synced, my files organised, my calendar set, my bills paid, my grass cut and my car washed (that doesn’t mean i love doing those jobs by the way). I enjoy routine. I love eating at the same time, but don’t mind extra sessions, I love knowing Friday night is ‘burger night’ and looking forward to it and I love that Saturday is a day with little or no interruptions. I’m smiling as i think about it! No eye rolls!!!! Now, on one level there is nothing wrong with having a structured approach to life and in the same way there is nothing wrong with having an unstructured approach to life. However, there are dangers to both and today I want to reflect on how an ordered life can become a religious life.

I, like many people, am reading through the Easter story on this Good Friday – re-reading Jesus’ story of how He saved the world. As I started to read about His triumphant entry in to Jerusalem I was reading the account of Him entering into the temple. That would have been a crazy scene to see. We’ll get to that in a minute.

What we need to understand is that the temple in Jerusalem was a place of order. There was an order to who could be where; whether it was Jews, gentiles, men, women, priests or high priests, everyone had their place. There was an order to when things happened; different festivals, feasts and fasts had times that were appointed. There was an order to how things happened; sacrifices, confessions, and worship all had specific ways that they were to be handled. These weren’t even man made ideas, many of these directions were established by God. He wanted to ensure that they was a holiness around how people engaged in worship. While that might seem strange to our modern minds what we also need to know is that many other faiths had pretty raucous affairs (often quite literally) when it came to their worship. They were affronting to most people and God wanted to distinguish His people and His presence from the self serving, indulgent , worship that marked the polytheistic world His people lived in.

All in all the temple environment was a great environment for someone who enjoys order. But the order was never meant to be a god. Only God was to be God.

What had happened was that the human desire to be in control had taken over in the Temple. People tend to ‘puff up’ when they are the guardian of a rule and those in charge of the temple had certainly done that. They would enforce the order strictly while allowing other things to slide as long as it lined their pockets. If everything and everyone did what they were told and no one disturbed the peace then these leaders would be able to lead a comfortable life in the midst of the Roman occupation. This was order running wild (in a very tame way).

Enter Jesus.

Before we look at His entry into the temple I want to be clear. Often we see Jesus portrayed as this unstructured, free hippie, who broke up the order of the stiff necked, tight collared leaders. We tend to personify Him as someone who kicks against order, structure, and anything that has been organised. But that’s not strictly true. Jesus wasn’t simply kicking against order or structure. No, Jesus himself also attended the feasts and festivals like other Jews. He engaged in synagogue, sabbath, and the other practises that God instituted for His people. We hear that there were places He went regularly meaning He had routines as well. Jesus wasn’t conducting a fight against structured or unstructured. This was something much bigger. This was Kingdom warfare that has stretched back to the beginning – The Kingdom of God exercising its authority over the kingdom of earth.

There’s no doubt that Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem upset the order that the religious had come to value and even worship themselves. Read some of what happened when Jesus arrived in the temple.

Jesus went straight to the Temple and threw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dove merchants. Matthew 21:12

Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. They came to Jesus and he healed them. When the religious leaders saw the outrageous things he was doing, and heard all the children running and shouting through the Temple, “Hosanna to David’s Son!” they were up in arms and took him to task. Matthew 21:14-15

There’s nothing that will upset religious order more than children running and shouting in the middle of things. Add into that other people who were deemed unclean who were now being healed. I can guarantee their reactions to their healing were loud, undignified, and perhaps ‘colourful’ in their expression. If I was crippled and was subsequently healed I think I might jump about a bit too. The religious were angry at all of this ‘disorder’ and so they ask Jesus if He can see and hear all that was happening i.e. they wanted to know why He was allowing all this commotion and singing to happen. Here’s His reply;

……. Jesus said, “Yes, I hear them. And haven’t you read in God’s Word, ‘From the mouths of children and babies I’ll furnish a place of praise’?” Matthew 21:16b

What can we learn here?

I think the main thing is that we must be ready for Jesus to upset the order that we have created when it comes to our faith. There’s nothing wrong with reading our Bible at the same time everyday, praying through set prayers, having a structure to our services etc. God always has and always will work through these structures. However we don’t serve these orders and structures. The goal of any of them is to help us meet with Jesus and if they don’t do that we shouldn’t be engaging. Let’s ensure that if we have a love of order and structure that it doesn’t prevent us from the one who might come in a way we wouldn’t have predicted. Let’s not be scared of anyone or anything who might do it a little differently than us. Let’s embrace Jesus in the midst of it all.