The clearing of the temple: Jesus disrupts our thinking. Causes us to ask questions. What are we doing here? He disrupts our thinking in two ways (more than two, but we only have time for two here).

First, Jesus disrupts our thinking about the other. The system of exploitation that was set up blocking access to the divine in the temple made Jesus angry. The marginalized, the poor had no access to worship in the temple without paying an outrageously inflated price first. Blocking access to the divine? Who do we think we are? This is one of the reasons we at ReNew made the decision we made a year ago - to be open and affirming.

Second, and last, Jesus disrupts our thinking about our own bodies - challenging us to see them as temples, homes of the divine. This isn't what we were taught. We've been taught to mistrust and fear our own bodies. Jesus talks about his own body as a temple for the divine. Do we have a healthy theology of the body? How can we move past our fear, mistrust and squeamishness and offer our whole lives to God - including our bodies? These are the kinds of disruptive questions the church needs to answer.

Barbara Brown Taylor says a lot about our bodies, and how crucial it is that we love our own so that we can love others' bodies better. It's impossible for us to love our own bodies more without increasing our love for all bodies. Which means, of course, that we can't love our own bodies and stand by while other bodies are mistreated and abused. Which is why our kids might save us, with their willingness to call out the oppression and hatred around us.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: John 2:13-22

http://bible.com/events/49042822