Introduction

Was Jesus a religious man? I think it is a difficult question to answer, isn't it? In the Gospel, Jesus often criticizes, with sometimes tough words, the formalism of the Jews' religion, their rules and sacrifices, so he is often attacked as impious by his enemies. But at the same time, Jesus seems to criticize religion only in order to restore a true relationship between men and God. This text we've just read contains the same ambiguity : is Jesus defending the Temple or does he want to destroy it? Does he want to destroy it in order to build an new one or does he wants it as it should had been?

We have the same problem with religion. This passage of the Gospel really makes me think of Luther attacking the traffic in indulgences : “How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!". Christianity can also lead to evil: we experienced it in history. That is why it is also difficult for us to hear criticisms about religion: “Religious people are hypocrites, intolerant, sometimes violent” because we know these criticisms can be true. So we try to refer to “true religion”, “true Christianity”, as Luther and Calvin did. But this “true religion” is really difficult to find and we know referring to Jesus isn't sufficient to make a religion a good one. Jesus warned us: “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7).

In fact, we can find this contradictory attitude towards religion in all the Bible : Prophets like Amos or Isaiah often criticize the religion of the kings and of the priests, their useless sacrifices because of their lack of justice. In the same way, in early Christianity, Paul will have to argue with Peter to make him understand that they don't need any more to obey the food rules or to be circumcised to be true believers.

I would like to stress that we just can't picture today what Jesus did in the Temple. Most theologians agree to say that it is this scandal which is going to cost Jesus his life. The Hebrews and after them the Jews were, and still are, very religious people and the Temple in Jerusalem is the archetypal sacred place. In fact, the story of the Temple runs through all the Bible: finding a place for the Temple, building the Temple, the catastrophe of its destruction, its restoration and all the prophecies around it.

So I suggest that we think about the problem of religion following in the Bible this story of the Temple:

• Mankind and religion: Needing the Temple or needing God?
• Hebrews and religion: Serving the Temple or serving through the Temple?
• Jesus and religion: Having a Temple or being the Temple?
• Us and religion: Being a temple of stone or a temple of flesh?

1 - Mankind and religion: Needing the Temple or needing God?

We can't understand the need the Hebrews had for a country and for a Temple if we don't remember the wanderings of these people. “I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another.” says the Lord. The Exodus wanderings after the patriarchs' wanderings: wanderings in a geographic way but most of all in a spiritual way. Six hundred years after Abraham's call, Moses finally gave rules to the Hebrews, three hundred years after Moses, Solomon built them a Temple! You can imagine how they longed to have a place of their own.

We can recognize this need of religion in mankind. Because Religion is the house of faith: it is the material expression of an inner experience, an experience of great fear or of great wonder in the face of life. We need this material expression to understand what we live for ourselves and we need it to share our experience in a community, which also helps us to understand and to deepen what we live. This experience is understood in a tradition and in a culture. Religion helps us to have markers, and we often feel sorry for young people who don't have these markers to help them to grow. It is often said that religion is made to reassure people. Well, that's true! But if I look at a map before leaving for a walk in an unknown place, it also will reassure me, and it isn't useless and it isn't childish. God recognizes this need we have of religion.

But God warns us also: he doesn't need religion, we need religion. It is amazing the way in this text it is said that it's David and the Hebrews who need a house, not God: “Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their leaders whom I commanded to shepherd my people, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" and then “I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed”.

Life is both beautiful and terrible: so the aim of religion is to reassure people but it should reassure them not by magical practises but by helping them to understand what they live and to lead them to God (as a map would do). It isn't comforting them and that is the danger we are threatened by, even in Christianity. God wants to accompany his people, I think he likes being a nomad! But men always want to have a country, as the Hebrews did, they want to build a house. Our religion should show us directions, invite us to question our life but the problem is that we don't want to question too much so we build religions full of certitudes. Then comes the time we believe our religion is the true one, then we think we are right! Very reassuring, indeed! So we should sometimes wonder, as the Hebrews did : Do I need religion to find God's light and God's peace or do I need religion in itself, just to give me self-assurance as a house or a nation, or any kind of institution, does?

2 - Hebrews and religion: Serving the Temple or serving through the Temple?

So this is the reason why we can read in the Bible strong criticisms towards religions, as here in the book of Amos (5, 21-24):
21 "I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

The criticisms towards religion become very strong in the prophet’s mouth. The problem is: Serving the Temple or serving through the Temple? is religion closed in itself or is it an open way to God? What strikes me in this text, is that it could describe any kind of service. God talking to the Hebrews seems to me to be talking to all mankind: religious feasts, assemblies, offerings, songs...Isn't it the stuff all religions are made of? In fact, seen from the outside, religions may look very similar, and it often offends us when we realize Christianity didn't invent anything: not only can we find in other religions its worship with priest and offerings, but also in its dogmas: for example virgin birth and resurrection are very old ideas to mankind. Amos doesn't intervene to explain to the Hebrews how the should worship or what they should believe. The problem isn't their religion, it is the emptiness of it. He speaks about “the noise of their songs”.

Religion can become idolatry: trying to take control over God by prayers and sacrifices to obtain something in return. Religion isn't a deal with God: Jesus driving out of the Temple the merchants could be saying the same words as the prophet: “Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.” God tells us what makes a religion pleasing him: justice, love for our neighbour. We mustn't be proud to be Christians because, with righteousness, any religion can have sense, or be empty if our heart isn't in it.

Religion has to bring an inner transformation, the ceremonies are the manifestation of something happening inside, they mean nothing if they aren't the sign of something alive. But as we saw in the book of Chronicles, if religion is a human building, it can be a gift of God when he agrees to have a relationship with us through it. God will illuminate our ceremonies, he will have regard for them, as says the prophet, then our dogmas will help us to grow. Religion is a mean for a better understanding, not an aim in itself. If we change our hearts, our religion will express in a better way this relationship with God. So a religion can't be “true” or “false”, it's our attitude which is “true” or “false”, isn't it?

So religious teaching should be based on our relationship with God. Knowing God isn't about an intellectual understanding, it's a spiritual understanding, it includes all of our life, all aspects of our person: our behaviour, our intelligence, sensibility, even our body. We can have this understanding without finding the words, we can also have the words, the Word, with no understanding. In John's Gospel, the Jews understand nothing of Jesus' teaching because they are always on the outside of things, they don't listen with their hearts: they think of a temple of stone, Jesus is talking of a temple of flesh. What matters? Stone or flesh? Religion as a social event or spirituality as an inner transformation, a “growing with God” life? Where is our temple?

3 - Jesus and religion: Having a Temple or being the Temple?

Jesus keeps things in perspective, the Temple could be destroyed. He often teaches very clearly that religion is made for men, and not men for religion. In John's text we understand that Jesus considers the Temple as an image of ourselves, since he compares the Temple to his body. Paul will develop this idea many times. It is said in 1 Corinthians 3: “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? ” I think that, religious people as we are, since we often come to church, we have to be careful. We want our friends, our children, our parents, to become Christians. Well, of course we want what we think the best for them. But are we concerned about what they live, what they feel, what they are interested in, where the find beauty and pleasure in life? Finding God isn't a church experience, it's a life experience ! We don't have to bring religion to people, but church, or religion, can help us to understand the presence and the seeking of God in our life, in all that we do, then we understand we are made to be a Temple, because we can have God's presence in us.

“Religion” means “link” so in a sense, we could say that each of us has his a own religion because each of us is called to be a specific link to God and each of us has a special place in God's heart. So we shouldn't be surprised that there are so many religions in the world. Do you think that God who makes such variety in nature, in people, would like to be worshipped in the same way everywhere? Our religion should express something of ourselves, of our experience, or our feelings, joy or despair, if we come to church just to say the same words as our parents and the parents of our parents said, it could become empty religion. So a “true” religion has for aim God, but also human beings. Because without human beings, there is no relationship with God! A religion should serve God and human beings, Jesus put the two commandments on the same level: we have to recognize that some ways of practising religion forget the love for human beings and forget to make room for them.

But Jesus reminds us also that if religion is made for men, we aren't here to try obtain something from God by prayers and sacrifices. Religion isn't something to do good to yourself, as we mostly find it today in cults and new religions. We are confronted today with a real market of religions! But we are the temple, we aren't God! Religion helps us to build a temple, the temple we are. We can't use our religion to comfort us, to give us peace of conscience. We are in church to find a place, a time to meet with God, we are in church to hear his word. Religious practices should be used to make a room in our life for God. Does my religion question me? Bring a change in me? Religion shouldn't be something to have, but something to be :What is sacred, it's not the Temple, it's this relationship we have with God.

4 - Us and religion: Being a temple of stone or a temple of flesh?

So why are we Christians? A Christian, not a Buddhist, a Jew? But the answer is easy: Most of us are Christians because we were born in a Christian culture! There are conversions of course, but that's not very common. I often noticed that considering this fact is something difficult to accept. For some people, it suggests that Christianity is not true. Well, Christianity isn't true, Jesus is the truth, he said it himself. What does it mean?

Jesus can be understood as an example of this revelation of God through a human life: “The temple he has spoken of was his body ”. Jesus' life speaks to many people today, even non believers: we have to rejoice about it, because the aim is finding God, not Christianity. We also have to remember that if for us Jesus is the incarnation of the 2nd person of the Trinity, if we believe that Jesus is truly God, we have to accept that the second person of the Trinity can be known by other ways than in reading the gospels or having a report on Jesus' human life. Everything was created through the Word, everyone is saved by the Word. It's an ambiguous sentence to say that “mankind is saved by Jesus” we should say “mankind is saved by God through Christ”. People who do good aren't “Christians without knowing it”, as we so often hear. They aren't Christians, even without knowing it, because to be a Christian is to know Jesus! But they know Christ, in a different way than we do.

So, why are you a Christian? Not a Christian because of your birth and culture, a Christian of stone, but a Christian in your heart, a Christian of flesh? Because you recognize the Word in Jesus. We can go back to our first reading, using the NT as a key to the OT. We read: I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessor. I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.' "Is it said about Solomon, son of David, whose name means “peace”, but it is also said of Jesus, son of David, prince of peace, Christ our true religion who offered himself to be the Temple in which we are admitted to worship God. To me, it gives a very different understanding of religion: religion in itself can't lead to God, in Jesus God shows us he is coming first. Christ changes our human ways into godly ways. A religion can't force the presence of God, God's love is given, but a religion can be a testimony and a praise for this gift of love and salvation. Conclusion

As Christians, we understand the need of religion as a consequence of the difficulty we have to be in relation with God, since we turned away from him. So religion is a response to God's love and it should help us to understand our relationship with God. In Jesus, God makes a covenant with mankind and offers his love and salvation. Then we understand that God comes first and makes us seek him.

Does our religion express this seeking of God, this hope for God? Religion should be a way to learn to listen to God, to receive his word, but often it is our noise which resounds in our ceremonies, as Amos deplores. Not the noise of our songs, but mostly the noise of our own preoccupations, of our demands, even our own ideas about God, this noise hides from us what God is trying to tell us.

So let's take a little time of silence to say to God today that we didn't come to church to obtain something, even a response or and understanding concerning our life and preoccupations, neither did we come for our own pleasure, because we like this church and our friends here, but let's say to God we came to be found and loved by him. I hope the following prayer can help us as we can read it silently and then think about it.

Meditation

Come Lord, help me
Make my heart free from all preoccupations
so that it will be open to see you
Mould my heart so that it could become your home
and you may come there to rest and to talk with me
Amen