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This was the center of everything: of worship and music, politics and society. I expect that kind of ruckus from James Bond or James Bourne, but not from Jesus.īut here we see Jesus entering the Temple, what someone called the “beating heart of Judaism” (Wright). One of the reasons that I love watching these movies is because it’s so chaotic, so unbelievable. Things get destroyed, and general mayhem takes over. People jump out of the way at the last minute. In those scenes, tables get knocked over. Quite often these movies involve a chase scene through a crowded market, usually on a motorcycle. I love watching movies, and I certainly love watching movies that involve James Bourne or 007. That’s the first thing we’re going to see in this passage: Jesus exposes religious pretension. In particular, we are going to see two things, and the first is this: Jesus exposes religious pretension. We’re going to see that Jesus is not who we expect. This is Jesus in the spotlight for the first time in the Gospel of John. This is Jesus going to Jerusalem, the center of religious and political life. We’ve been looking at the Gospel of John, and today we come to the first public event that takes place in John’s gospel.ĭon’t miss that: this is not a random event. Why would anyone want to hurt Him? Maybe because He’s so annoyingly precious but that’s not the story of the gospels.” Instead, Wright says, we should be looking for a “crucifiable” Jesus, a Jesus who does something so provocative as to make the religious leaders of the day murderously hostile.Īnd that’s exactly the Jesus we find today.
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Wright states that many popular depictions of Jesus portray him as: “a hippy peace-child, a delicate flower of a man, a dew-eyed first-century Jewish Gandhi. A hymn about Jesus has these words, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child…” Theologian N.T. This view of Jesus seems to be a popular one. I can’t remember all the details, but I can remember the feeling from the picture that Jesus is a very peaceable type of man who probably never raised his voice or got upset. He had light brown hair and blue eyes, and he looked like a very gentle and serene man. As I remember, the picture was of Jesus as a shepherd holding a sheep. When I was a child, we had this picture of Jesus hanging in the Sunday School room at my church. Purpose: To expose our tendency to replace reality with ritual, and to see Jesus as the answer to this problem. Big Idea: Jesus exposes religious pretension and replaces it with himself.