a prayer for Holy Monday

Lord, it is Monday: back to work, back to making money, back to the business of living in this world. And so it is jarring to pause and recall what you were doing on that Monday. I can only imagine t...he shock, and the offense taken, when you strode boldly into the temple precincts and shouted at them, even got physical with them, hoisting the tables onto their sides, money clattering on the stone floor, birds flapping and squawking away, men gasping, pushing back. What was that like for you? What on earth were you trying to accomplish?

I think I can see that you were not just angry but also hurt that they had turned the sacred, simple, holy place into a market – the way we in our society make everything into a market. Lord I was raised to be a consumer; I was taught that money and market forces really determine everything. You judged all that, and tried to clean it up.

And not just our consumer culture, but also our vapid, twisted religiosity that thinks a few prayers will get you to do our bidding and otherwise you will leave us be. I am as weary as you were with a thin, self-indulgent faith. Clean up my soul, and your church.

Lord, this Monday is a hard day, but I would not live it without your righteous frustration with the way we get it all wrong. Your house, and my house, shall be called a house of prayer. Amen.See More