This has been an indescribably rough week.  If you haven’t been made aware yet, Karla Jones, who was in the motorcycle wreck with Mike Kern, passed away last night (9/30).  Please keep her family and Mike in your prayers.  These are such difficult passages to walk through, but we trust in God’s grace to comfort and steady them as they go.

This Sunday we’ll be reading Luke 19:45-20:8.

This is the account of what happens immediately after Jesus enters Jerusalem.  He starts cleaning house.  The event leads naturally into chapter 20 and the confrontation with the high priest and rulers.  They know right off that what Jesus has done, both clearing the temple of consumerism and setting up a teaching workshop in it’s place, is a challenge to THEIR authority.

That’s the underlying message of this section.  Authority.  The high priest asks where Jesus got the authority to do all this, and Jesus answers with a question about John the Baptist’s authority….and the lingering question is about resolving just WHO calls the shots in life.

That’s the challenge to us.  Who calls the shots in our lives?  Who is the final authority on value sets and choices?  If we understand the temple concept of the New Testament to be that WE are now the temple of God…what does Jesus’ clearing the temple imply for our own lives?  What tables do we have set up that reflect a value set different from God’s original purposes?  How can we apply this challenge about authority to our own lives?

Those are the directions we’ll be taking.  Hope to see you there.