Jesus cleanses the temple

I'm rearranging the order of Scripture a little (a lot?). The cleansing of the temple takes place after the Triumphal Entry in the gospels (though John has another account very early in Jesus' ministry). But I didn't want to put Palm Sunday two whole weeks ahead of time (needing the Sunday before Easter to cover Good Friday), so this story got bumped back.

We talked about how, when we want to worship God, we go to church (Chinese translation: "teaching meeting,"), where the main activity is teaching. But in Jesus' time, the main activity of worship was making offerings. People would bring cattle

or sheep

or birds

to present as offerings. Some of them they would burn on the altar, some they would contribute to the priests, and some they would eat themselves, enjoying a feast and thanking God for His provision for them. Sometimes they would get so happy they would dance! Which we all did then, singing one of our favorite choruses, 盡心盡性來敬拜我主 (I will praise the Lord with all my heart and mind…)

But that day when Jesus went into the temple, He didn't see people singing and dancing and worshipping the Lord. He saw people doing business, making a profit for themselves by changing money and selling animals for sacrifices. He got really angry! He made a whip of cords and drove the animals out of the temple, and overturned the table of the moneychanger. Then the priest was supposed to ask Jesus what His authority was for doing such a thing, but our neat-and-tidy-loving Jesus was too busy picking up the spilled coins. (smile)

For our game, we talked about how sometimes the moneychangers would cheat the people, but we were going to exchange things exactly. The girl who led the game would draw one number card from a basketful, and then each player in turn had to find two other cards that together would add up to the leader's card. Good math practice. Hard for a lot of the kids; but the parents were okay with that!

For craft time, we braided different colors of plastic string together, to make not whips but bracelets. That was hard for some of the kids to, but they all seemed to enjoy trying, with help.

All in all it was an enjoyable morning. Actually, the night before, we had prayed specifically that I could have an enjoyable morning—I love MLFF; can't imagine wanting to go to church anywhere else, but lately a lot of the fun has gone out of it with the tension over our one older boy, wondering what he's going to do and how some of the parents are going to react to him. I feel sort of caught in the middle between wanting to accept him warts and all, and wanting to be sympathetic to those who are strongly put off by his behavior. Well, he didn't show up at all. We found out later in the week that his refusal to take his medicine finally caught up with him & his mom ended up having to have him put in the psych hospital to get him stabilized. We don't know yet exactly how long he might be there. Lord, please work in his heart so he will want to take his medicine; everyone is happier when he does, including himself!