“A Humble King, and Welcoming Lord” by the Rev. Dr. Don Wahlig, March 29, 2026, Year A / Lent 4 – Isaiah 56:1-8 ¨ Matthew 21:1-17

THEME:   In Jesus Christ, everyone is invited into God’s presence to praise him, not just the privileged and the elite.

One of the things I love most about the gospels is that they give us so many different pictures of Jesus, don’t they? At the Wedding of Cana, we see party Jesus. In his disputes with the Pharisees, we see finger-wagging rabbi Jesus. In his interaction with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, we see best friend Jesus.  And so many more. The picture we get today is the angry Jesus. Nowhere else in scripture is Jesus as angry as when he sees what’s going on in the Temple courtyard. Some might say that it’s a little out of character. After all, flipping out and flipping tables is a bit extreme. But maybe we do not understand the full magnitude of what was going on at the Temple. And maybe we do not realize how far that was from what God intended.

When God gave the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, he gave instructions to build a portable tabernacle. It was a tent that functioned as a movable sanctuary. This was where the ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Law were kept. Wherever the Israelites went, the tabernacle tent went with them. For the next 500 years, from the wilderness journey to the Promised Land, that is where the people worshiped. That is how it was until David’s son Solomon built a glorious temple in Jerusalem. That first temple lasted for 500 years until the Babylonians destroyed it and took the Jewish leaders into exile. Then, when the exiles returned, they built a second temple. 500 years after that, a decade or two before Jesus was born, King Herod decided the Temple wasn’t grand enough. So, he began a massive expansion project. He doubled the size of the temple. It was spectacular. You can still see the huge, car-size stones that formed the 100-foot high wall. This is the Temple that Jesus entered on the first day of the Passover Festival. 

He was well aware that the Temple was a far cry from the center of sacred worship that God intended. It had become a colossal economic engine. It had to be, because it supported a network of 60,000 priests, administrators, judges and musicians. Which begs the question, where did the money come from to support them all? The money came from the people who traveled to Jerusalem to worship. Jews were required to worship at the Temple three times a year at the major religious festivals. Passover was the largest and most important of all. For the Passover festival, Jewish pilgrims arrived from all over the Empire to worship and pay the mandatory Temple tax. But before they could pay the tax, they had to convert their foreign currency into the pure silver shekels required by the Temple authorities.  Pilgrims also needed animals for the sacrifice. The Temple supplied both of these, and collected a fee in the process.

The Temple functioned as a treasury, a bank, and a tax authority, all rolled into one institution, operating under license from Rome. By some estimates, in today’s money, the annual tax revenues alone would have been in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The High Priest controlled the flow of all that money.  He made sure that it benefited himself and the other religious elites, as well as the Roman officials he bribed to get his position in the first place. The entire system was corrupt, and the furthest thing from a sacred house of prayer. 

This is not the only reason why Jesus was so incensed. That is what Matthew is telling us when he describes Jesus healing the blind and the lame, and the rejoicing of the children who echo the shouts of “Hosanna – save us!” All of these had no money and no status. Children were essentially property. The blind and the lame were more likely to be seen begging outside the Temple than worshiping inside it. In the process of turning the Temple into a massive financial enterprise, the religious leadership had grown callous. They ignored the well-being of those most in need, in order to cater to their own greed. 

That is what really set Jesus off.  He quotes Isaiah 56, where God’s sacred house of prayer is to welcome all peoples who love and obey him. Even eunuchs and foreigners are to be included in the worshiping community of the faithful. Matthew is warning us about the danger of losing sight of what God most wants from us.  Worship means nothing to God if we do not follow Jesus’ command to love him with our whole being, and our neighbors as ourselves. It does not matter how loud we sing, how fervently we pray, or – dare I say – how long we preach. Speaking of which, have you heard the old joke about the long-winded preacher? After going on far too long from the pulpit, he finally says, "I'm sorry I talked so long. I left my watch at home." Some wag in the balcony pipes up and says, "There's a calendar behind you." But don’t worry. I promise I will be finished before tomorrow.

In all seriousness, the point Matthew is making is the same one that Isaiah makes. Orthodoxy – which is right worship – means nothing without orthopraxis – which is right living. From the law to the prophets to Jesus himself, right living means loving God, who loves us by becoming one us in Jesus Christ, and loving the least and the lost the way he did it. This is why our vision here at SSPC is to be a grace-filled family of faith, sharing Christ’s love with all.  And the ‘all’ is emphasized.  ‘All’ includes those who are overlooked and those who are marginalized.

I had a meeting this week with someone who knows firsthand what that feels like. His name is Yogesh. He is the pastor of a small, 50-member congregation that meets in his home here in Mechanicsburg. They are all Christians who migrated here from Nepal. In the 1980s and 90s, they were expelled from their home country of Bhutan as part of an official ethnic cleansing. With nowhere else to go, they were forced to live in refugee camps in Nepal, but they were not welcome there either.  So, in 2008, under a wonderfully compassionate government program initiated by President Bush, they were resettled here as religious refugees. But now, once again they are facing hostility and persecution.

As Yogesh considers how to move his worship service to a more stable and appropriate location, I am reminded of what Matthew tells us about Jesus. God’s humble King who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. And God’s faithful savior who challenged the powers of his day to welcome those whom he called the least. Let’s be clear on what Matthew is saying, and what he is not saying. Living faithfully, with humility, compassion, and hospitality rarely requires grand gestures or profound public statements. And I doubt that you will ever find yourself inclined to overturn tables like Jesus. What faithful living always requires is to be present to others - including and especially the ones who have no power, money, and no status. Jesus is showing us to see them, to hear them, and to care for their needs. I am talking about something more than mere tolerance. I am talking about loving them as Christ loves us.

This is what the great 19^th century saint, Thérèse of Lisieux, called the “Little Way.”  She recognized that faithfulness is not about grand gestures. It means doing small things with great love.  Living this way transforms ordinary encounters with ordinary people into divine opportunities to demonstrate Christ’s love.

I thought about this last fall when Beth and I went to visit the Lake District in England. We were in Grasmere, the home of the great romantic poet, William Wordsworth.  If you have ever taken an English Literature class, you are no doubt familiar with his most famous poem, “Tintern Abbey.” It includes what may be his most famous line: “The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."

Unlike the grand, heroic gestures that fill history books, what matters in God’s eyes are the little acts of loving kindness toward ordinary people. These small acts of love, done with Christ-like humility and no expectation of recognition or reward, are the expression of true faith. They are seeds of compassion. When they bloom, they spread like wildflowers of love in an otherwise harsh and barren world.

So, who are you likely to encounter this week? A neighbor? The clerk at the check-out counter? Folks here at church, maybe some you do not know that well, or at all? Whoever it is, let’s remember that in every encounter with others God is giving us an opportunity to share his love in small but important ways. 

They are invitations to see Christ in others, and to love them as we love ourselves.

May it be so.