My point in that line of thinking is that in Matthew’s Gospel, the crowd of onlookers cheer as Jesus rides a colt through the east gate. These are the “church folk.” These are the people who knew Scripture well enough to understand what they were seeing and celebrate it as the coming of the Messiah. They sang out the words of the Hallel (Psalm 118). They concluded that Jesus was the Messiah because His actions fit their religious picture of God and salvation. But He goes on to baffle them by creating a whip and driving people from the temple. People could cheer sweet Jesus on the little donkey who heals the sick and cares for the poor but the religious folks got bent out of shape when He started messing up their little system.

So that’s a long way of saying, it doesn’t surprise me that you get some religious backlash as the first response to this insightful, humble and well-presented plea for the generations who have already been to the circus and decided they don’t need to run off and join. What is interesting about the Matthew account of the temple cleansing is that the children (next generation) cheer Jesus as the Messiah because they see Him put God’s house back into priority order. This is how we’re going to get the attention of the “been-there-done-thats.” You call a spade a spade – if it thinks like a Pharisee, talks like a Pharisee, loves people with different opinions like a Pharisee… well, you know the rest.

The pain of my heart tells me that we have an American church led and largely populated by Phariseeism. Not because I want to call people who don’t agree with me by dirty names either… I have written a long series or articles titled “Me, the Pharisee.” My definition of Pharisee thinking comes from Jesus in John 5.

“You search the Scriptures because in them you think you find life. But you will not come to me that you might have life…” (paraphrase of the NKJV).

My great hope is that we have people like you who won’t just whistle and look out the window while Rome is in flames.

Peace, Brother!