Preached at Stoke Bishop.
“Make not My Father’s house an house of merchandise.”—St. John ii, 16.
You have heard these words in the lesson for this morning. If you understand them I think they will tell you what this Church testifies of, why it has been set apart from the buildings round about it, what it may do for those who worship in it, and even for those who see it as they pass.
Every Nation had its temples; these temples spoke to the Nation of a Being higher than themselves; these temples said that men might hope by prayers and sacrifices to approach these Beings, to make them hear their prayers and do what they desired. The Jewish temple said to those who worshipped in it:—
’The God who made the heaven and earth; the God whom no man hath seen or can see has chosen your fathers to know Him, and to bear witness of Him. You did not seek for Him, He sought for you. He has desired you to know that He is not like the things which you see and handle; that these are given you to rule and to use; that He is the Lord your God, the Lord of your hearts and reins; the guide of your thoughts, desires, hopes. He who shows you what is right and what is wrong; He who gives you hands to war and fingers to fight; He who puts down the oppressor and exalts the oppressed. In that character above all others He reveals Himself to you. He brought your fathers, when they were a set of poor slaves, out of the land of bondage. He led them through the wilderness. He gave them the land in which they dwell. And ever since, when they have remembered Him, the unseen God, and have trusted in Him as their Redeemer and their King, they have been a brave, free, united people. Though they have been insignificant in numbers and in outward power, they have been able to teach the Nations round about them who the Lord of the whole earth is, and to raise their thoughts above those idols to which they were bowing down, and to show them that Righteousness is the Truth for all, and that all unrighteousness must be put down at last.
And when they have forgotten Him, when they have thought that they were not His people and that He was not their Redeemer and King, or that He was only the Redeemer and King of their forefathers, and had ceased to care for them, then they have become weak, cowardly, divided, superstitious; then they have begun to bow down like the other people before the works of their own hands, and to think they could bribe the beings they worshipped to deal falsely, to let transgressions go unpunished, to favour the ill-doers, and to make good evil and evil good; and so instead of being teachers of the nations, they have caused God’s name to be blasphemed among the Nations. And the Nations have despised them, and trampled upon them, and they have become slaves as they were before in the land of Egypt.’
The temple had borne this testimony to past generations of Jews. The testimony was all the stronger to the Jews who were living in the days of Herod, because that was not the temple which Solomon had built. The unbelief and corruption of the people had caused the destruction and overthrow of that. The goodly building in which they were worshipping then reminded them that no building could do anything for them if they did not understand the purposes for which it existed, if they were insincere and heartless. They thought they had learnt the lesson, for they were not bowing to foreign idols as their ancestors had done. They gloried in their separation from the other peoples of the earth. They rejoiced that they knew the true God, and the way of serving Him. But they did not know the true God, and they were not serving Him.
There was an idol in that very temple—an idol which they had with them in their houses and by the wayside. They were worshipping their gold. That was dearer to them than all things in heaven and earth. And, therefore, they could not believe in an unseen God who had redeemed them from the service of visible things, and had made them His people. Visible things had dominion over them—more complete dominion than they had over any generation of those who had gone before them, and the necessary effect had followed. They were not instruments of good to the heathen people, they were instruments of evil. These people found them more grasping, more covetous than themselves. They thought their religion taught them to be grasping and covetous. The people saw that their religion did not unite them, but set them quarrelling with each other; that they were divided into sects and parties; that they had no strength to resist wrong or to do right. And so the same consequences followed as of old. These Jews had fallen into slavery. They had first become slaves in their own hearts, then the Romans took from them all their outward freedom.
The oxen and cattle and sheep, and the changers of money who were sitting in the temple, were signs of this state of things. They were tokens how the trade spirit had got the mastery over them, and how little they were able to get rid of it even when they came into the building which they counted the most sacred of all. But now One stood up in that building, One whom they were told was a Galilean, who walked about the streets with fishermen for His friends, who went among publicans and sinners. And He made a scourge of small cords, and drove the oxen, and the sheep, and the changers of money out of the temple, saying:—“Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.”
“My Father’s house!” Think how these words must have sounded in the ears of those who were assembled there! This man of Nazareth dares to call the Maker of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, His Father. But we do not speculate about the way in which such language may have affected the Jewish people. We know how it did affect them. The gospels—this gospel of St. John especially—tell us that. They called Him a blasphemer. This was what made what He did and said so dreadful in their eyes. He declared that He had come down from heaven to do a Father’s will; that He was showing them by their own acts and words what that Father was; what His mind was; what His purposes to men were. In every message to publicans and sinners, in every warning to Scribes and Pharisees, in every parable, in every miracle for the hungry or the sick, this great pretension was involved. He had come to claim men as His brethren. He had come to redeem them from the service of the world and of their own lusts, that they might be the children of the living and righteous and eternal God. For this He was arraigned before Caiaphas; for this He was condemned to die. The other charge, ‘He has made Himself a King,’ was the plea on which He was delivered to the Romans. That was the charge which caused Him to be crucified instead of being stoned. But the chief priests and scribes regarded the first as the real crime; the other as consequent upon it.
We believe that the Jewish temple fell again, fell finally, because those who worshipped in it would not acknowledge that there was One upon earth, born of a woman, who had a right to say, ‘This is my Father’s house. This house exists to testify that the God of all has sent me to redeem you into the state of children.’ We believe that when the Jewish priests had refused this message for their nation, it went forth to all nations; that Greeks, Romans, Germans, Gauls, Britons, were told, ‘God has sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that you may receive the adoption of sons.’ We believe that when the temple of their own nation had fallen, the churches in all the different nations rose up to proclaim this as the great gospel to mankind. And every new Church that is reared in any neighbourhood, carries this testimony with it to that neighbourhood. It repeats Christ’s own proclamation. It says this is His Father’s house; the Father of the Son of Man; therefore, O sons of men, it is the house of your Father! In Him God looks upon you as His children. In Him you may one and all say, “Our Father.”
My brethren, it is this witness and no other, which this church is meant to bear unto you. For this work it was consecrated, or set apart from ordinary houses. It was not that those houses, the houses in which you dwell, the houses in which your fathers dwelt, in which your children may dwell after you, might be less dear and sacred in your eyes. It was that they might be more dear and sacred; that you might understand how blessed they are. The father of the family, the hearth, and the household, receive a fresh consecration where there is a house in which the great Father, the Father of the whole family in heaven and earth is worshipped. Each English household, belonging to the richest man and the poorest man, becomes then not a mere isolated house; but all its own holy memories, all its trials and sorrows and joys, all that binds it to the past and to the future, become joined to those of every other. The family relations and affections which are so apt to become isolated, to cut us off from those who have been brought up in circumstances and under an education different from our own, all are so many ties of common citizenship and common fellowship. We cannot spare one of them. Our Heavenly Father has ordered each one of these human relationships; they are images of His divine relationship. He has inspired every one of these human affections. They come forth out of His universal and all-embracing love. So again, the consecration of churches is the consecration of all that we call our national duties and obligations. I have shown you how the Jewish nation fell into debasement and slavery. At one time as much as at another the cause was the same. The visible things which were given them to use as their servants, became their masters. In the earlier ages of their commonwealth the temptation came through the sun and the stars which showed them the seasons when they were to sow and reap, through the animals which worked for them. They supposed that God must be like some of these. In the later times of the commonwealth it came from the trade spirit. Their buying and selling absorbed their whole souls. To both periods the description of their own prophet is equally applicable. “They forgat God their Redeemer.” And in forgetting Him they forgot their manhood. The nobleness and freedom which belongs to men cannot remain when they are busy only about things that are beneath them, things that they can hold and grasp, things that are changing and perishing every hour; things that one man has and another wants. When these things get the mastery over us, when our thought is how we can get the most of them, how we can best exchange one of them for another, we do not lose our religion, but it becomes a trading, bargaining religion; a religion like that we read of in the Bible, of the nations who worshipped at hill altars, who cried and cut themselves with stones to make their gods hear. It ceases to be the worship of a Deliverer and a Father; it becomes the worship of superstitious slaves, not of courageous men. Every Church stands up to bear witness against such a religion as this. It stands up to say to prince and peasant, to him who has no house and to him who has one, ‘The Father who is rich in grace and goodness, who so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to save it, has given this land to you all to keep it and till it and improve it for Him. All your works and toils as professional men, tradesmen, or handicraftsmen, are given you by Him. All are honourable and precious in His sight. There is nothing so great, nothing so mean, but that He cares for it, and will make it minister for your good. Evil and misery and baseness come when your Father’s house comes to be regarded as a house of merchandize. Evil and misery and baseness come when you forget that the God of heaven and earth cares that you should be right and true men, that you should know His name and show forth His image.’
Brethren! for the sake of the houses of merchandize—for the sake of that trade and commerce with which God has blessed this land, and which may be unspeakable blessings to it, I rejoice to see these houses rising up which are not houses of merchandize, but witnesses of a Father. Our trade and commerce have grown up through the toil and suffering of enterprising noble men, who have had courage to face dangers and wisdom to guard against them. Do not think that such courage and wisdom will remain to us if we become mere money worshippers. That worship makes us fear where no fear is. It gives men no nerve in hours of peril. It takes away their foresight and makes them reckless gamblers. But what can take away fear and cowardice, is the belief that you cannot go out of the reach of His government who walked the waves, and healed sicknesses, and delivered from death; that death and the grave and hell have been visited by Him who gave Himself for us, and that He came back the conqueror of them all, to say, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God!” What can be a motive and encouragement to men to plant colonies in new lands, or to work as the servants of the Queen in governing, educating, civilizing any race who have been committed to our sceptre like this, that wherever we go we may bear witness of a Father who claims men of every tribe and colour as His children, that wherever we go we may bear the good news that the earth is His and the fulness thereof; and that He is not a Destroyer but a Redeemer and Life-giver; not the favourer of any caste or nation but the Righteous Judge of all? Every act of mercy which our higher science is able to accomplish for sufferers from sickness, becomes a witness for God; so the work of every magistrate becomes a witness for Him equally; so commerce as it extends the bonds of fellowship between lands, and shows how one can give what another lacks, bears a witness no less mighty and effectual. And those who have been doing works in distant lands may return to their own and find again that which has told them in infancy of a Father, still telling of Him in their manhood or old age, reminding them that they were signed with the sign of the Cross and marked out as God’s children and servants; giving sacredness to their early lives and their marriage vow, giving them a sure and certain sign that there is a resurrection to Eternal Life for them that have fallen asleep, and whose places on earth know them no more. So all the stages of our earthly life on to the last are consecrated; so every beautiful spot in nature as well as all the forms of art share in the same consecration, and have that one name of ‘Father’ illuminating them all.
My brethren, I have not thought it necessary to show you that the church in which we worship has any distinctive claim to your affection, because I believe that I am but recalling to your memories what has made it dear to you, when I dwell on the great universal characteristic. When you enter the church the first words tell you of a Father to whom you arise and go; the next tell you that you may come to Him though you have forgotten that you are His children, and have erred and strayed from His ways; the next how He pardons and absolves you to the intent that you may join with His whole family in heaven and earth in saying “Our Father;” that name meets you everywhere, goes through every prayer and thanksgiving and act of adoration. There is not a sentence but declares to us the love of Him who sent His only begotten Son to take our nature, and through that Son bestows on us His Spirit, that we may know and worship the Father and the Son in the unity of that Spirit world without end. These are the signs that we meet not to glorify our own opinions or our own sect, but to claim all the citizens of the land, rich and poor, as the children of one Father, heirs of one Hope; to warn them that all their misery now, all their misery hereafter, will come from not trusting Him, from not believing that He has reconciled them, from living as exiles and strangers when He has brought them nigh; from selling themselves to be slaves when He has redeemed them to be freemen.
I believe that this is a testimony which the great merchant city that is so near us needs, which the whole land needs, which mankind needs, which each of us needs. Therefore, I beseech you, that you will bring some of the fruits of that merchandize which may else turn to the injury of your civic life and your national life, which may be a canker to eat up your nobler inward life, which may make you less of Englishmen, less of men, to the support of this house which speaks of a Father who will make the gold and silver, and the stone and the iron and wood, all to serve for the good and glory of His creatures, and who will make those creatures themselves into a more glorious temple in which He Himself will dwell for ever and ever.