CreatingCommunity is an email devotion to guide your preparation for worship next weekend. Imagine how much clearer and relevant God's Word will be if you have had an opportunity read, reflect, and dwell in the Word prior to worship. You may do this devotion alone, with others, as a family, or over Zoom as a small group.

This devotion is to be done in preparation for this coming weekend's worship.

Please follow these three steps:

1. Read through the text
2. Respond to the questions (select one of the sets of questions)
3. Offer a Prayer
John 2:13-32

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
No Experience Necessary Questions:
  1. What scares, confuses, or challenges me in this text?
  2. What delights me in this text?
  3. What stories or memories does this text stir in me?
  4. What is God up to in this text?
Family Questions (for the entire family):
  1. Have you ever been angry? What upsets you? Tell of a time.
  2. What do you think of an angry Jesus? What was it that made him angry?
  3. Why would having "money changers" in the church to help with the buying and selling of animals (like a fair or market or carnival) upset Jesus?
Advance Questions:
  1. Why would this story of an upset Jesus be told in Lent? What does objecting to the commercialization of religion by driving merchants out of the temple have to do with our Lenten journey?
  2. What is the connection between Jesus' actions and the prediction of his own death and resurrection?
  3. When Jesus throws the merchants out of the temple, he is defending the worship of God alone and rejecting the ways commerce and profit-making can become our gods. Can you point to similar practices in the church today?
Click here to listen in preparation for Sunday
with this week's CreatingCommunity song
"Holy God, Holy and Glorious"


Say a Prayer of your own or offer this one.

Holy God, through your Son you have called us to live faithfully and act courageously. Keep us steadfast in your covenant of grace, and teach us the wisdom that comes only through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Pastor Lutz would love to hear your responses, questions, thoughts about your experience with CreatingCommunity. You can reach him at [email protected]