The former Parish of All Saints Chorley and St. George's have united to form a single, harmonious parish, now known as the Parish of Chorley St. George's and All Saints'. This merger is under the collective pastoral and spiritual leadership of Fr. Mike and Fr. Jordan, who are committed to guiding our community with wisdom, love, and compassion. This change symbolises our growth and unity, offering us a chance to come together under a shared vision and purpose. We welcome you to embrace this new beginning, which promises to enrich our faith and strengthen our bonds within this beautifully blended parish family.

The merger unites the churches in equality apropos church attendance for St Georges, giving parents more choice and more opportunity to benefit from a meditative, meaningful service. This week, I publish the sermon of Jordan for yoru consideration. 

Dear All,

Please find attached this week's sermon and don't forget to join us for a fun evening of games as we worship God together at our 'Closer' service, at 4pm in Church. I can't wait to see you all there!

Sermon: Jesus Clears the Temple Courts

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.

John 2:13-25

A big part of what I do is building relationships. When you’re trying to get things up and running, one thing you’ve got to do is get to know some of the key people who you want to involve in whatever it is you’re doing. Whether it’s schools, businesses, charities, you name it, building a relationship is how it works. A community is there for each other when they need them and to do that, you need to know each other.

But there’s always one big blocker. One thing that gets in the way of being able to do that which takes some work to get around. In fact I’ve made it a measure of success in some cases in the past and I call this blocker “getting past the secretary”.

If you want to go into a school as a priest and be able to open the door to doing assemblies, RE lessons and the like, then you have to start by walking into the school, going to a desk and asking to see the head teacher. Now, usually, the receptionist will have been briefed to keep away non-essential people, so you then have to convince the receptionist that actually you should be able to have a meeting with the Head teacher. If you can get past the receptionist and into the room with the head, they’ll usually see you have a lot to bring to the table, but if the receptionist fobs you off, then that’s (for now, at least) the end of that.

You cannot build the relationship, unless you can get past the secretary and meet with the head teacher.

Well as I reflected on our Gospel reading today, I thought it might be a good question to ask; are we helping people to build a relationship with God, or are we being like the receptionist who gets in the way? Are we helping people to have a relationship with God?

Because maybe, in some parts of the Church around the world, we’ve actually stopped giving people a place where they can meet with God and Jesus has something to say about this.

You see, the temple in our bible reading was actually the second temple, it lacked the gold and ornate beauty of Solomon’s temple, but it had grandeur instead, it was massive, a skyscraper by ancient standards. You could see the temple from miles around and it was the absolute centre of all things Israel. It could be said that it was the height of the Hebrew culture at the time and it had taken half a century to build. This is the place that the law was studied to its highest degree, the place where the high priest worshipped and the council of religious leaders made decisions but more importantly than any of that, this was God’s house. This was the place where people came to meet with God. This is the place they came to ask God for help, the place they came to say sorry and offer sacrifices, the place where they came to give thanks. This is the place where God, to the Israelites at that time, met with people. This was where people could build their relationship with God.

We don’t really have anything compare it to, because this wasn’t just another Church. This was the only real church, God’s home itself. And not only that, it was also the high court, the main cultural centre so the main museum, the main library, the house of parliament. If there was ever a place that could define a whole nation’s identity, it was the temple in Israel. It defined who they were and it was where their God met them. It was where they built that relationship.

And what were people doing? They were getting in the way.

To meet with God, the people of Israel had to make sacrifices. The rich could afford to buy cattle or sheep, whereas the poorest could only afford the smallest sacrifice, the doves. This sacrifice was how they were forgiven for the things they’d done wrong, and without making these sacrifices, they couldn’t come into God’s presence in the temple. People had to pay money to get past the metaphorical secretary; can you imagine if they tried to do that in our primary schools today?

That idea was scandalous to Jesus. How dare people charge money for people to come close to God? It would mean the poorest didn’t stand a chance at forgiveness and that relationship with God, there was no way they’d get past the secretary to start building that relationship, they were being kept out of it by these sacrifice-sellers.

In fact, he was so angry that he throws these people out the temple. The temple isn’t there for people who get in the way of people coming close to God, the temple is there for the exact reason that God wanted to come close to his people. Without all that explanation, you may have thought the second part of our Gospel reading didn’t seem to build on the first part but, actually, it does.

“What authority do you have, Jesus?” Some of the Israelites ask him in relationship to chucking out the people who were charging for sacrifices, the people who were getting in the way of people having a relationship with God.

“I will destroy and rebuild this temple in three days” he answers.

Now, if you were to look at the temple in terms of its cultural significance, or in terms of the monumental size and effort that went into the physical building of the temple, or if you were to think of the temple as its importance as a centre of law or anything else, then Jesus saying that makes no sense at all. When it is eventually destroyed, it’s destroyed by the Romans and it hasn’t been rebuilt 2000 years later.

But if we recognise the temple as the place where God met with people; the place where people could be forgiven for their sins and build a relationship with him, then it suddenly makes a whole lot of sense, doesn’t it?

God came close to people through Jesus. He made relationships with people through Jesus as Jesus was literally God. And then God died and through the destroyed, broken body of Jesus, and through his body restored on the third day, we all can come close to God and build our relationships with him, if we just trust in the cross and resurrection.

If the main point of the temple was to help people meet with God then this temple is even more grand than the last. It does the job far better. One sacrifice was enough for everyone, no matter how rich or poor, it’s totally free, you get access to a relationship with God.

I remember when my family upgraded from dial up internet and it was amazing. Before, to get access to the internet, you used to log on and get what you need as quickly as you could because you didn’t want to rack up a big expense. You could never quite enjoy it because access was limited and not always affordable and if someone picked up the landline you might get cut-off in the middle of something important. But then along came broadband and you could endlessly scroll through the things you needed, watch videos and talk to your friends. It wasn’t just better, it changed the way it worked, it changed our relationship with the internet.

Well in a much bigger way, when Jesus replaced the temple, it changed everything. The secretary was moved out of the way and we can all, now, have a relationship with God if we just put our trust in him. In what Jesus did on the cross.

So I have two challenges for you today. Whether you’ve done it a hundred times before or this is the first, take up the direct relationship you can have with God. Take it up by saying sorry, knowing the sacrifice has been paid on your behalf, so that you just have to say sorry, trust in Jesus and then you have full access to God. He wants to come close to you. If the price has been paid then why not just talk to him today, talk to him in your hearts.

And the second challenge is this: as we move towards to the cross, where God removed every obstacle in the way of our relationship with him by dying for us, why don’t we ask ourselves what we can do to help others have a relationship with God? Are there times when we have been like that receptionist? When we’ve only let people’s relationship with God flourish when they meet certain criteria? Do we stop people from coming to God because they don’t look like they have enough money? Or because they’re too young? Or because they are new?

Ask yourself, how can I encourage the relationship between those who come here and God, rather than get in the way. And may we all remember that we can come close to God, through faith in Jesus who died on the cross for us. Amen.