17 Pentecost - Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

Did the closure of church doors come from heaven, or was it of a different origin?

And they argued with one another.

One neighbor on the phone assured me that this is of Satan, and churches need to stand up and seize back the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, which was "born of God", instead of falling for the lies of scientists and media who disagree with him.

One colleague reports that since their community stopped worshiping in person, attendance and giving are both up, and many new people that their congregation never reached before are receiving God's good news.

I can tell you that prayer and pastoral care concerns, and opportunities, and appreciation, and complaints, and workload have all increased.

More families are drawing closer together; more families are breaking apart.

Faith is growing stronger, being incubated again in the home; and faith is growing

weaker, as people more easily tune out and drift away.

The positives and the negatives are both magnified as the exile of God's people to the sofas of Babylon has flipped church on its head.

Is this a curse or is it a blessing?

If we say it is from Satan, then why are we not resisting by re-opening the doors?

If we say it is from heaven, we are afraid of the crowd, for they regard it as a bad thing.

New reports keep coming. conclusions keep changing, and now, with the entire internet at our fingertips, we do not know.

The chief priests and the elders standing in the temple with egg on their highly educated faces can sympathize with our plight.

They have dedicated their lives to getting religion right only to have John and Jesus come along and upend everything.

The baptism of John was a conversion of Jews, changing God's chosen people into something else.

Now Jesus is teaching in the same temple he trashed by flipping over the cash registers and

driving out the staff.

They both let the wrong people in and drove the right people out in a system organized around holiness—honoring God by keeping things and people meticulously separate and orderly.

Both John and Jesus flipped religion on its head, making a mockery of the worldview and

lifestyle these leaders had spent a lifetime learning, teaching, promoting and protecting.

Four years of seminary, twenty-two years of pastoring, and no preparation for preaching Easter to a camera in an empty sanctuary behind locked doors.

Eighty-seven years of hugging other people and no preparation for keeping social distance from grandchildren.