Stick with this one… I do have a point… probably several… if you look out for the patterns and pictures that God imprints on everything He does, you’ll make it to my point well before you read your way there.
The church of 2000 years ago was previously not a thing. It had never existed before. Yes Christianity birthed from Judaism but the church wasn’t a reformation of the temple or a revamp of the synagogue system – she was a brand spankin’ new baby, born on an earth shaking weekend about 30AD.
She was given life and breath – and just learning to walk for the first time in the decades that followed. We use the letters written to teach and help her, still, today but it’s easy to get weird or wonky without remembering that context.
Synagogues were meeting places with separations and purposes that were in keeping with the old law – and the temple in Jerusalem was the central hub.
The temple that Jesus walked and spoke and upturned tables in had a series of sections through which people could only move by a whole series of gradings and a host of regulations.
Anyone could enter the outermost court of the temple but from there it began to get tricky.
Only Jewish men and women, (and those who’d become Jews under the law) could go to the next area, and only then if they’d fulfilled all the sets of regulations to do with ritual cleanliness – which could take more than a week to fulfil, and could be wrecked at the drop of a hat.
From there, only the Jewish men could progress further – with more rules and regulations.
From there, only Levites (descendants from one of the 12 people groups that form Israel) – with more rules and regulations and with specific duties.
From there, only priests (who came from the sons of Aaron, brother to Moses) – with more rules and regulations and with specific duties.
From there only certain priests who fulfilled more criteria and who were on rostered duty – with more rules and regulations and with specific duties.
And from there only one priest, in the specific role of Head Priest, with more rules for cleanliness etc and more rules and regulations and duties – once a year.
There were courts within courts disallowing whole swathes of people from being allowed to go any further in.
And at the pinnacle of it all, the High Priest was still just a man, who had the same problem of sin, which needed atoning for even though he passed all the other gradings and rituals. The purity of the only one pure enough, wasn’t actually enough.
Then this Jesus comes and blows up the system that was to prove its own impossibility.
The only one who couldn’t be separated out by any of the filters belonging to either system. Not the earthly system, nor the spiritual one it was to point towards and illuminate.
The system-brokers hated and killed Him for it.
But the barriers didn’t apply to Him so He removed the separators and barriers for us.
Jesus never said to get clean before you come in, or be a particular nationality or ancestry or vocation or status or gender or age. He didn’t say you had to know stuff before you came. This Jesus says – “come to me, get to know me, abide in me, walk with me, trust me, I’ve made a place for you, I’ll share my strength with you, I’ll teach you and show you. I’ll make you new – spirit, soul and body”.
The purity of the only one pure enough, was finally enough.