What does Reverence mean?
This is something I am often asked to lead Worship on so here is an interactive story I wrote to illustrate it! This is how it was published so some of it is just for those people leading the time
Reverence
It is defined as Respect is thinking and acting in a positive way about yourself or others.
Respect is thinking and acting in a way that shows others you care about their feelings and their well-being.
So I thought I would tell you a story from the Bible about something Jesus did because He was upset by the people in God’s Temple. A temple is a bit like a Church – in Jesus time all the Jews had to go to the Temple and do certain things on certain days as part of their religion and to obey God’s rules.
It should be a place where people worship God and a place of Reverence but it wasn’t really managing to do that!!
I am going to tell you a story that needs actions
(Explain actions – some others are used just once in the script – in brackets – so I usually just explain then when you get to them in the story)
Actions –
Temple – Make hand to look like a roof
Money – “Ca Ching”
Jesus – Hurray!
Split group into three or Four and give each one a “call”
Birds – “Coo, coo- one coin for 2”
Lambs – “Maa Maa – 4 coins for a pair”
Bull – “ Moo moo – 6 coins will do”
(Food – “Food for sale”) – optional
Let me tell you what happened one day in the TEMPLE.
Well, there I was in the outer court – I am a MONEY exchanger, you see, and that part of the TEMPLE is for everyone. The TEMPLE is where we go to pray ad meet God. Well it’s supposed to be! We are Jews and we believe in God, but we know other groups of people believe in him too – but we know we are SPECIAL (Oooh oooh!) so us Jews are the only ones that can go into the “Inner” TEMPLE.
The outer court is for anyone you like: Jews, Romans, tourists – anyone! It is where we swap your City coins for TEMPLE coins.
Now – we MONEY exchangers all agree how much we will swap – we buy it from the Priests – One City coin for one TEMPLE coin, but we sell it to the people for more, sometimes we can get 3 city coins for just one TEMPLE coin!
I make lots of MONEY
Anyway it is always noisy – some people are selling BIRDS, some sell LAMBS and some sell BULLS. Oh and of course, where there’s a crowd there is always someone selling FOOD!
There are lots of people there, some are there to Praise God (Shout Hallelujah!), some are here just to look around at the amazing building (WOW!) and some people are here to worship and they need a sacrifice – that is where I come in, they need TEMPLE coins to buy animals.
If they are poor, they might buy a pair of BIRDS, some might have enough to buy LAMBS and some who are really rich might buy a BULL, and of course they all need FOOD!
Well, one Sunday we were all busy as normal and there was such a noise outside: people were cheering (Cheer!) and shouting Hosanna (Hosanna) and we couldn’t work out what was happening. Then JESUS arrived to the entrance on a Donkey (ee-or, ee-or) and He marched straight into the TEMPLE. He looked around at us swapping our MONEY and selling BIRDS, LAMBS, BULLS…. And FOOD
And he wasn’t happy; in fact JESUS was angry, really angry!
He started shouting “This is GOD’s house!” and marching around, he knocked over a BIRD cage and opened the gate around the LAMBS. They escaped and started eating the things on the FOOD stalls. He knocked over tables and the MONEY spilt all over the floor. Of course the BULLS got upset and managed to escape in to the city.
It was chaos, what a stir JESUS created and we were all really cross (Let me see your cross faces! – KS1 only?)
We had to pick all our MONEY up off the floor, the BIRDS had flown off, some of the LAMBS were recaptured but one of the BULLS was never seen again. And there was not much FOOD left!
BUT – it made me think, was He right?
Have we missed the point?
Now I trade more fairly, by the rules and people still come to me – because they know I am fair and I actually do quite well for myself – and this is all because JESUS made us realise what a TEMPLE was really for!