Where I come from? Where I go to?

From a place of worship to an option called love/destruction?

Today’s gospel reading in the Latin rite (Mathew 12, 14–21) starts with an interesting sentence,

The Pharisees went out and took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.

Normally we ignore the starting verse and focus more on the later verses. A good question to ask is, where the pharisees went out from? Few previous verses will say that they came out of the synagogue, probably after a prayer, and also a healing by Jesus. It is easy to get into the binary of Pharisees (as evil) and Jesus and miss the message pointing to our lives. I will reformulate the verse;

After the worship in the Church, the believers (or the authority) went out and took counsel against — — — (you can fill any name) to destroy him/her.

I don’t say this happens always, but this is a dangerous possibility, and the worst subversion of the act called worship. There can be two possibilities.

• The worship, which includes the sermons, may have something, which inspires us to destroy others (not to create justice or peace).
• The worship happened at one level. I came for the worship, but it didn’t touch me in any level. I continued with my evil ways.

To go a little further, it is good to check whether our prayers, vacations (time to relax), professions (a place of my contribution) lead to peace or plan for the destruction of others/nature.