Money lenders and money changers made temple life all about money and effectively robbed worship, robbing God. Today it still happens. God is robbed of worship when people find ways to make it pay for them. For a city, this can make it a lonely place. To meet in Christ’s name is made expensive. Housing costs make it necessary to put such community life to a lower priority, to make ends meet. Church groups usually require as a bare necessity the employing of a full or part time paid minister. This prices worship out of reach for most people burdened in a city with high housing costs. Jesus overturned the tables. What would he do today? "A time is coming, and in fact has come, when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me."
— John 16:32
We can each seek to focus on a relationship with God, as Jesus did, but only if we believe in and follow God, keeping Jesus Christ’s teachings. Communities once, and in rural life still might do it, allowed community life for both believers and unbelievers, which meant that children who might take a long time to find belief, or might have no way to find it, still had a sense of community belonging. In a city this is made difficult. Everything is made to be about money. So such community life is one cost of living pushed to lower priority. Worship even more so. It should not be this way. “Consider ways of encouraging each other daily.” In my opinion we might think how meeting in the name of Christ need not necessarily involve overheads of hiring a paid minister or hiring a building. The poor need to be included, and in a city most people are effectively made poor.
