Jesus must have walked past those tables and vendors and stalls of doomed animals a hundred times. He must have checked out the tellers exchanging Roman coins for temple currency. Maybe he shook his head, even seethed inwardly. But to our knowledge he never said a thing. Until this time:
“The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’” (The gospel reading for Sunday is here.)
What was it that caused him to go ballistic now, out of control, driving people and livestock out of the temple courts, knocking over tables, generally having the kind of fit that got so many zealots before him into trouble with the temple leadership, and in turn arrested and crucified by the Roman authorities? Or was that the point? Was this part of the plan to move toward his own passion and death, to live out the mission to which he was called by God?
And why all this commerce in the temple courts? The place had become a killing floor, awash in the blood of animals being sacrificed to meet arcane demands in the Law of Moses. For along with the requirements and regulations of the Law, it provided some loopholes. Instead of committing your firstborn son to God’s service, as the law required, you could offer a sacrifice. Over time, these loopholes accumulated and widened enough to drive a wagon through. Every demand of the Law could be satisfied with the blood of some animal or other, if you had the cash.
An economy grew up to satisfy this burgeoning business of bloodshed. You didn’t have to bring your own sacrificial animal – you could purchase one right there, one stop shopping. No temple currency on you? No worries – we’ll exchange your Roman coins for our own, and take a little fee for our pains. The whole place had become a well-oiled enterprise – what Jesus called a “marketplace.”
Still, it puzzles me why he seemed to lose his temper so thoroughly, when in other stories we see him exercise such grace under pressure. This scene is the start of months of increasingly heated exchanges between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day (in Matthew, it comes at the end). Over and over he accuses them of having lost the heart of the Torah, the Law of God, and having distorted it. And they, from their vantage point of power – limited as it may have been under Roman rule – can’t help but resist his challenges to their authority.
Later, after his arrest, during the events of his passion, we see Jesus seem to accept his treatment meekly and silently. Where is this outrage then? He was certainly capable of expressing his anger. Perhaps he reserved his ire for those who would pervert his Father’s love and oppress the weak.
Maybe that’s the lesson for us, when we wrestle with when and how to express our anger. There is one way to handle personal anger, however reasonable it may be – we can invite Jesus to hold it with us, or ask God to transform it into something life-giving. But righteous anger at injustice or misrepresenting God? Maybe there are times for letting that anger show, even when it means knocking tables around.
Yes, indeed.
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