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 now:
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!”
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 the requirements and regulations of the Law came with 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. Any demand of the Law could be satisfied with the blood of some animal, if you had the cash.
An economy developed to satisfy this bloody business. 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.”
What was it that caused him to go ballistic now, driving out people and livestock, knocking over tables, generally having the kind of fit that got so many zealots before him into trouble with the temple leadership, and then 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 play out the mission to which he was called by God?
Could be - but I'm puzzled why he seemed to lose his temper so thoroughly, when elsewhere we see him exercise such grace under pressure. This scene launches months of increasingly heated exchanges between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day (in Matthew, it comes at the end of his ministry). 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, during the events of his passion, Jesus appears to accept his treatment meekly. 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, not for his own preservation.
And maybe that’s the lesson for us, as we wrestle with when and how to express our anger, with what social justice looks like for Christ-followers. There is one way to handle personal anger, however reasonable it may be – we can invite Jesus to hold it with us, ask God to transform it into something life-giving. But righteous anger at injustice and distorting God’s Word? There are times for letting that anger show, even when it means knocking tables around.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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