Perhaps
it is the accumulation of a righteous indignation from all the years Jesus had
come to the temple to worship only to be bombarded with the noise and chaos of
a common street market in the very court where reverence for God should abound. I must confess that I have felt a similar
indignation in moments when the line between commerce and worship is blurred in
churches and religious gatherings I have attended. There is something that shouts inside of me,
"Not now! Not here!" But I have not reached the point where I take
the steps Jesus did in this passage.
I
know he wasn't outside his right to do what He did, which only leads me to one
other option, one I would rather not think about. Or perhaps there is something at play here
that is foreign to me; something I do not understand about the emotion that
drove him to expel the temple merchants.
He changed the nature of the chaos-- from one defined by the buying,
selling, bartering, profit and loss, to a chaos initiated by the One meting out
immediate and intentional retribution on the perpetrators. Jesus must have cast a large image-- he is
one man driving out the entire mob.
There is no mention of the early disciples pitching in with their own
whips. Certainly the temple guards did
not help. The fact is the temple
inhabitants who benefitted from the income generated by this display must have
been more than a bit chagrined by the actions of this stranger. But no one stops him. He lays waste to all the filthy lucre of the
day and cleans house.
This
story seems so out of character for Jesus, although this intense disdain for
those who malign the name of the God he came to reveal comes to the surface a
number of other situations in the Gospel narrative. His divine anger is not aimed at those who
come broken and defeated. His holy wrath
is not intended to drive out anyone seeking forgiveness and a new start. Jesus makes clear that he will never drive
away those who come to him (John 6:36).
This day brings out Jesus' intense ire towards those who in the name of
God act in the most ungodly ways, and by doing portray God as one who is for
sale and makes salvation something to be sold and bought, or worse a God who is
accessible only to those who can afford it. Maybe there should be more disdain
by believers today towards the merchandising of the Gospel. Has Christianity become little more than a
religious Big Business? The events of
this particular day in Jerusalem seem to point out that danger. But Jesus has yet to make his inspired
statement of the day....
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