The Messing Up of the Temple – Holy Week Reflection 1

Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there.  He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.  And as he taught them, he said,
“Is it not written:

‘My house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations’

But you have made it a den of robbers.”
Mark 11:15-17 (NIV)

Every year, as Holy Week comes around again, I try to re-watch Jesus of Nazareth starring Robert Powell as for me this particular dramatic portrayal of the life of Jesus still speaks very powerfully to me.  Particularly powerful is the scene showing the cleansing of the temple where a Jesus full of righteous anger topples tables as he shouts the words, “This is a house of prayer and you have turned it into a den of thieves.”  I imagine that this is pretty much how the original event took place.

Many commentators are of the opinion that it was the cleansing of the temple, or rather the messing up of the temple as I usually think of it; that lead to Jesus death on the cross; though John’s gospel indicates that the raising of Lazarus also had something to do with it.  To understand why it led to his death, to understand the full significance of Jesus act, we need to understand just how important the temple was.

For centuries before the coming of Jesus the Jews had always worshipped at the temple in Jerusalem.  Its main purpose was as a place of sacrifice, where animals and birds of various kinds were sacrificed to God.  There were daily sacrifices as well as special seasonal sacrifices at different times of the year.  The purpose of these sacrifices was to ensure a continuing harmonious relationship between the people and God.  The Jews understood that the temple was where God lived on earth, as a special place that had the presence of God in a way that no other place did.  The temple was not the only place the Jews worshipped God of course.  Each Sabbath they attended the synagogue to worship with their fellow Jews and they also had simple ceremonies in their homes.  The temple in Jerusalem was special to all Jews though, it was the focus of their religion.  No Jew in the time of Jesus, except our Lord himself, could have conceived of the possibility of worshipping God without the existence of the Jerusalem temple.

In order to give donations to the temple in Jesus’ time the Roman money that was used for everyday commerce had to be exchanged for special temple money, and the money changers made huge profits on this.  Doves and lambs for sacrifice were also sold in the outer temple court, again at hugely inflated prices and if you tried to bring in a bird or animal from outside the temple it would amost certainly be pronounced as not fit for sacrifice.  Not only had the outer temple court, the place of the gentiles and the only place in the temple that gentiles could pray, become a market place; it had become a thoroughly dishonest marketplace.

It was more than that, though.  In our passage we are told that Jesus ‘would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.’    It would seem that some were using this outer part of the temple as a shortcut, totally failing to acknowledge that they were passing through a house of prayer.

It was all this that aroused anger in Jesus, because he was undoubtedly angry.   Just in case you don’t like the idea of an angry Jesus or think it unscriptural, there are other occasions when Jesus was angry.  In Mark 3:5 we are told that Jesus ‘looked round at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts said to the man, “stretch out your hand.”’

Jesus was angry, the righteous anger of one who is not only angry because people are not able to pray to his Father in Heaven but angry because of the injustice of the way people were being cheated.  There are times when it is right to be angry.

I sometimes wonder if we in the modern church are a bit lacking in anger.  There are injustices going on in our world today that we either seem unconcerned about or that we express a sort of vague concern about before moving on to the next topic of conversation.  The last budget, just a few weeks ago, was a travesty of injustice so far as the very poor in our society are concerned yet there didn’t seem to be much genuine anger about it.  The budget certainly wasn’t a topic of serious concern in any conversation I heard at church the following Sunday.   If Jesus got angry about injustice then surely we should too.

There is more to the messing up of the temple than Jesus’ anger at injustice; there was also the question of what the temple was.  The temple was God’s house, a house of prayer for the nations.  The only place for gentiles to pray was in the outer court; the very place that had been turned into a ‘den of thieves’.  They had no chance to pray in the cacophony of a market place.  The gentiles were being denied the opportunity to pray to his Heavenly Father.  No wonder he was angry!

Jesus anger was not the only reason for the messing up of the Temple, though, as John’s account of the same incident makes clear.  By his actions Jesus was preventing the normal business of the temple taking place; without the animals no sacrifices could be made and the disruption he caused would have lasted several hours.  By driving out the money changers and animal sellers Jesus wasn’t just condemning commercial activity in God’s house, he was actually announcing the end of the sacrificial system the Jews had used for centuries.  Now that Jesus had come into the world the temple and its sacrifices had become irrelevant, he would be the only sacrifice required, he himself would become the focus of worship because he would die on the cross and then be raised to new life.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No-one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NIV)  In his messing up of the temple Jesus was giving a very physical and public demonstration of this eternal truth.