I wonder what image comes to
mind when you hear the words, “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who
were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the
money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.”
In John’s gospel, this story
is located at the very beginning of Jesus ministry and has a stronger sense of
violence about. Jesus makes a whip of
cords to drive out the animals.
It is understandable that the
image might be built up in your mind of some kind of rampaging righteous hero
who total disrupts the activities in the whole temple forecourt and is
challenged by no one.
The Biblical scholar Douglas
Hare questions this kind of image suggesting that this notion of Jesus interrupting
the activities of the temple may be more than a little fanciful given the size
of the temple forecourt where the market was said to be. It was simply too large an area for a single
man to take control of.
Moreover, the presence of
temple authorities, guards and possibly even Roman soldiers nearby raise
significant doubts about how extensive Jesus actions may have been. This is not to suggest that Jesus did not
engage in these actions but that the images we may have of the event are
probably overstated. The fact Jesus was
not arrested on the spot might be an indicator that Jesus’ action, whilst
significant did not entirely disrupt the temple operations.
The importance of the event for
the gospel writers is not the extent of Jesus’ actions but the symbolism
contained within them.
They are a challenge to some of
the aspects of the temple system, its secularisation, and the corruption of institutions
which potentially disadvantage even more the marginalised groups within the
community.
In terms of symbolism the turning
over the money changers tables seems to raise issues about the connection
between the temple and Rome and the way this relationship was being handled.
As for the dove sellers
chairs this may be Jesus making way for a different approach and understanding
to religious practice and how God was to be understood.
It struck me as I was
considering the symbolism of this event to wonder what it might have meant for
your everyday kind of devout but ordinary Jewish person. To us the old phrase the man on the street.
I would suggest that if you
weren’t a follower of Jesus and neither a particular fan of the religious authorities
Jesus actions were disruptive and confronting and made your life difficult. In the practice of their faith the average
person knew they could not use Roman coins in the temple, the needed to use the
temple currency, and if they wished to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving or
purification or atonement they would need some doves.
Jesus’ action interrupts the
everyday life of the average person and asks serious questions of how they understand
their relationship with God and the community they are part of.
The symbolism of this action
of Jesus whilst having specific meaning in the moment in time when it happened
is also transferred into our present reality.
Like most of Jesus actions there is a specific context and meaning but
the scriptures also operate to make them parables of truth for us.
What this means is that just
as Jesus presence in the temple raised issue for the average Jew on the street
so too Jesus actions are a parable of God’s confrontation with our lives as
well.
As I dwelt on this week I
considered quite a long list of issues in which Jesus might be said to be
confronting us in our religious, our social and our political practices.
Given today is Palm Sunday I
have chosen to highlight just two of these issues that I have grappled with
this week. One for each hand, one for each
palm as it were:
On the one hand there is the
whole Easter chocolate extravaganza that we have in Australia. I read a report on the IBIS World website predicting
that that this year Australians will spend $190 million on chocolate this
Easter: that’s around $9 of chocolate for every person in Australia!
Anyone can look at The
Australian Bureau of Statistics website and be reminded about the growing
number of children and adults overweight and suffering diabetes and question whether
our Easter chocolate splurge is warranted.
In general most kids that I hear talking about Easter are counting the
days until they get their chocolate. Is this really generosity? Does it really
help people in their faith?
Added to this issue, there is
of course the issue that much of the chocolate sold comes from sources where
children are used to pick the cocoa, sometimes in conditions that we would
consider slavery. Each year I follow the
anti-slavery and anti-child labour campaigns like STOP THE TRAFFIK to see what
progress we are making in these areas.
As much as these issues are coming more into the public’s mind the
changes at the checkout are not as significant as we might hope.
Now I believe Easter should be
a celebration and that generosity is a good thing. We usually have a couple of Fair Trade eggs
in our house and I have given them out to congregation members in the past. But what happens when our celebration and
generosity get misdirected?
This is exactly the kind of social
and systemic norm Jesus challenges as he turns over the tables. It is not that celebration and generosity are
wrong but when the unintended consequences are revealed maybe, just maybe, Jesus
would encourage us to think again on how to engage in celebration and
generosity and possibly more importantly to whom our generosity should flow.
So that’s one thing for us to
think about this week as we prepare our hearts, our souls and our children to celebrate
Easter.
On the other hand a second issue
I would raise is the way we approach our faith.
At some point in the period between the beginning of the Enlightenment
and now we have been taught to believe that “faith is a private matter”
something not for the lounge room but rather in the privacy of the more hidden
spaces of our lives.
The question raised by Jesus
in the Temple forecourt was both political and religious. How are you practicing your faith? How are you engaging in the rituals and the
conversation and how is that shaping your day to day lives?
As I consider the hidden,
private nature of faith – a faith forced into the shadows I believe we have as
Christians lost both some of our basic disciples and stunted our growth. If we do not converse, how to do we grow? If
we do not engage, how do we share God’s love?
If we simply look at the
specific context of what Jesus was doing in the Temple on that day we can be left
floundering in our own mediocre approach to our relationship with God. Jesus challenge to the way the Jewish faith
was being lived out can easily be converted to being a challenge to how we are living
our faith out.
In both examples, in the two
hands, I would suggest Jesus is continuing to push us in our understanding of
ourselves and God.
The reason the specific
context is so important is because Jesus confrontation at the Temple is a step
in a bigger journey through which we see God moving towards the world in love
and reconciling all things to himself.
As we may find these moments of confrontation uncomfortable the good
news is that Jesus has made all things new including our errors and
misdirection. As people who hear this message
of good news we are invited to share in that message by considering again how
we might live as followers of Jesus now.
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