They came to Jerusalem,
and on entering the temple area
he began to drive out those selling and buying there.
We are temples of the Holy Spirit. Just as zeal for the house of his Father consumed our Lord, so too does he zealously pursue our hearts. He is jealous for us with a divine jealousy. He knows that we often pursue idols and he compares this adultery (for instance, see Ezekiel 23:37), infidelity to the one who is all good and deserving of all of our love. He knows that when we permit lesser things to usurp his place in our hearts we do not experience freedom or happiness but rather enslavement, anxiety, and fear. If we try to give Jesus only the religious part of our lives but keep the parts related to career, money, and providing for our families to ourselves, and to run those parts on our own, without reference to him, those parts of our lives will consume us and make us miserable. Assuredly, no one trading in the temple was as happy as those who were actually able to find the peace and quiet of prayer and the presence of God.
He overturned the tables of the money changers
and the seats of those who were selling doves.
He did not permit anyone to carry anything through the temple area.
We hear occasionally about the idea of righteous anger, that is, the right amount of anger, for the right reason, at the right thing. Seeing Jesus angry shows us what might be a legitimate reason to be angry. We see him angry and any social conventions or institutions that prevent people from coming to the Lord and from fully living their God-given potential.
Jesus gets angry with any aspects of our habits or behavior that prevent us from growing closer to him. He might even get a little violent in the means he uses to uproot these vices from us. But this is because he is being protective of a greater positive good we are meant to know, and of our relationship with him.
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples?
But you have made it a den of thieves.”
A second aspect of the holy anger of Jesus was that the purpose of the temple being compromised was causing the exclusion of a whole class of people. These outer courts were meant to be a place where the Gentiles could come to pray. But this could hardly been expected with the clamor and noise of all the buying and selling. It would be hard for the Gentiles to even perceive that this was supposed to be a place of prayer, and if they perceived it, still, it would be almost impossible for them to enter in.
The chief priests and the scribes came to hear of it
and were seeking a way to put him to death,
yet they feared him
because the whole crowd was astonished at his teaching.
To the degree that we don't put God first in our lives we risk being unable to be inclusive in the way that God desires. We will be too full of care for money or sex or power to give the poor and the outcasts of society their due.
We need Jesus to help purify our hearts so that we can bear fruit no matter the season. We must be willing to allow him to chase from our the most inner spheres of our hearts things which do not belong there, whether greed or unforgiveness. When our hearts are functioning as intended, when we are living as temples of the Spirit, our prayers become powerful.
It is, after all, only in God that true wealth and true blessing are to be found.
And for all time their progeny will endure,
their glory will never be blotted out.
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