Monday-Easter Week

The graphic I am using marks Monday as the day Jesus cleared the temple. The passages cited are Matthew 21:10-17, Mark 11:15-18 and Luke 19:45-48. Matthew reads as if this occurred on Sunday. Mark clearly tells us it occurred the next day. Luke also is not definitive about the day. John cites an earlier clearing of the temple in chapter 2:13-17.

I’ve had a long day today, but I’ve thought off and on about this scene asking God what I needed to notice here. A couple things have stood out.

Jesus is incensed at the selling going on in the temple. In a very real sense, access to God is being sold. Think about that, he is about to pave the way for free and clear access to our Heavenly Father and he finds, once again (remember the John passage occurred very early in his ministry) money changers profiting handsomely from the pilgrims at Passover. I could go into detail about needing “temple” coin and the exchange rate used to extort from the pilgrims, but let it just be said, this is not how God’s house is to be used, or abused in this case.

He proclaims that it will be a house of prayer. This idea has stuck with me today. Many know that I am passionate about prayer. I’ve come to believe it is the lifeblood of intimacy between our Abba and us. I no longer view prayer as my “prayer life” as if it is something separate from other parts of my life. It is no longer something I take out occasionally, dust off and try to practice. It simply has become my life connection to Jesus.

Jesus, by his proclamation that his house will be a house of prayer, elevates this important function in the life of all who will follow him. If you watch Jesus and how he lived during his years of earthly ministry, you will find him often going out alone to be with his Father in prayer. It is a model we all should emulate. He is telling us in this violent act of clearing the temple that prayer is IMPORTANT!

There is something else I’ve noticed. We tend to try to tame Jesus. We want a meek and mild Jesus, here to simply love us. He does love us, more than we will ever really understand, but he cannot be tamed.

If you read the passage of the first cleansing you will notice something interesting, he goes into the temple, sees the money-changers and all the others selling access to the temple, and then goes out and makes a whip. A whip. Think about the forethought he is putting into what he is about to do. The passages citing the second clearing make no mention of a whip, but make no mistake. Jesus is angry.

This is a side to Jesus we often have trouble with. Frankly, I don’t. I am relieved that he is willing to make a huge ruckus that day to get his point across. There is a wildness to him that is refreshing. He will not be tamed by our ideas about who he “should” be. He simply is who he is. There is a fierceness to him that we need to not forget.

It is refreshing because he is FOR us. He wants us to have clear and free access to prayer, to him. He is willing to fight for that, fight for us.

John, in the opening of his gospel tells us much about Jesus. Take a few minutes and read that description of who it was that came as a baby, grew up learning carpentry then gathered his disciples and started a ministry that will culminate in death. But what a death it was, one that showed us his mastery over what we consider inevitable and final.

It was not final and that is what we are moving towards as we sit with him in these passages about those last few days.