Turning the tables
Jesus in the Temple
13Not long before the Jewish festival of Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. 14There he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. 15So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.16Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, “Get those doves out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace.”
17The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, “My love for your house burns in me like a fire.”
18The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, “What miracle will you work to show us why you have done this?” 19“Destroy this temple,” Jesus answered, “and in three days I will build it again!”
20The leaders replied, “It took forty-six years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days?”
21But Jesus was talking about his body as a temple. 22And when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered what he had told them. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words of Jesus.
Jesus goes to church. He goes to the place of worship, what does he find? People praying? People listening to God’s word? People reaching out to the poor and the disadvantaged? No, none of that.
Jesus comes to the house of God, and finds a money racket going on. The main activity seems to be not worshipping God, but supplying the animals for sacrifices that everyone would need, and the means for those from far and wide to change their money to buy one. We can assume from Jesus reaction that they were not providing a helpful service, but that there was some extortion going on. Jesus is not happy with what he finds. And he reacts very strongly.
This leads me to reflect on what Jesus would think of what he found if he turned up in our churches one day (not that he doesn’t anyway, but you know what I mean – I hope!). What would he find us doing? What would our focus be? Would he be happy?
And even more scarily, what about our lives?
Lent is for reflection.
What is there in our lives that should not be there? What is stopping us – or others – from getting to worship God?
Perhaps today is the day that we invite Jesus in to show us?
And then ask him to overturn our lives.
Jesus casting out the money changers at the temple by Carl Bloch
Lord,
I am scared to let you look closely
into my life.
I know some of what is there.
I am not proud of all that I have let happen.
But I know that the only way forward
is to ask you to overturn my life.
And so today
I ask you to come,
to look,
to chase out what is getting in the way,
that my life may be clean
and doing what you ask of it…
Pam's Perambulation 