Blogging through Holy Week: Monday

So, Jesus goes to the temple mount. Looks like it was a Monday, the day after the remarkable “triumphal procession” that we mark as Palm Sunday.

Wasn’t the first time he’d been there, and he’ll go again this week. But this time he causes quite a ruckus. Well, there was already quite a ruckus going on but the people couldn’t see it any more; they’d probably gotten used to the way things were and accepted it. As people do. Assuming their leaders knew what was best.

In this case, they didn’t.

This place, designed to be one where man and God could meet, had been desecrated. Oh, the whole temple would be destroyed before long and Jesus didn’t seem to mind that. But as long as it was there, it was to be a place where God’s glory and holiness was on display. Not, as it had become… Hear how Matthew tells the story:

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' [Isaiah 56:7] but you are making it a 'den of robbers.’ [Jeremiah 7:11]"

– Matthew 21:12-13

The next bit is rather remarkable. The dirty fringes of society press in. Children, usually kept away or under control, were there too. They were shouting out exclamations about this amazing man sent by God, this Jesus. The temple leaders had been able to take the money changers and animal sellers in stride but this they could not handle. You aren’t supposed to let kids come in and run wild in God's house!

The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant.

"Do you hear what these children are saying?" they asked him.
"Yes," replied Jesus, "have you never read,
"'From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise'?" [Psalm 8:2]

– Matthew 21:14-16

“Tomorrow, Monday of Holy Week,” said my pastor, “I want you to ask yourself: What does God want to do to cleanse his temple, today?”

Uh oh. Paul sums it up most succinctly in his letter to Corinth, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

As with the temple in Jerusalem, our bodies will be destroyed and this is not the tragedy it might seem. But in the meantime, what happens, it matters.

I know my inner life seems as caught up in consumerism and selfishness and distractions, abusing other people or using them for my own ends, as what Jesus saw that day in the temple. Do you long to see the distraction and desecration in your life destroyed, driven out; to see healing and worship be what are happening, instead?

Psalm 51 comes to mind.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

– Psalm 51:6