Monday morning after Palm Sunday, Jesus returned to the temple. This time, he entered the temple from the south, through the main gate, right under Herod's seat.
When he entered, the courtyard looked like a cross between a cattle auction and oriental bazaar. Animals and salesmen were everywhere. That was when Jesus made a flog from some rope and drove the whole lot out.
It was a symbolic act. The moneychangers did not stay gone for long. Still, the point was made. God will not tolerate the commercialization of His temple, nor will he allow His house to become a circus. Yet that is precisely what God's house became, and what it keeps becoming again and again down through the millennia. There always seems to be someone ready turn God's house into Walmart.
I am not talking about rummage sales or bake sales. It don't think God is too concerned about those. Nor am I talking about what someone else thinks is a commercial service. Contemporary people think the traditional church sold out, and traditional people think the contemporary church sold out, just because they think each other's services are "worldly." That's not what bothers God, either. What really displeases God in my opinion is our attitude, not our choices. We ministers are often guilty of looking at the church as a commerical enterprise, with ourselves as CEO.
Full time clergy live off our sheep. I wish we didn't--but we have to, if we want to be full time. Most of them do not fleece their sheep--they take what they are given and serve with grace and humility.
Our profit from the church does not have to be material. Even then they don'r pay us, we enjoy the attention the church gives us. We like sitting at head tables, having special parking places, borrowing someone's summer home from time to time, having dinner at the country club with a wealthy donor, and schmoozing with the prominent people in the town.
If we are going to mix with the elite (we tell ourselves) we need to look the part. We need to keep ourselves in nice clothes, ride good cars, living in a good home. We have to meet the social status of our wealthy parishioners, and that takes money.
That is what those moneychangers were about. The moneychangers were not hard working small businessmen trying to make a living by changing souveniers. They were working in cahoots with the temple managers, paying a cut to them, so the priests could live in the nice houses on the nicest street in town.
What bothers me (and I think bothered Jesus) was not just that they were selling animals in the temple but that the people who were supposed to be leading worship as a service to God were getting fat off it. It was those priests and Levites who saw themselves as professional clergy, who were more concerned about their money than their piety, who made Jesus angry.
The priests felt that they needed the money. They told themselves that their office required a certain dignity. It was a lie, of course, but that's what they told themselves. Bending to the poor and stooping to help someone in the ditch was just not their job description.
Jesus wasn't just punishing these men, though. He was cleansing the temple. The house of God should be for talking to God--period.
The modern church isn't just for prayer, either It is part lodge hall, part architectural showcase, part family chapel, part concert arena, and part social watering hole. It is much easier to spend our time on the upkeep of the house and it's furnishings, than on the business that is supposed o do.
If we want Jesus to show Himself in our midst, then we had better clean first--not our buildings but our hearts.
God, cleanse my heart, and make it a place of prayer.
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