Cleansing the Temple: Then and Now
With Holy Week upon us, I have a few thoughts about the cleansing of the Temple on Palm Sunday. Many make reference to Jesus’ turning over tables of the money changers as a needed antidote for today’s Church, and some appear to volunteer for the job. Let’s dig a little deeper into why those views could be half right.
First, Jesus defines and defends his actions in connection to Isaiah 28 and Jeremiah 7. Both Hebrew prophets were deeply concerned about idolatry, corruption, and oppression of the poor. Jesus quotes Jeremiah about the Temple being a “den of thieves” & Isaiah about its purpose as “a house of prayer for all nations.”
Second, Jesus casts out the money changers, and the word employed here for “cast out” is the same word used elsewhere for ‘driving out’ demons. In a way, Jesus is exorcising the Temple. The Holy Place has become the habitation of dark powers and is crushing people rather than freeing them.
Third, we should note that the area of the Temple where this was occurring was the Court of the Gentiles. That space, reserved for God-fearing Gentiles to worship Israel’s God, had been overrun with tradesmen and pilgrims exchanging Roman currency for Temple coins so they could conveniently purchase sacrificial animals on the spot.
Who was being robbed? Many conclude it's all in the exchange rates. To a degree, yes. But references to Jeremiah and Isaiah beg for a wider application, one that goes much deeper than price gouging. The real victims of this religious thievery were A) the Gentiles who were robbed of their place of access to God in worship, and B) God, who was robbed of the glory the Gentiles would bring him. All of this occurred because religion was reduced to convenience for people and profit for the powerful.
At this pivotal moment in history, Jesus saw that the house of God had been corrupted by convenience and power, that it rejected outsiders and its mission to them, and that it was filled with the worship of idols that had to be cast out. Jesus sought to restore the Temple to its true purpose.
As Hezekiah and Josiah had done before him, Christ the King sought to cleanse and restore the Temple, making it, albeit briefly, a place filled with annoyingly loud praise, and home to his teaching & healing ministry. For a few days in that Jerusalem Spring, God himself had come to his House and was healing his people with his mercy.
Can today’s Church be compared to this? I believe so. That has happened at various points in history and isn’t a new thought at all.
When the Church forgets its mission to the world, builds around convenience for the attenders, and protects & enables corrupt, powerful leaders who abuse authority and people, then yes, the Church has become an idolatrous house and must be cleansed.
Is that the situation today? Sadly, in many places that description is true. Christ loves his Church too much to leave us uncorrected and uncleansed. Surely part of the great upheaval occurring in the church today, exposing corruption, abuse, and demonic deception is part of God’s mercy to us. The King is entering his house and cleansing us.
That doesn’t mean we get to turn over tables. It means we get to repent and come to Christ’s Table. We have to recognize our own part in the tragedy and invite Christ to cleanse us. We are a Temple of the Spirit, as both Paul and Peter teach. To us as God’s priestly people belong the summons to renewal and cleansing.
When the Church is politicized and compromised, it serves idols. When it uses fear and shame to control people, or when it harasses the abused and protects the abusers, it is demonized.
We need the church cleansed by Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, renewed in her mission, and returning to her holy work of light-bearing in the world, offering true worship in the house of God and as God’s house in the whole world.
Malachi wrote, “For My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be presented in My name, because My name will be great among the nations," says the LORD of Hosts.”
Christ has come to build his Church and he will cleanse and renew us by his grace. He does this not only for our sake but for the sake of his saving Name being heard in the whole world. We exist for the sake of those who have not yet entered the Kingdom. So let us bid farewell to convenience-based religion, be more concerned about prophets than profits, and remember that the House of God isn’t confined to a beautiful building on Yamato, but is in fact every believer as we enter the world with Jesus’ message and mercy.