Cleansing of the temple or what would Jesus throw out today?

The gospel story we heard today is a familiar one. The story of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is found in all four gospels. Unlike the other gospels, however, John places this incident at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as he is flagging that the winds of change are blowing, and through Jesus, the old is about to be radically reformed into the new. 

The Jerusalem Temple at Passover would have been a crowded, busy place. Passover was the most holy of the Jewish festivals, and at Passover, Jerusalem’s population would have swelled from its normal 50,000 to over 180,000.  The Temple would have been packed with people, each person purchasing a Passover lamb there (or, if they were poor, a dove). Imagine the noise and chaos caused by the presence of the crowds, the animals, the vendors, the moneychangers and priests in the courtyard of the Gentiles. It was into this confusion and chaos that Jesus came.

His was a thorough cleansing. The same verb that is used of Jesus exorcising demons from possessed people is used here, implying Jesus is exorcising the Temple, driving out the demons of political power, economic greed and religious domination. 

This Temple action on the part of Jesus was an outrageous act of civil disobedience.  It was a clear and unquestioned attack against the entire Temple sacrificial system – and the people behind that system who maintained it and who used it to further their own wealth and power.  

God's house, Jesus proclaimed, was not to be a marketplace, a business institution. A new prophetic voice, a new spirituality, and a new way to understand what it meant to be obedient to God, was being heard. The disciples do not understand properly what they hear, but they know they hear the voice of a reformer and a prophet.

If Jesus came today to cleanse the modern day Temple, the Christian church, what do you think he would choose to drive out?

The church’s reputation in secular society is not brilliant. Churches are seen as hypocritical, as covering up abuses, as places of privilege. The Royal Commission into child abuse has reinforced this view, with priest, bishops, school principles all indicted of covering up gross misconduct to protect the reputation of the institution at any cost. Our traditions present as arcane and out of touch, our communities as inward looking and insular.

Throughout its history, the church has often encouraged an individual, passive faith is over following the radical teachings of Jesus. The church today, if it is to have any chance of a future, needs to remove these things that block and impede an active faith. It needs to understand that the power to change our world begins by looking outward to the future, not inward to the tradition.

In John’s gospel, when Jesus looked into the temple, he saw priests more intent upon rituals than reform, a dying institution of fading relevance, and a host of victims waiting to be sacrificed. He drove them out, people, cattle and sheep together, to bring them to their senses in order to save them.

What would Jesus see if he looked into many of the mainstream churches today? Would he also see a dying institution, with a host of victims caught up in rituals of fading relevance, just waiting to be sacrificed to the passage of time and the demands of the institutionalized tradition? Would we all be bundled unceremoniously out of the door as impediments to the hearing of the prophetic voice of God and the radical discipleship and obedience to God that the gospel demands?

We can grasp the vision that Jesus offers, of a new temple that radically reshapes our way of being church. We can cast out the traditions that block us from proceeding forward towards the heart of God. We can refrain from supporting any institution that relies on the blood and sweat of victims to sustain it. We can be a part of the wind of renewal that God wants to blow through the courtyards of Christianity.

Or, we can put our tables back up, collect our coins that are scattered all over the floor, rearrange the ritualistic birds and animals that we have for sale, and set up out tables for business as usual. The choice is ours.