The Cleansing - Matthew 21:12-17; John 2:13-22

“Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17 and Psalm 69:9)

If there’s one thing that made Jesus mad, it was religious leaders who turned the practice of faith in to profitable enterprise. The Temple – a house built for him – was a place to interact with LOVE (a house of prayer). But Jesus found it had been usurped by fools and freeloaders masquerading as religious experts, defrauding cash from the poor and the pilgrim. Not good. Jesus got angry on purpose for a purpose. He went nuts. Turning over tables, cracking whips, shouting insults, throwing people out, his was a holy fury: “My house is a house of prayer,” Jesus shouted, “but you have turned it in to a religious bazaar.” (Luke 19:45-46, The Message translation).

This episode may seem extreme, perhaps even a little unchristian at first reading. Yet it is critical to our understanding of who LOVE is and it is recorded in all four gospels. Interestingly, Matthew, Mark and Luke all record the episode as occurring four days before Jesus’ death. Whereas in John, it is recorded near the beginning of his public ministry. Perhaps Jesus did it twice. Perhaps John – whose gospel is pieced together with theology in mind rather than chronology – thought it was fundamental to setting out Jesus’ agenda for ministry (rather like the Jesus’ reading of that Isaiah passage in Nazareth that we read about a few days ago). Note how John uses the episode to teach about how the Old Testament concept of a Temple is a picture for us of Jesus’ body in the New Testament.

Jesus’ core message as he cleansed the temple couldn’t be clearer: his people are to be a people of prayer. Let’s pray that this might be true of the church in Bournemouth. That together, we might be a “house of prayer for the nations”.

“My house was designated a house of prayer for the nations.” (Mark 11:15-17, The Message translation).