By Reverend Laurie DeMott

And so today, in addition to the normal cooing of doves and the jangle of the coins of the money changers, the bleating of sheep and bellows of oxen fill the air. The sellers hawk their wares to the passing pilgrims: “Get a beautiful calf to offer in sacrifice!”

“Look at this ram, pure as bleached linen.”

“Can't afford an ox or lamb? We have beautiful doves just the right price for a struggling family.”

A couple approaches one of the dovecots. “How much is that nice cream colored dove?”, the elderly man asks, jingling his coins enticingly.

The seller scowls when he sees the drachmas: “Can't have any of that pagan money in the Temple. You'll have to go over to the change tables and get some proper coins, and then we’ll talk.”

The disciples wend their way through the crowd. A pilgrim shoves by, dragging a mewling calf. A knot of young men knock into Jesus as they veer away from a beggar beseeching the crowd’s pity. Animals bleat and bellow, hooves clack on stone, money clatters on every side of them, laughter and shouts echo off the Courtyard walls until finally something inside Jesus snaps.

“Out! Out!” he shouts. When no one moves, he grabs some ropes hanging on a nearby stall and drives the animals before him. People scramble to get out of the way of the stampeding oxen and this man suddenly gone wild. “Take your animals,” Jesus shouts, “take your money boxes,” he yells as he throws tables over, coins flying, “take your exchange rates and your sacrifices and your empty prattle and get out!”

The disciples stand frozen, mouths agape. What on earth has gotten into Jesus?

What on earth had gotten into Jesus?

You know, given the things that Jesus had to deal with in his ministry – authorities trying to kill him, demanding crowds, and bumbling thick headed disciples – Jesus was usually pretty even tempered. He maintained his cool in the face of situations that would have driven the most patient of us to distraction. And yet all of the gospel writers agree that he became completely unhinged by the scene in the Temple courtyard. As we try to explain why Jesus got so ticked off that day, most of us assume that it was because Jesus disliked people making money in the house of God, and there is no question that the money changers did hike up the exchange rate a little and the vendors were not giving the animals away out of the goodness of their hearts: everyone in that market was there to make a profit. Furthermore, as is the reality of human economics, anytime money exchanges hands there will be a few unscrupulous individuals who will exploit the situation and gouge prices a little, but it would be a mistake to assume that everyone there that day was a thief. The vendors and the money changers were offering a service to worshipers so that people would be able to offer proper devotion in the Temple. Temple traditions prohibited the use of any coins that showed the face of the emperor to ensure that emperor worship did not get mixed up with worship of Yahweh. It was an ancient form of our belief in the separation of church and state. Changing common currency, then, for acceptable coinage was as normal for the Jews as it is for us today to exchange American money for Canadian at the border. And those animal vendors made it possible for pilgrims to offer sacrifice without the bother of driving their cattle all the way across the countryside. The Temple marketplace provided necessary services to the Jewish worshipers as certainly as Cokesbury Supply offers services to our churches when they sell us bulletin covers, altar candles, and organ music. If Jesus’ anger was provoked by only the business of running a religion, we had better take a good look around our church right now before we pass judgement on the moneychangers in the Temple.

And maybe that is a little of the moral of this scene: Jesus’ tantrum can and should make us careful of the way we construct our budgets, thoughtful about the way we spend the church’s money, and cautious about becoming enamored with the trappings of worship, but I think that when you place this episode alongside of the rest of Jesus’ ministry, you will see that his anger was provoked by something more significant than just the jangling of coins. Let’s look again at the scene.

Jesus has been baptized with the Spirit, has gathered his disciples, and is about to embark on a ministry dedicated to bringing others into communion with God, and the first thing he does is head to Jerusalem to worship in the house of the Lord. It is a natural starting place for him, but look at the process that a person has to go through in order to worship in the Temple. First, before you can even enter the Temple gates, you must pass through the ritual baths so that you will be cleansed before presenting yourself. Once cleansed, you are allowed past the outer wall into the Temple courtyard where you exchange your money and pick out your animal for sacrifice. If you are a Gentile, you can’t go any further and would do well to heed the warning sign posted on the entrance to the Second Court: “No foreigner is to enter within the balustrade and embankment around the sanctuary. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death which follows.” Jewish men, however, and non-menstruating women may pass into the Second Court but here the women have to stop as well as any Jewish men who are ritually impure, those with leprosy, for example. Ritually pure Jewish males can now continue on and move deeper into the Temple’s interior to worship in the Third Court. If Jesus hadn’t lost his temper in the outer courtyard and been forced to depart rather quickly, this is where he and his disciples would have done their praying that day. But even the Third Court is not the closest to God; there is yet a Fourth Court where only properly attired priests may enter. Here in the Fourth Court is the altar, with its menorah, candles, and knives for the sacrificial slaughter, a place of great holiness reserved for the priesthood alone. And still, even within that holy sanctuary deep within the Temple’s interior, there is a room holier still. Screened by a veil, to be entered only by the High Priest once a year on the Day of Atonement, is a tiny room known as the Holy of Holies; and here finally is the mercy seat, the very throne of God.

Layers upon layers upon layers upon layers separate the people from their Lord. Ritual baths, proper coinage, acceptable sacrifice, the right ethnic background, the proper gender, freedom from disease, personal sanctity – all of this is required to get even within shouting distance of God and the only one who can claim to enter the presence of the holiest Lord is the High Priest and he only dares to do that one day a year. Is this the God that Jesus preaches, the God whose Kingdom is among us, the God who forgives the man with leprosy, who loves the Samaritan, who invites sinners to the banquet table, and cares for the least among us? For Jesus, there are no layers between you and God. For Jesus, there are no hoops you have to clear before you are acceptable; there is no sin that can remove you from God’s presence; there is nothing that separates you from the love of your God. Each of us has the right to enter the Holy of Holies and see our God face to face. Jesus was willing to not only overturn a few tables to drive that point home but even to go to his death to break down the walls that stand between you and your God. When Jesus died, Matthew says, the curtain of the Temple, the veil that stands between us and God in the Holy of Holies, was torn in two.

We may not have outer courtyards in our churches, or warning signs on the entrance to our sanctuaries, but we are often no better than the Temple keepers at allowing everyone equal access to God. Instead of walls, we Christians today preach the need for proper doctrines, acceptable sexual persuasion, appropriate rituals, compliance to certain political or cultural stances. Henry Sloane Coffin tells of a missionary conference in the 1920s that invited missionaries from numerous denominations to gather together and share stories of their ministries. They concluded their meeting with an ecumenical service of Holy Communion in a Scottish Church at which an Anglican Bishop presided and everyone present agreed that this worship was the spiritual highlight of the conference. However, when word of this innovation got out, the Bishop of Zanzibar brought a formal protest to the Archbishop of Canterbury and a council was convened to discuss the matter. The Bishop George Bell summarized the report with a smile saying, “The Commission comes to the conclusion that the [ecumenical service at the recent conference] was eminently pleasing to God and must on no account be repeated.”

We, like the Temple keepers, want to maintain the layers of conformity that will ensure that only the right people have access to the love of God because a God whose grace is bestowed on all and sundry offends our sensibilities and suggests that God knows more about running a religion than we do. But Jesus offered God’s love to every person – to the rich and the poor, to the Gentile and the Jew, to men and to women, to you who have accepted your forgiveness and to you who still struggle with the burden of your sin, to you and to who wake up each morning feeling a delight in your bounty and to you who lie awake confused and battered by life, to you who have achieved a wealth of friendships and to you who wonder when the loneliness you feel will be lifted, to you who are admired and respected in your community and to you who have known the barbs of judgement and condemnation – God invites you all into the presence of the Holy, without qualification. And the only requirement is that you come with open arms, ready to receive not only the grace of God but also the presence of such a ragtag community of faithful.

I invite you now to Christ’s table where all shall partake in the goodness and grace of God.