A Real Mess in the Temple!

Whew! What a violent scene! In the second chapter of John’s Gospel, we find Jesus in The Temple courtyard. It’s a fairly typical scene for that time of year, sort of “business as usual.” The money changers are carefully making exchanges and the vendors, in stalls around the court are tending prize animals all destined for slaughter. It’s business as usual, and then…CRASH, POW, BANG: no more business as usual!

There wasn’t anything particularly wrong about the vendors and money changers being there; they both served perfectly good purposes. One couldn’t bring Roman money past a certain point in the Temple. But one still had to purchase an animal for sacrifice. This required the “shekel of Tyre,” the only acceptable currency in the Temple. Besides, in all likelihood, the merchants and money changers were both Temple employees; they were just doing their jobs. Perhaps the problem was elsewhere.

Well... it was, after all, the Passover, the feast which gave the people of Israel an identity, but most of all, it was the feast of freedom. But there was another part of their identity that had fallen to the side:  the law itself and its purpose in their lives. 

Thus, Jesus wasn’t attacking the merchants and money changers as much he was overturning the system they served. This was a system that danced to Rome’s tune. Rome got a cut of all the proceeds of the Temple; they even controlled access to the sacrificial garments. Then the priests themselves were a problem; they were despised by the populace for being usurpers. But the worst thing was that, because the Temple had replaced law as “first,” the people were once again enslaved to the whims of a privileged few.”

This event is called the “cleansing of the Temple,” but Jesus didn’t make anything clean. Consider something: the “unclean” money and the Temple money were now intermingled on the ground. The animals, marked for certain death were now free to roam. The profane and the sacred had just been largely equalized. At least for a day or two in the busy season, this wasn’t a cleansing; it was an end. The entire economic game had been uprooted. No one—not even Rome—made any money that day.

It’s a troubling scene to contemplate: People often have trouble imagining an angry Jesus; it’s out of sync with compassionate Jesus, or Jesus the healer or Jesus who welcomed outcasts. Maybe this trouble comes from some of the representations of him to which we’ve been accustomed. We’ve all seen them: the loving, gentle shepherd with a far off, heavenly gaze; or a perfect little boy Jesus, in a perfect little white robe with perfect, porcelain white Anglo-Saxon skin! In other words, Gentle Jesus, meek and mild!

One good look at the Gospel should dispel that myth! Where does not-so-meek-and-mild Jesus come off putting such a violent a stop to the system? It sounds as though he’s indulging his anger. Isn’t anger a sin? Isn’t this the opposite of the patience and righteousness we’re expected to embrace?

Well, the short answer is no. First, however, we need to look at the terms righteousness and anger. What is righteousness? Jesus doesn’t use this word in a moralistic sense. Instead, he means, as one writer says: 

"Righteous” as in a person whose whole being is illuminated in God's light, and who therefore naturally acts with justice and compassion.

His actions are consistent with the feelings of all the prophets. Like the prophets of old, he was reminding everyone that the covenant between them and God had nothing to do with the Temple cult. Rather, it depended on keeping of the Law. God didn’t want more blood; God wanted justice, and ethical behavior. In short, God wanted agape.

So then, what is anger? Well, it’s a feeling. Psychologists tell us that there are just four basic feelings: mad, sad, glad and afraid. So then, anger is necessary. But there is more than one type of anger. One type is self-serving, self-righteous anger. We often call that resentment. This anger gets in the way of things and stops us up. When we’re stopped up, we can’t grow. An old Scottish proverb says that this anger is more hurtful than the wrong that caused it.

But then, then there is righteous anger. This kind of anger comes from knowing that that justice is being denied in its own name. It can also come from being confronted with something in ourselves that we don’t want to face. At some level, the spirit of the big 10 isn’t being met and this should make us angry. That is righteous anger. 

But righteous anger is nothing without action; we must actually do something with that anger, even if it creates an inconvenience and even if it costs us.  Jesus didn’t cleanse the Temple; he uprooted and cast it aside. That is righteous anger. Christ invites us to have just such a righteous anger.  

But how can we discern between self-righteous and real righteous anger? The problem is that they often feel the same. Here are two questions that might help to clarify that conundrum:

First, we need to be honest with ourselves. Will a desired change serve the best interests of everyone or just us? That’s trickier than you might think; what one person or group thinks is unacceptable doesn’t necessarily translate the same way in other groups. Finally, we need to assess if our actions will provide real hope for others and not just our own interests. Hope isn’t born out of self-interest. Hope is important because it’s a root virtue of the Christian faith. St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote that:

Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger, so that what must not be cannot be; and Courage, so that what can be will be. 

This story is in all four of the gospels, but unlike the others, this version comes at the start of the Gospel, at the start of his ministry. It asks us to look and see what needs transforming or what needs to be replaced. Are we doing things without a second thought? Perhaps we come to church because we think it makes God happy. Maybe we view attendance at church and parish finances as more important than actually doing the Gospel. Those were the real issues with Jesus and they’re no less important today.