Grifters in the Temple (Bad Easter Part II)

Christianity attracts grifters like a church picnic in Houston attracts mosquitos. Like mosquitos, the church grifters go where food is to be found and their lifeblood is money and power.

The grifter, Harold Hill in the Music Man is an example, makes his living through sideshow fraud. He also has a big dream and a big plan but leaves behind smoking ruins when he is done. The grifter is always fatally attractive to a troubled establishment as he is powered by a charismatic personality, puffery, and hope. The hope is irrational (the think system), the credentials inflated (Gary Indiana Conservatory gold medal class of ought-five),  and the personality unconnected to actual abilities.

The grifters had taken over the Temple by the time of Jesus and Holy Week.

How?

The Jews were in a desperate plight. The Romans, old allies, had become brutal tyrants crucifying the best of the nation. Revolutionaries were growing in power, but all but the insane knew that to oppose Rome meant death for the nation . . . as events were to prove when the Zealots finally got their way. A growing Hellenistic movement was selling out Judaism to the Roman establishment and attracted most of the leaders’ kids. Against this, traditional Jews (the Pharisees) were left with few sources of power, income, or hope.

And yet the Pharisees, right about almost everything doctrinally, had one advantage. They were actually religious and so became the party that could influence the people who showed up at the Temple. It wasn’t much, but if the Temple establishment could be swayed, there was a small bit of revenue and power to be had outside of the Roman establishment.

You could work with the Temple people.

Jewish religion was hard for grifters because it had so few paid clergy. Rabbis had to know something. The local synagogue was personal and service oriented, but the Temple required sacrifice and sacrifices could be sold. There was money to be made there. Temple business also had to be conducted in “Temple money” (think ancient Disney dollars) and there was money to be made in this transaction as well.

If you couldn’t handle grifting the Romans, a dangerous game requiring real skills, you could become a Temple grifter. By the time of Jesus, the grifters had a place providing services in the Temple. They did well by doing well for themselves . . . and the house of prayer had become a lucrative business for the religious right. In this way, the good people were corrupted for the political equivalent of a bowl of pottage, since the graft was small compared to the Roman tax system.

Temple grifters looked good compared to the tax collectors and it is always easy to look cool in a small pool.

Jesus was a Pharisee. He agreed with them on the doctrine, but He insisted on living it. Sometime during Holy Week as He got ready to die, Jesus purged the Temple of the grifters. He fashioned a whip and kicked them out. This was not the act of a revolutionary, but of a conservative Jew disgusted by the exploitation of traditional Judaism by the Temple-men, the grifters of the ancient Jewish right.

When I was a little boy, my family was associated with churches that would not let any monetary transactions take place on church property. They kept even bake sales at an arm’s distance. This was extreme, but it did protect them from the grifters. If there was nothing wrong with the church book table, and there really wasn’t, it attracted grifters. Soon Pastor X was peddling his product like a religious Walt Disney monetizing the old time Gospel for profit.

It is easy to judge the television evangelist with his private jet and cushy salary. It is easy to mock the ministry where the children of the leader just happen to be the most “qualified” to lead the ministry in the next generation. It is surely true that Jesus would fashion a whip and chase the moneychangers out of these temples.

But what of me? What of what I charge? Do I spend too much time trying to do well by doing good? Am I more concerned about owning the right books, living in the right neighborhood? Do I play on fears to raise money? Am I apt in my own fear to listen to my own music-men, my own set of grifters, to deliver me from my perceived weaknesses?

God help me, but the grifter is a little bit in me. I think the grifter is in all of us. We think our corners can be cut for the greater good. We know God wants us to enjoy life (true!) and is not opposed to physical pleasures (true!), but we use it to justify a sort of snooty, academic comfort. Is tuition reasonable? Is it possible for the poor? Am I monetizing my ministry at the cost of the ministry?

This Holy Week, if we are honest, we will find Jesus taking a whip and chasing the money changers out of the temple of our hearts. We are in a materialistic culture in a money grubbing age. Having good doctrine is no protection against grifting, as the Pharisees show. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, chase the grifting from my heart.