Short Prayers 35: Jesus Cleanses the Temple

Matthew 21: Jesus Cleanses the Temple

Holy Week Monday

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written,

“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,

“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself”?’

He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

Meditation on Jesus Cleanses the Temple

It appears to me that this cleansing of the temple is a symbolic act. It’s much more than merely overturning the tables of the money changers and healing the blind and lame. It symbolizes a revolution within Judaism, a purification of classic Hebrew worship habits. Instead of a place of business, worshippers should concentrate on prayer and on ministering to children as well as the blind and the lame.

In principle, this cleansing applies to all religions. It applies even to our Christian churches. It’s easy for us to fall into the habit of attending only to practical things, to keeping the institutional gears well oiled. We need once in a while to pause, to stop what we’re doing and ask: why are we here, again? What is the gospel, again? Why do we do what we do, again? Then, we should pray about it.

HOLY WEEK PRAYER

Holy Spirit, prepare our church for Holy Week. Cleanse us when we need it. Amen.

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Ted Peters is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus seminary professor. He is author of Short Prayers  and The Cosmic Self. His one volume systematic theology is now in its 3^rd edition, God—The World’s Future (Fortress 2015). He has undertaken a thorough examination of the sin-and-grace dialectic in two works, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (Eerdmans 1994) and Sin Boldly! (Fortress 2015). Watch for his forthcoming, The Voice of Public Christian Theology (ATF 2022). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

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