If I Ruled the World: A ‘Day After Palm Sunday’ Reflection

The Cleansing of the Temple by Cecco Caravaggio

I want you to imagine that you are a member of the underclass in a politically oppressed nation. There is widespread feeling that the time is ripe for change. All it needs is the right leader to step forward. People are waiting for their own ‘Aragon’, a ‘Return of the King’ moment which will spell the end of the local ‘Sauron’ and his orcish forces. Now imagine that you wake up one morning and find that the crowd has recognised you as ‘the one’ and you have been thrust to the front of the long expected popular uprising! What is the first thing you would do?

Now jump in a time machine and travel back roughly 2000 years to this morning’s equivalent day in about 30 or 33AD. You are in Jerusalem. The Roman army is the occupying force. The oppressed Jewish people have a religious expectation that God will raise up a king like David and reinstate the kingdom as it was in the glory days. There is a prophecy that when this King comes He will ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. Yesterday, a guy called Jesus from an out-of-the-way place called Nazareth did exactly that. He is not the only guy around claiming ‘messianic’ status. But He is the only one who has been able to back up that claim by exercising the kind of power which should be on display if God is behind the man. Rumour is that Jesus had done even greater miracles than Moses and everyone knew that Moses was a man of God.

Anyway, yesterday, as preparations began for the auspicious Passover festival, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey. Fair to say, the crowds went absolutely wild. They were singing and chanting that He was the new David. The whole town was filled with an electric buzz. The crowd were ready to rally to his flag. Revolution was in the air. This could only go two ways - either Jesus was who they thought He was, or the Romans would suppress the whole thing with a violent exercise of raw power. What would happen next? It’s now Monday morning and everyone is asking the question: “Now that the crowds have publicly recognised Jesus as ‘our chosen King’ what is the first thing He will do?!

Would he build an army of liberation, besiege the Roman garrison, and send the political occupiers packing?!

No.

The first thing He did was to approach the temple and forcibly evict the religious occupiers.

Religious corruption is nothing new. God had given the Jewish people a system of ceremonies by which to approach and worship Him. Around this system a network of profiteers had gathered selling the animals needed for sacrifice. The courts of the temple, which should have been open access for non-Jews who wanted to worship God, were filled to capacity with money exchangers and cattle markets, all working to maximise profits. No doubt the priests themselves were complicit, perhaps charging rent or taking pay-offs from those who wanted the best location for their stalls. The sacred space set aside by God to allow Gentile participation in His holy worship, literally stank from the animals being sold to poor, faithful Jews at inflated prices. Figuratively, the whole situation stank because of the moral and spiritual decay. The aroma of these sacrifices - offered in a way that respected the minutiae of the law but completely missed its spirit - were an offence to God.

That is where Jesus started his work as Israel’s King. He did not declare war against the occupying Roman army. He declared war against those who were treating worship as a means of financial gain rather than costly, sacrificial devotion to God.

He was not just overturning money tables. He was overturning a corrupt religious system. On the authority of God (see Luke 9:46) those who had imposed an illegal blockade in the entrance to the temple were turfed out and excluded so that those who had been unjustly kept out, by merely human authority, would be able to draw near to God in prayer. His first act as the new King was to start a Holy War, not a political revolution.

I think we might often overlook the significance of this. Jesus was not just the King who would fulfil the David-ic promises. He was also the Priest and Sacrificial offering that would fulfil and replace the whole Aaron-ic or  Levi-tical ceremonial system. He was the climactic and final sacrifice. Of all the Passovers through all the years this is the one in which ‘all righteousness must be fulfilled’. God had tolerated the corruption for a long time. But this year - the year that the ultimate sacrifice is offered, the year that the Messianic promises are fulfilled, the year that sin and Satan and death are finally dealt with - this year, the temple will be cleansed and the doors will be open for anyone - Jew or Gentile - to engage prayerfully and sincerely in the true worship of God. This is Christ’s priority as King. To open the doors to anybody with a desire to worship God in the way that God designs.

Is it a surprise that many churches and Christian organisations have been rocked by scandals involving various kinds of financial, moral, and political corruption? Just yesterday I started reading another news article shared by a friend about a horrible scandal involving a serious abuse of power. I couldn’t finish it. But it was not a surprise. Wherever there are people who sincerely wish to worship God there will be others who see an opportunity to take advantage of them for personal gain. That is the nature of sin.

That is the nature of the sin against which Jesus goes to war.

This comes as a multi-directional warning. It is a warning to popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, ministers, preachers, evangelists, missionaries, elders, deacons, theology lecturers, Sunday school teachers, youth workers and anyone else who goes about their religious work through ambition and pursuit of personal gain. It is a warning to churches and para-church organisations which measure the success of their meetings by the contents of the offering plate. It is a warning to Bible colleges and seminaries that lower the admittance criteria through an interest in the fees paid by students, and to academic theologians who build their careers and publication résumés by producing novel theories about the Bible. Jesus is not interested in your career, your reputation, your success, your bank balance, your name or anything else you have your heart set on. He came to set people free to worship God in the way God desires. So far as you ‘have in mind the things of men and not the things of God’ you are acting contrary to Jesus’ purposes and provoking His opposition. 

It is also a warning to those who criticise the church from the outside. Jesus himself critiqued the corruptions of the religious status quo. So far as you agree with Him your critique is unoriginal and unnecessary. Where your critique goes beyond Jesus’, so that sincere and faithful worshippers are painted with the same black brush as those individuals and institutions that abuse their power, then you simply reveal the corruption of your own prejudice and injustice. And if you use your arguments to discourage the sincere and faithful from worshipping God, you are adding your own non-religious blockades to those constructed by the more religious opponents of Christianity who undermine true worship from the inside. God will have a people to worship Him in the way which He desires. Jesus came to set people free to do just that. If you do not want to rally behind Him in worship, at least do not provoke His active opposition by standing in the way of those who do.

It is also a warning to the ordinary, regular religious person. Do we go to church to worship God? Or do we go for some purpose of our own - personal religious therapy, to maintain a sense of self-righteousness, or to be part of a community where we can rise to positions of repute and influence? It is a great tragedy that, for whatever reason, many ‘victims’ of corrupt religious machines are willing participants in the system, with no more intention of coming to God on His own terms God than those in the positions of power.

This is an outright rebuke to many and a warning to many more. I should add that to many of us it is a welcome warning. We want God to be worshipped more than anything else but at the same time we feel the same temptations towards personal gain that others feel. We are indebted to the grace of God for the way the words and action of Jesus restrain us and the Spirit of God works in us to do what would otherwise be impossible: to live for Him and not for ourselves.

God has declared: “My house shall be a house of prayer but you make it a den of robbers”. The right response to Jesus’ cleansing the temple is not to casuistically justify our corruptions and maintain a false and superficial impression of innocence. The right response is to rally behind Jesus, to let His actions and His teaching liberate us into lives of true worship. The right response is to stop being the kind of person Jesus fights against, and start being the kind of person Jesus fights for. The right response is to start putting the Kingdom of God and His righteousness ahead of our own interests, prioritising personal devotion, prayer, and praise, over profit, property, personal ambition, and power.