There are few verses in the gospels that I really don’t know what to do with. The first one is Jesus meeting the Syrophoenician Woman found in Mark. The second one is where Jesus cleans the temple. Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman is challenging because he calls this woman a “dog.” Why does it seem like Jesus called the woman a racial slur? What was the point of this story?
Jesus cleansing the temple also brings up many questions. Where the Syrophoenician Woman focused on a Jesus that seemed racist, Jesus cleansing the temple shows an angry Jesus, a fuming Jesus. What does it mean that Jesus was angry? What does it mean that he was so violent? What does this story tell us about God?
I’ve preached on this story many times and each time it seems I feel like I only understand a part of it. I try to explain it, but the questions remain stuck in the back of my brain: why did Jesus respond so violently?
What’s even more puzzling than seeing Jesus fly into a rage is how modern readers react to the story. Most of the time, people try to imagine Jesus grabbing a whip and flipping tables in some modern setting. Maybe you’ve seen the meme of a classic painting of the Cleaning of the Temple where the logos of large corporations replace the heads of the fleeing merchants.
What I’ve noticed whenever somebody talks about Jesus cleansing a modern temple is where the speaker is in the story. Where does that speaker place themself in the story? More often than not they are not among the merchants. Where are they? Usually, they are in Jesus’s shoes flipping over the tables of injustice that they see in their own world.
But what if that isn’t where we’re supposed to be? What if we are the money changers? What if we decided to turn our faith over to thieves? Do we need Jesus to come in a cleanse our hearts and minds?
It’s far easier and fun to be on Jesus’ side flipping over the tables of the people we don’t like. We want them to get their comeuppance.
When Jesus enters the temple he sees busy people. They are doing evil things, but in some way, God has been crowded out by the busyness of life. It could be the marketplace that crowds things out, but it could be other things like politics or cultural issues that push God over the side.
Jesus isn’t just flipping over the tables of people we don’t like. Jesus is a disruptor or as a colleague says, Jesus is an agent provocateur. He comes and flips our tables. Jesus comes into our lives which we might think is all put together and pretty and starts tearing up our hearts.
Theologian Mary Hinlke Shore notes how John places this story at the beginning of his ministry which shows that conflict is going to be at the center of his ministry. She shares Eugene Peterson’s Message version of the Bible where Jesus has moved into the neighborhood or pitched his tent (John 1:14). Moving into our neighborhood is going to be provocative, for all of us.
So maybe when we hear this story, we should put ourselves in Jesus' shoes. Instead, we should be asking what have we done that has made our hearts dens of robbers and seek forgiveness instead.