Holy week has begun…. Jesus has entered Jerusalem and the first place he heads to is the Temple. And what he finds there makes him really angry. In Matthew 21 we read -
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’
Imagine this chaotic scene. Imagine Jesus, entering this sacred space and starting to wreck things -money flying, tables collapsing, birds flying from their cages… Imagine the horror of those busy with tasks of worship.
Why do you think this scene was so deeply upsetting for Jesus? As I pondered this, two things stood out.
There amidst the stalls selling doves for peoples’ offering, we see significant injustice… folk would arrive from huge distances to make their offerings to God. Arriving at the Temple, they would need to buy the appropriate offering. This would first often mean having to exchange their currency to the local coinage. All of which had become a system for profit making. The place of worship had become a market place, where people would rip off anyone they could. Injustice had grown.
But secondly, we also get a glimpse of the way Jesus enters the Temple, and sees this place that was meant to exemplify God’s intent for life and hope and joy among the people. And Jesus sees the ways God’s intentions had not taken hold, and instead had become a place governed by costly rules. How he must have grieved over that reality. So perhaps these actions of Jesus that we interpret as anger, are deeply rooted in a sense of injustice or a sense of grief at what had been lost.
And that makes me wonder about our anger. What we know about anger is that it is a secondary emotion. Underneath anger, you will find primary emotions, like fear (which includes anxiety and worry) or sadness (which includes loss, disappointment or discouragement). WIth Jesus I think we see deep sadness.
In these days of lockdown when we might be feeling some very different and quite uncomfortable emotions, including both anxiety and loss, it will therefore be understandable to also feel anger. It will make us feel vulnerable and sometimes out of control. We might need to knock over -or at least address- some of the things that are causing those primary emotions. To use our energy to face the money changers -or whatever they might symbolise for you, to take back a sense of control. Seeing beyond the anger might be a useful step for today. To face into the things that diminsh our ability to find the sacred and meet with God.
And so as we work our way through a day of Holy Week, .I light a candle beside my second square -moving from the triumphal entry, to the Temple…
