Day 16, Thu., 1 Mar.: John 2.13-22
I've lived my life according to the principles of reasonability and moderation. I can't ever becoming so angry that I've made a public spectacle of myself, as Jesus did in this passage. I do have passions. The environment is one; fairness and consideration of each other is another. "What you see depends upon where you stand" is a self-evident, guiding truth for me. Care of children is a third. There is little that enrages me more than the abuse of the powerless and helpless by the powerful, and that takes a poignantly obvious shape in the abuse of children. But although I become angry I've never behaved in such a way that I've been at risk of harm, gaol or even death.
I have a friend who, a few years ago, found herself chained to a gate in the Hunter Valley in her effort to prevent trains taking their kilometre long loads of coal to Port Newcastle and out into the world for burning and the release of carbon over against the provision of energy and the receipt of monies. She was arrested, gaoled briefly, and in danger of gaining a criminal record. A reasonable person like me, that shocked her. To have a criminal record clashed with her self-image. Like me a Christian, she had grown up under the love mantra. To do something so radically aggressive is considered unloving.
Now she and I know better. That, I suggest, is largely because of Jesus' violent action in the temple. Jesus, the ultimate practitioner of non-violence, who replaced the hacked off high priest's servant's severed ear and refused to call up 10,000 of His Father's angels to save Him; who calmed down James and John, the Sons of Thunder; who submitted, un-resisting, to the dreadful violence done to Him; here He practised premeditated violence. His was no doubt a crime, according to the authorities. It was motivated, no doubt, by passion, but by making a whip of cords He showed that he had planned this action, and that he intended to cause harm, disruption to commerce, and even pain.
So unusual and seemingly out of character was this action that it is one of relatively few incidents of Jesus' life that is described in all four Gospels. What was going on? What made Jesus take this violent course?
I think the causes of his anger were twofold. Firstly, the temple was his Father's house, for which He cared deeply, and it was being abused, used for a corruption of the sacrificial syste for which it was not intended. The temple, like Bethel, where Jacob had his vision of the great staircase, was a "thin" place in which the realms of heaven and earth, separated by the earthly realm's participation in the revolt against heaven's and God's rule, came close together. It and the sacrificial system that was conducted in it were provisional means of bringing ordinary people back in contact with God. But greedy religious authorities and their sidekicks had worked out ways of corrupting the sacrificial system to their own financial advantage. I would say that Jesus was rightly angry at this travesty which disrespected god and rorted the poor.
But his actions were not just a blind, angry lashing out. By upturning the money changers' tables, and driving out the animals and those who were selling them Jesus halted the flow of the sacrificial system, if only temporarily. This constituted a prophetic act in which Jesus was saying that the days of the Temple were numbered and the religious system symbolised and climaxed by the Temple was no longer capable of doing what it was designed for. It would soon be destroyed (by the Romans, about a generation later), to be replaced by...Jesus Himself. His action in the Temple and Jacob's dream about the stairway joining heaven and earth amounted to the same thing.
We have moved well beyond reasonability and moderation!
I have a friend who, a few years ago, found herself chained to a gate in the Hunter Valley in her effort to prevent trains taking their kilometre long loads of coal to Port Newcastle and out into the world for burning and the release of carbon over against the provision of energy and the receipt of monies. She was arrested, gaoled briefly, and in danger of gaining a criminal record. A reasonable person like me, that shocked her. To have a criminal record clashed with her self-image. Like me a Christian, she had grown up under the love mantra. To do something so radically aggressive is considered unloving.
Now she and I know better. That, I suggest, is largely because of Jesus' violent action in the temple. Jesus, the ultimate practitioner of non-violence, who replaced the hacked off high priest's servant's severed ear and refused to call up 10,000 of His Father's angels to save Him; who calmed down James and John, the Sons of Thunder; who submitted, un-resisting, to the dreadful violence done to Him; here He practised premeditated violence. His was no doubt a crime, according to the authorities. It was motivated, no doubt, by passion, but by making a whip of cords He showed that he had planned this action, and that he intended to cause harm, disruption to commerce, and even pain.
So unusual and seemingly out of character was this action that it is one of relatively few incidents of Jesus' life that is described in all four Gospels. What was going on? What made Jesus take this violent course?
I think the causes of his anger were twofold. Firstly, the temple was his Father's house, for which He cared deeply, and it was being abused, used for a corruption of the sacrificial syste for which it was not intended. The temple, like Bethel, where Jacob had his vision of the great staircase, was a "thin" place in which the realms of heaven and earth, separated by the earthly realm's participation in the revolt against heaven's and God's rule, came close together. It and the sacrificial system that was conducted in it were provisional means of bringing ordinary people back in contact with God. But greedy religious authorities and their sidekicks had worked out ways of corrupting the sacrificial system to their own financial advantage. I would say that Jesus was rightly angry at this travesty which disrespected god and rorted the poor.
But his actions were not just a blind, angry lashing out. By upturning the money changers' tables, and driving out the animals and those who were selling them Jesus halted the flow of the sacrificial system, if only temporarily. This constituted a prophetic act in which Jesus was saying that the days of the Temple were numbered and the religious system symbolised and climaxed by the Temple was no longer capable of doing what it was designed for. It would soon be destroyed (by the Romans, about a generation later), to be replaced by...Jesus Himself. His action in the Temple and Jacob's dream about the stairway joining heaven and earth amounted to the same thing.
We have moved well beyond reasonability and moderation!
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