The cleansing of the temple is one of those scriptures that has a multitude of interpretations. It’s one of the few stories that occurs in all four gospels, although John places it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry instead of the end. But of all the sermons I’ve heard on it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard two that look at it in the same way. Some of these interpretations fall into a trap of anti-Semitism. For instance, there’s the ever-popular surface reading: “Jesus was condemning the entire temple and the priests and overturning the law because it was oppressive and legalistic.” Considering that Jesus himself worshipped at the temple and practiced the law as well as sent people he had healed to the priests for purification, I think it’s safe to say he wasn’t condemning the temple itself. Then there’s the equally problematic interpretation, that Jesus was condemning Judaism for the exclusion of gentiles from worship in the temple when he said it was intended to be a “house of prayer for all nations.” However, since he was most likely standing in an area of the temple called “the court of gentiles” when he said this, that’s another interpretation we can probably rule out.
And then there’s the possibility that Jesus was condemning moneychangers and animal sellers who used the temple to exploit and cheat others to make a quick buck. I’ll be honest, until yesterday morning I fully intended to preach a sermon on that interpretation, and I’m not ruling that one out yet, but sometimes as preachers we end up reading something that leads to completely scrapping a sermon and rewriting it the night before. I think it’s possible that such exploitation was happening. Human history has shown us over and over that people will take something good, like a place of worship intended to bring people closer to God, and exploit it for their own gain. But as Amy-Jill Levine proposes in her book Entering the Passion of Jesus, Jesus’ protest might have been more about the people coming to the temple to worship and offer sacrifices than it was about the people working in the temple.
To understand why this is, we have to go back to the prophets. You see, Jesus’ act of turning over the tables was a symbolic action very reminiscent of the prophets. They did crazy things all the time in order to get their message across, like when Ezekiel only cooked his food using manure as fuel for the fire, or when Isaiah walked around in public naked, or when Hosea named his children “unloved” and “not my people”. The purpose of these actions was to draw attention to how Israel and Judah had turned from God and to foretell the consequences of their actions, namely that the two nations would be destroyed and carried off into exile. Now when we talk about why the Jews were conquered by Babylon and went into exile, we tend to focus on their idol worship. 1 and 2 Kings tell us about all the kings of Israel and Judah from Solomon until the exile. The two books focus on whether or not each king was good or bad, mostly using one criteria: did they worship the God of Israel, or did they worship foreign idols. The implication is that the exile happened primarily because of idol worship. But if we look at the prophets, we see that there were a few other reasons that were just as important. The prophets repeatedly call on the people to repent of how they have mistreated others. The people ignored God’s commandments and did not care for the widow and the orphan, they oppressed the foreigners among them, they exploited the poor and left them to starve. The prophets try to warn the people that if they continue to commit these injustices, God will withdraw protection and allow them to be conquered.
Isaiah lays it out clearly for them in chapter 58, which we read today. Here we see that the people have not turned to idol worship. They are still offering sacrifices in the temple and fasting and praying to God. But their prayers are going unanswered and they are crying out to know why. In their minds they are doing everything they are supposed to do, but God is silent. But the problem is that while they were worshipping God, they continued to exploit and oppress marginalized people. God tells them “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” Their fasting and praying and sacrifices meant nothing to God because as soon as they left the temple, they would go back to oppressing vulnerable people. So, what does God desire from them? Isaiah lays it out clearly in verses 6 and 7: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” Ultimately it is Judah’s mistreatment and oppression of the most vulnerable members of the nation that leads to the exile. God makes it clear: their prayers and worship mean nothing if they are turning around and harming people as soon as they say amen.
And then Jesus comes along, and he begins his ministry by proclaiming “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He spends the next three years sitting with the most vulnerable of his society. He’s living in a society where an oppressive empire and an unjust economic system has stripped most people of their land and source of income, leaving them destitute and starving, while a few wealthy people hoard all the resources for themselves. Throughout the course of his ministry, he condemns this unjust system again and again. He calls out the rich and powerful for their mistreatment of the poor. Remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, a poor beggar who died because the rich man wouldn’t give him even the scraps from his table. Remember the parable of the foolish man who hoarded all his wealth for himself. Remember when a young rich man asked what he must do to obtain eternal life, and Jesus told him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor. Jesus proclaims that the kin-dom of God has come near, a declaration that the system of injustice will be torn down and replaced with one where everyone is valued and cared for and has enough. Jesus’ ministry was all about lifting up the marginalized and condemning the rich and powerful in the same exact way the prophets did.
And then we get to Holy Week. It’s Monday. The day before Jesus made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, which was in itself a political statement against the Roman Empire. And now he goes to the temple, where Jews from all over have gathered to celebrate the Passover, a celebration of their liberation from slavery. And Jesus does something that some consider to be out of character: he gets angry. He turns over the moneychangers’ tables, chases out the animals and refuses to let anyone do business in the temple. And then he says, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” And it’s those last four words that are important here: “a den of robbers.” You see, a den of robbers is not a place that thieves go to steal, it is the place they go after they steal. It is the place they feel safe, where they can meet with other thieves and show off what they have stolen. So maybe Jesus wasn’t angry at the moneychangers and animal sellers. Maybe he was angry with the people they were doing business with. Because among that crowd were not just the poor and marginalized, but also the rich, the wealthy landowners, the people who were responsible for the rampant poverty in Judea through their unjust business practices and exploitation of their workers.
They too had come to worship and offer sacrifices and celebrate Passover. But just like the people in Isaiah’s time, they would worship God, and then turn around and keep harming people. They ignored the laws about caring for vulnerable people, laws that were put in place to protect people from exploitation. And then they turned around and offered prayers and sacrifices to God, expecting to be blessed. The temple was their den, the place where they could come and show off their ill-begotten wealth to one another through fancy clothes and generous donations, the place where they felt safe because no one was holding them accountable for their sins. And I have to wonder how welcome poor people felt in the temple, when their rich oppressors were right there being praised for their great show of faith.
And I wonder that about our churches today as well. So many churches today have become like the temple in Jesus’ time. Instead of following in Jesus’ footsteps, instead of standing in solidarity with people on the margins, instead of working to end injustice, instead of condemning the powerful who exploit and oppress people for their own material gain, we have allowed our churches to become places that enforce the status quo. They say we should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, but in most of the churches I’ve been in, it’s the other way around. We’re over here comforting the comfortable, and we do nothing to stop them from afflicting the already afflicted. We’re too scared to speak out against white supremacy, Christian nationalism, economic inequality, mass incarceration, and all the other injustices that plague our society, because we don’t want to offend anyone and risk losing members and money. As a result, so many of our churches have become dens of robbers, places where the rich and powerful can come to flaunt their wealth with shows of piety, and no one holds them accountable for the way they treat people outside the walls of the church.
Now I should clarify something before I go any further. I don’t know this church well. Last time I was here was during Urban Plunge back when I was in middle school. But I do know this is a church with a reputation, a good reputation, for grappling with the complicated issues of race and class as you strive to be faithful to who God is calling you to be. And I love that. But the sad thing is that most of our churches aren’t dealing with these issues. Over the past decade I’ve watched the PC(USA) become more and more aware of just how deeply rooted these problems are in our denomination and how much work we still have to do. You know we have a problem when the Stated Clerk of the denomination can’t even have a conversation about racial justice without being attacked on social media by people who say it’s a sign the church has completely turned its back on God. You know we have a problem when people think conversations about justice are antithetical to the gospel.
Christ aligned himself with the most vulnerable people in his society, the people most despised by the world, the people most in need of God’s love. He came to proclaim liberation for the captives. He came to tear tyrants from their thrones and lift up the humble. But somewhere along the way the church has aligned itself with empire and power and money and injustice, the very things Jesus preached against. Churches have become havens for those who commit injustice, and churches have trampled over the people Jesus would stand with. I think if Jesus came back today, he’d be walking into quite a few churches and flipping over their altars and communion tables, and it might be time for us to do the same, metaphorically speaking. Recently a friend and I were saying that Christianity needs a table flipping holiday where everyone goes out to protest injustice. But we should be doing that every day. It’s long past time churches everywhere stopped ignoring the sins of white supremacy, economic inequality, Christian nationalism, and all the other injustices that have taken over our places of worship. It’s time we rooted out these dens of robbers, these safe havens for the rich and powerful, and made our churches into safe spaces for those people who have long been rejected and marginalized by society and the church. When I see how our churches have upheld injustice for so long, I can understand the righteous anger that drove Jesus to do what he did that day. We should be angry at how the gospel has been twisted in a way that has caused so much pain and violence throughout the centuries. And we should use that anger to do something about it. We should channel that anger into making this world into the Kin-dom that Christ envisioned.
So what do you say? Who’s ready to flip some tables?