Reading
Mark 11:15-19: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.
And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

Reflection by Revd James Marston

We heard yesterday of a moment of tranquillity – the anointing of Jesus at Bethany – before the gritty grim drama that was about to unfurl. Well in today’s reading the turmoil really begins to get going. Jesus is all guns blazing – at his most angry and at his most frustrated.

His anger is well directed – aimed at those who have subverted of the holiness of the temple by turning it into a “den of robbers”, a place of commerce, a place where God is a mere side-line.
He points out, with actions and words, that the religious authorities have got the balance all wrong. The temple – the house of God – should first and foremost be a place of prayer, not a place of money making and trade. Human instincts have overridden the divine purpose of the Temple and Jesus sees it and calls it out.

And as a result, His death is openly plotted amongst the religious authorities who are threatened and exposed by Jesus. The crowd are spellbound, Jesus still has their ear, but the scribes and chief priests don’t like what they hear, nor the power Jesus has over the crowd, and they respond with conspiracy to get him out of the way. One thing leads to another.

Imagine, for a moment the scene – turmoil, and people running, tables being thrown around, shouting, noise, and disturbance – with one man in the middle of it all quoting scriptures to the very men who were meant to be the authoritative and all-knowing guardians and interpreters of it. Jesus is threatening, at all sorts of levels, the political and religious and social power of the powerful and the curtain is raised for the final act, the showdown that is coming. Jesus’ actions upset the status quo.

Crucially, this incident is one of prophetic symbolism and the scripture Jesus quotes is the key. Jesus uses the prophesy of Jeremiah and the phrase “den of robbers” comes from Jeremiah 7:11. In this passage, Jeremiah is predicting the destruction of the first temple because of the sin of the people. The scribes and chief priests would have known exactly what Jesus was saying and doing – Jesus is likening the people of his day to the unfaithful generation of Jeremiah’s day. He is heralding, by His own authority, the end of the power of the temple.

Jesus was threatening, at all sorts of levels, the political and religious and social power of the powerful and the curtain is raised for the final act, the showdown that is coming. Jesus’ actions are upsetting the status quo.

And Jesus knows the consequences of his actions, he knows what he was doing. The gritty drama has begun in earnest.