This week in Crisis Counsels we will be following the course of events during Holy Week. Yesterday, Palm Sunday, we remembered how Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem.

Monday of Holy Week was the day that Jesus cleansed the temple. The gospels report, “Jesus 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 . . . He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people’? But you have made it a den of thieves.” Mark 11:15-17

Contrary to what people sometimes think, this does not mean that it is wrong to have a bake sale at church! The items being sold in the temple were not raising funds for God’s work. The moneychangers and the traders were using the temple to exploit others and enrich themselves.

People came to the temple to fulfill religious duties, which often involved paying a temple tax or making a sacrificial offering of doves. Since Jewish pilgrims were coming to the temple from all across the empire, they would often purchase the doves and change their money into the needed half-shekel coin for the temple tax in the forecourt of the temple. The moneychangers and traders, taking advantage of these pilgrims who were unfamiliar with Jerusalem, charged inflated prices for their services; and they gave a cut of their profits to the high priest. Jesus was furious at this corrupt use of the temple space, plus the fact that the trading took place in the outer temple court which was supposed to be for pious Gentiles to use for prayer – not so possible when the buzz of trading filled the space!

One could certainly use this story as a basis to critique the various forms of religious exploitation or corruption which we see at times in churches today. But the story of Jesus cleansing the temple speaks also on a personal level. Even as we hold to a personal belief in God, it is easy for our lives to become so cluttered with ambitions and distractions that our hearts no longer function as a “house of prayer.” In such times, we can benefit from a Christ-centered spiritual cleansing! It can be uncomfortable if Christ “upsets the tables” in our lives. But it can be beneficial when things are shaken up a bit in life – if in the end we become more rightly directed in authentic devotion to God.

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