Overturning Tables – Matthew 21:12-17

I clearly remember as a child watching on TV the news reports about Martin Luther King Jr. and other African Americans peacefully demonstrating and, of course, the police challenging them, shooting water cannons at them, and in some cases swinging billy clubs at them. I also remember thinking, why are these people upsetting things and creating such an uncomfortable situation? I didn’t understand what was at stake, obviously, and I resented them.

Those who encountered Jesus felt much the same way and were very vocal about it.

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?

And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. (Matthew 21:12-17 ESV)

Jesus entered Jerusalem on Sunday and Mark makes it clear that this event in the temple happened on Monday.  He spends the night in Bethany, as Matthew also indicates here, then returns to Jerusalem the short distance each day.  According to John 2, Jesus had cleansed the temple early in his ministry, but this time, with the opposition so poised to attack, it creates tremendous indignation and continued plotting to kill Jesus.

Jesus again rejects using the temple as “a house of trade” (John 2:13-17), but here he also characterizes what is being done as robbery.  The money-changers and pigeon salesmen were intended originally as a convenience for pilgrims who traveled to Jerusalem to make sacrifice.  Pilgrims would not need to bring the animals they wanted to sacrifice but could purchase them at the temple, and if they were using a different currency than in Israel they could make an exchange.  But apparently there was corruption in this process and made what should be a time of unadulterated worship of God a time of stress and injustice. Can you imagine being on pilgrimage for holy purposes and being taken advantage of this way?

When the chief priests and scribes see this action of Jesus and the miracles he does they incredulously complain about Jesus receiving praise from the children in the temple.  They were supposed to be watching for the Messiah and identifying him to the people but they instead reject him.  His quote from Psalm 8:2 indicates that he sees himself as worthy of receiving the praise David says comes to God.  These religious leaders would have clearly understood this and would have considered it blasphemy and yet another reason to condemn Jesus.

If we imitate Jesus by challenging injustice, standing for what is holy, and performing miracles of healing, can’t you imagine that we will also receive the same kind of treatment from the world? May it be so.