Jesus’ Prophetic Acts

Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in 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....” Mark 11:17

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, surrounded by crowds of peasants, his motley parade made a sharp contrast to the Romans’ military procession into the city in the very same week. We might call Jesus’ entrance a dramatic symbol of “God’s politics” thrust into the politics of the Roman world: Jesus’ procession represented a kingdom that would not allow the few to dominate the many, the rich to exclude the poor, or religion to sanctify an oppressive regime.

When Jesus entered the temple the next day and began chasing out the merchants and the money-changers, he was again engaged in a prophetic action which – by word and deed – thrust the values of God up against the values represented by temple religion.

We need to understand that it was not the merchants and the money-changers who were flouting God’s will. These merchants were necessary for the temple’s normal functioning. The money-changers helped Jewish pilgrims pay the temple tax; other merchants provided animals suitable for the temple sacrifice. What did flout the will of God was the collaboration between the temple’s authorities – the nation’s religious leaders – and the Roman occupation. The priests, and all of Israel’s religious authorities, were responsible to God and to their people for the temple’s worship and sacrifice. But they were also responsible to the Roman authorities to keep the peace and their own people under control. The religious leaders of Israel had divided hearts – their loyalty was not to God’s kingdom, but to their own safety and prosperity.

Half a millennium before Jesus, the great prophets were already protesting the misuse of the temple for ends other than God’s. Jeremiah prophesied,

If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place.... Has this house, which is called by my name, become of den of robbers in your sight? Jeremiah 7:5f

After contrasting the actions of the temple with the demands of God, Jeremiah goes on to proclaim,

Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name...just what I did to Shiloh. Jeremiah 7:12f

Borg and Crossan, in "The Last Week", help us understand that Jesus’ cleansing of the temple follows the prophetic tradition of Jeremiah. In Jesus’ day as in Jeremiah’s, the leaders of the temple were not offering true worship to God through care for the orphans, the widows, or the poor of Israel; they were not putting God’s justice first. Rather, they were hoping that the temple’s rituals could take the place of genuine justice. Because they themselves worshiped “properly”, and because they helped their people worship “properly” by the proper words and deeds in the temple, they thought they could escape God’s judgment for their actions (and inaction) outside the temple.

But just as Jeremiah’s words and actions forecast the destruction of the first temple in 586 B.C., so Jesus’ words and actions symbolically forecast the destruction of Herod’s magnificent second temple in 70 A.D.

Borg and Crossan write this about Jesus’ prophetic words and actions in Jerusalem that last week: Those action-word combinations proclaim the already present kingdom of God against both the Roman imperial power and the Jewish high-priestly collaboration. Jerusalem had to be retaken by a nonviolent messiah rather than by a violent revolution, and the temple ritual had to empower justice rather than excuse one from it. What is involved for Jesus is an absolute criticism not only of violent domination, but of any religious collaboration with it. In that criticism, of course, he stands with the prophets of Israel.... but he also stands against those forms of Christianity that were used throughout the centuries to support imperial violence and injustice.

Here is, quite literally, the “crux” of the matter for us today:

Where in our world do religious leaders still help to justify political domination by a minority, or support economic systems which oppress the poor?

Where in our nation, state or county does religious worship help excuse the political domination or economic oppression that exists in our own culture?

Does our own worship empower justice? That is, does our worship encourage us to act justly not just in our personal lives but also as citizens of towns, counties, states and nations?

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.... Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amos 5:21f