Reading… and Thinking

     Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers.’”
     The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.

— Matthew 21:12-14 (NIV)

Jesus had no tolerance for abuse of his Father’s house. He quotes here from Isaiah 56, which says that God’s house would be a house of prayer for all nations. Those who controlled the temple had taken over the Court of the Gentiles, and turned it into a profit center.

They made a lot of money—because no Gentile-produced currency was permitted in the treasury. They of course were happy to exchange your Roman or Greek coins for temple coins—at an exchange rate very favorable to the moneychangers. And no home-grown animal was acceptable—it might have a hidden blemish. They of course would sell you a dove or a lamb—at a high price, to cover the fact that it was certified to be without blemish.

So there was no place left for a Gentile to worship God, at the house of prayer for all nations. Instead it was a haven for (technically legal) thieves. The “den of robbers” reference is from Jeremiah 7. The context of that passage is unfavorable in the extreme toward those who controlled the temple.

Because it was his Father’s house, and he was the Anointed to whom all things were given, and he was the prophet like Moses (and like Isaiah and like Jeremiah, for that matter), he had the authority to do what he did. For the second time, he drove all the merchants out of the temple area. The parallel account in Mark tells us that he also prevented anyone from carrying a burden through the temple. People were using it as a handy short cut! Where was the realization that this was a house of prayer?

And who did Jesus invite in place of the merchants? The blind and the lame! In 2 Samuel 5:6-8, we find the origin of an interesting custom. Because of a cutting remark of David’s directed at the Jebusites, it became a custom to bar the blind and lame from the temple. This prohibition was still in place in Jesus’ time. Jesus couldn’t have made his point more clear: all are welcome in the house of God. That is, all except those who desire to profit from it.

Several times in the New Testament, Jesus and the apostles refer to the church as the present day house of God. We need to remember the dramatic lesson that Jesus provided on this occasion just a few days before his death. There is no place for personal profit in the house of God (monetary, power, or otherwise). But there is plenty of room for the aliens, the blind, the lame—those who are without God, without hope. We should be welcoming these inside, bringing them the healing they need, as Jesus did. Welcoming them into God’s house of prayer.