Good marriages require compromise. Nowhere is compromise more important than in travel — especially on long trips.
That’s why I was so flexible about planning the sabbatical Carol and I enjoyed last spring and summer. For example, we spent about two weeks in France — in Paris and Normandy. I knew that in Normandy I wanted to see the World War II battlefields. So with great consideration (and possible without disclosing the full extent of the battlefields) I asked Carol what she wanted to see.
Carol’s choices were really good. She wanted to go to Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny. She wanted to see the monastic island of Mont St. Michelle on the Normandy/Brittany border. She had had a poster of Mont St. Michelle on her wall as a teenager and wanted to see the real thing.
Great choices both of them. I loved Giverny. But I have to say that I was disappointed by Mont. St. Michelle.
For one thing, it wasn’t a wall poster kind of day. It was cold, gray and miserable. For the second thing, the monastery itself was covered with a scaffold. For the third thing, it was tacky.
One narrow twisting street winds up from the wall gate to the monastery. This narrow road is absolutely lined with of tourist shops — restaurants, wax museums, dungeon museums and the like. Of course the tourist trade has flourished there since the Middle Ages. It was a great pilgrimage site. So even the tackiness is historic. But the place looks a whole lot better from the distance than it does up close.
I suppose that’s true about a lot of things.
For example, the great temple in Jerusalem -- the temple Jesus knew - looks so beautiful in the artists renditions in my Bible atlas. But the reality would have been much different — and very smelly.
As Jesus approaches Jerusalem with His disciples He can see the temple at a distance. He can see the gleaming cream-colored marble walls. He can see the golden tops of the pillars illuminated by the morning sun.
Huge Passover crowds flow up the steps to the great Court of the Gentiles. This was a walled, marbled paved area by the south side of the temple. This court was the length of three football fields and 250 yards wide.
But despite it’s great size, the court is crowded. It is filled with tables and pens for animals.
Some of these tables were for the money changers.
Exodus 30 commanded that a shekel be given by each male worshiper over twenty. This couldn’t be a standard coin. Roman coins all had some image of a god or goddess or a divine emperor. So the Jews had to change these idolatrous coins for a special shekel of the sanctuary. Of course they had to pay a fee for this service -- a very big fee. The ultimate beneficiary was the man who sold franchises to the money changers. This man was Annas, the High Priest of Israel.
Annas also made money from the sale of animals. For example, at the Passover season it was standard to sacrifice a lamb. Of course not just any lamb could be sacrificed. It had to be free from blemishes. You don’t give God leftovers.
Rabbinical literature tells us that inspectors spent eighteen months on a farm learning to distinguish between clean and unclean animals. They even learned how to spot animals that would become unclean at some time in the future even if they were presently okay. It was an art. And you could be dead sure that any animal you brought to the Temple from your own farm would be declared unworthy by these artful inspectors. So people simply bought pre-certified sacrifices from the animal sellers in the Court of the Gentiles. Of course these animals were very expensive. The profits went to Annas, the High Priest.
The Lord comes and sees all this for what it is -- a monstrous desecration of holy ground. He decides to clean up the place.
He does this twice -- once at the beginning and again at the end of His earthly ministry. John tells us that at the start of His ministry Jesus entered the courtyard and saw what was happening. He reached down, picked up some cords and knotted them together. Then He began to cleanse the temple. Tables crashed and money jangled across the pavement as our Lord drove the money changers, the inspectors and the sellers out of the courtyard. “Get out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
That’s intense. It’s so intense that it bothers some people. For instance, one man rewrote John’s account this way: �tching up some of the reeds that served as bedding for the cattle, Jesus twisted them into the semblance of a scourge, which could hurt neither man nor beast. He did not use it.”
Right.
Gentle Jesus meek and mild is a concept that has been so overworked that many preach and follow a Jesus who has little resemblance to the Jesus of the New Testament. Their Jesus is drained of deity -- a weak, good natured guy whose great purpose is to let us off the hook.
Don’t get me wrong. Jesus Himself says that He is meek in Matthew 11:29 when he invites those who have burdens to come to Him. He is gentle. But we need to balance that aspect of our Lord with the other times that he ‘looked at people with anger” because of their hardness of heart. And I’m sure the Pharisees saw nothing mild about Jesus in Matthew 23 when He says to them: “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
The cleansing of the temple is a wild scene. Men grab their moneybags as Jesus turns over their tables and applies the whip. We may be disturbed by that. But Jesus is as Godlike here as when He blessed the children — or when He hung on the cross. Love for people includes hating those things that seek to destroy them.
Then, almost three years after the first cleansing of the temple, Jesus comes back. Nothing has changed. The money changers, the inspectors and the sacrifice sellers are still there. So again “He overturns the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” This time there is no mention of a whip. He doesn’t need one. He has a reputation. The retailers are quick to move.
Then note what Jesus tells them — Mark 11:17: “Is it not written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.’”
This is a direct quote from Isaiah.
Earlier in the service, we read from Isaiah 56. What God says there to us Gentiles who seek the God of Israel is very special. “Let no foreigner who has joined Himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely exclude me from His people.’”
God says we are not left out. In fact, far from being excluded, we are invited into deepest intimacy with Him. Note the progression of Isaiah 56 — to the place where God is found, (My holy mountain) to His presence, (My house of prayer) to acceptance, (their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar.)
This potential for relationship was why the temple was to be called “a house of prayer for all nations.” God’s stated purpose for the Court of the Gentiles was for it to be a place where non-Jews like most of us could seek God and find Him. In fact, when Solomon dedicated his temple, here is part of what He prayed to God:
&#As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel, but has come from a distant land because of Your name — when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven.”
Why? So all the people of the earth will come to “know and fear God’s name.” The temple was to be used for Gentile evangelism. This was part of the purpose of the temple from the get-go.
But how could any Gentile concentrate or pray for anything in the bazaars of Annas? Not only are the people of Israel being ripped off. The Gentiles are being pushed aside. The desecration of the Court of the Gentiles is a massive national sin against God and against the lost people of the world.
God doesn’t like that. So when God in the flesh entered His house and saw what was happening, He went to work. He did it twice. Jesus knew that this second attack on Annas’ pocketbook would cause Annas to seek His life. He did it anyway.
This brings us to the Lord’s Supper.
It is a long way from Mont St. Michelle to the peat bogs of Ireland. But it’s worth the trip. For history has preserved two magnificent silver cups from the boggy marshes of Ireland.
The first is known as the Gundestrup Cauldron. It comes from a century or two before Christ. This was a the time when the Irish worshiped violent pagan gods. It is adorned with pictures of gods and warriors. One panel shows a gigantic cookgod holding squirming humans and dropping them into a vat of oil. These gods demand human sacrifice to appease their appetite.
The second cup is called the Ardagh Chalice. It comes from the time after the Irish had turned to Jesus. Like the cauldron, the chalice is a work of magnificent craftsmanship. But the God it represents is radically different than the cauldron’s cook. This chalice is a cup of peace -- designed to be used in here at the Lord’s Table. And as the worshiper lifts it to her lips she is reminded that this God does not demand human sacrifice, but instead sacrifices Himself for us.
God said through Isaiah, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” That includes us. And Jesus gave His life to keep it that way.
What would Jesus turn over and clean up and drive out of our churches....that one seems easy for pontificating pastor's to get into . We like to piggyback jesus' anger and then get some things off of our chest. Be careful as you do...we are NOT Jesus! Still it is a fair question to ask what Jesus would do in our churches...
But let's push on....what would jesus do if Jesus came to our study or office? What would get turned over....shaken up and driven out ...what books would go...what things would stay...
And let's push on...what would happen if Jesus came to our Houses? What would have to go? What would get turned over and driven out?
Worship is forever tricky...we always get what we worship in and with confused with the ONE we worship...
Jesus was cleaning house...what would happen if Jesus came to our church...our study/office....our homes?
Isn't this a fair Lenten way of thinking as we approach calvary? What would get tossed?What needs to be driven out? What would we do in response to such a cleansing? Vance in NC
Arthur Gordon, in his book Aspiring to Greatness tells of a time he lost his temper at a public meeting. The end result was he said some pretty harsh and sarcastic things. His father was at the meeting, but said nothing. When Arthur got home however he found an note on his pillow. Written on it was a passage from Aristotle: "Anybody can become angry that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."
In the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific some villagers practice a unique form of logging. If a tree is too large to be felled with an axe, the natives cut it down by yelling at it. (Can't lay my hands on the article, but I swear I read it.) Woodsmen with special powers creep up on a tree just at dawn and suddenly scream at it at the top of their lungs. They continue this for thirty days. The tree dies and falls over. The theory is that the hollering kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers, it always works.
Ah, those poor nave innocents. Such quaintly charming habits of the jungle. Screaming at trees, indeed. How primitive. Too bad they don't have the advantages of modern technology and the scientific mind.
Me? I yell at my wife. And yell at the telephone and the lawn mower. And yell at the TV and the newspaper and my children. I've been known to shake my fist and yell at the sky at times.
Man next door yells at his car a lot. And this summer I heard him yell at a stepladder for most of an afternoon. We modern, urban, educated folks yell at traffic and umpires and bills and banks and machinesespecially machines. Machines and relatives get most of the yelling.
Don't know what good it does. Machines and things just sit there. Even kicking doesn't always help. As for people, well, the Solomon Islanders may have a point. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts....
Source: Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten