Fr. Bob
In the temple that day Jesus sees the money changers (in today’s language let’s call them the loan sharks) turning his Father’s house into a marketplace (In today’s language let’s call it a shopping maul). Jesus is angered by what he sees. Why is Jesus so bothered by that?
Renown Protestant scripture scholar and theologian Walter Brueggeman puts it this way. The temple in Jerusalem was the symbolic expression of all that was true, good, and beautiful in life. It was the ultimate hope for the presence of God in the world and in the lives of people.
Bit as Jesus saw it the core of the Jewish faith had now been co-opted into a Wall Street” like place of commodity transactions. Worst yet, in the name of religion, it fostered a system that exploited the poor.
So, it wasn’t just the irreverence that the loan sharks had shown in making the temple a place of business. Along with that Jesus was confronting a system that put profit before people. Unfortunately, the same can often be said for today. It was Jesus’ deep sense of justice on behalf of the poor that ignited his anger.
Jesus’ strong reaction in the temple that day challenges us to ask, “What are the injustices that we see today that ignite anger in us? There are the obvious ones, sex trafficking, senseless school shootings, abortions. Then there are the less obvious injustices that we can sometimes miss, gossip, giving in to getting even, the shunning of those different than us, etc.
Back to the temple that day. Seeing what he does Jesus makes a whip out of leather straps. And then in an unleashed fury starts turns over the money changers’ tables. Coins go flying. Animals go running. In that chaos the money changers are left standing there speechless.
If Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers that didn’t belong there in our lives what are the tables of “compromise” we sit at that don’t belong there? That compromise could be whenever we sell out to what we know isn’t right. Or it could be the important in life that we let slip away.
After the incident in the temple reports of what Jesus did in the temple reached the authorities and they were angered by that. Jesus had challenged the status quo comforts they enjoyed as members of the privileged class.
So, the question. How well do we use the status quo comforts that we enjoy as people of privilege? Do we use it for entitlement? Or can we, of privilege, use our privilege to help those without privilege?
The story of Jesus in the temple that day gives us a lot to think about. If Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, I n this story he does both for me. And I need to think more about that. That’s as far as I got with this homily. I’ll let you finish it for yourself as it applies to you.