Some caption the image as “Jesus driving out the money changers.”
Others label the picture as “Jesus cleansing the temple.”
I don’t think Jesus’ goal was to disrupt as much as put things in order. Some paint an image of a roaring, ravaging lion tearing up bad guys. The image which seems closer is a mother bear alarmed for her cubs, willing to savage the threats, for her cubs’ safety. Jesus’ goal was not to gain a reputation as an iconoclast and gain a good photo op, but to re-create purity and peace in The House of Prayer.
Garbage being thrown into a can may look like disruption to those accustomed to it cluttering floors and countertops. If cleaning out garbage is disruption, may every place and every heart be thoroughly disrupted!
Fishermen had their industry disrupted. Routines out the window!
Tables topsy-turvy. Religious notions, traditions and rules which subverted the Ancient Ways, took a lashing – for a cleansing
Demons lost their homes.
Doctors’ predicable income dried up
Funeral home directors lost business
When Jesus shows up with His scourge and mop He is into deep cleaning. I feel he is asking deep cleansing questions of His Church today. What answers shall we give him?
“My house is meant to be a house of prayer. Why do you do everything but?”
“Why do you serve bits of crackers and juice in demitasse cups and call it communion?”
“Why do you work so hard to keep the 99 and not search for the lost?”
“How can you love one another when you separate from one another?”
“Why do you spend money on X, Y and Z, but not on 1, 2 and 3?”
“Why do adults get such energy and the children get the scraps?”
Jesus’ end goal is not to lay on whipping stings of shame and humiliation, but to challenge us to our roots, that we may regain our health, vitality and fellowship with Him! By responding positively to these questions, we will see Jesus as less of a disrupter, and more as the mother bear giving us a good scrubbing behind the ears!
“Lashes and wounds purge away evil,
and beatings cleanse the innermost parts.” Prov 20:30
Steven C Johnson
LandingStripEnterprises.com
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