Today's Daily Lesson is from Mark 11:
15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “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.”
It is Holy Week and I want to take this week's lessons to reflect on the last week of Jesus' life and the events which led up to his death.
When Jesus came into Jerusalem that last week he engaged in what was clearly a very intentional protest against the cultic system set up in and around the Temple. The system was set up so that the faithful who came to offer their religious sacrifices in Jerusalem were taken advantage of with exorbitant rates of exchange for temple coins and outrageous costs for "pure" animals to be sacrificed. Thus Jesus called the money changers and those selling pigeons "robbers" and interrupted their business by not allowing anyone to carry animals through the Temple.
It was a drastic measure - but a necessary one. The religious elite in Jerusalem and all the others who profited from the religious trade had set up a pervasive system of religious exploitation which they made them a ton of money through the sale of purification, forgiveness, and atonement with God. Jesus disapproved of the exploitative prices; that is why he labeled the place a den of robbers. But even more to the heart of things, Jesus disapproved of the whole idea that atonement with God is something that can be bought, sold, or gained through the sacrifice of an animal. For Jesus, the Temple cult did not simply need reform - it needed to end altogether.
Psalm 51 says, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart . . ." Jesus taught that these are things that one either has or does not have within him or herself. They cannot be sold by or purchased from a religious institution.
And it is for that teaching that the religious institution decided this Jesus of Nazareth had to be killed - because he was bad for business.
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