Mtr Kelli Joyce

Dear Friends in Christ,

The story of Jesus driving out the merchants and currency exchange people is one of very few stories that appears in all four gospel accounts. It is in distinguished company alongside other major events in Christ's life and ministry - his baptism by John, the feeding of the five thousand, his last meal with his friends before his death, his crucifixion, his resurrection. The cleansing of the temple, it seems, was as (in)famous a story about Jesus as these.

It's a story that can make us uncomfortable. Jesus, here, is acting with total disregard for common sense. He is being impractical and unreasonable. He is, if we read the story with honest eyes, using violence to drive out businessmen who had every legal right to be where they were, doing what they were doing. There is no indication in this story that the animal sellers and money-changers were stealing or cheating or exploiting anyone. They were doing commerce, in its most ordinary and unremarkable form. And yet, this is precisely what Christ condemns them for. "Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace," he says.

I expect that if an event like this were to occur in our own day, we would side with the money-changers, and not with Christ. I fear that I myself have never been so consumed with zeal for God's house and the right worship of God that I would be willing to make a scene, or initiate conflict with people more powerful and well-connected than myself. I fear that I am, though I don't want to be, more concerned with the approval of society and its rules of decorum than I am with the approval of the Living God, who is no respecter of human empires or economies.

How do we make God's house a marketplace? Would Jesus feel compelled to braid a whip of cords if he came into the churches of America today? How have we allowed worship to become something that serves our own ends and promotes our own interests rather than seeking to glorify God first and foremost? And where have we allowed such things to go unchallenged?

In peace,
Mtr Kelli