It’s a fascinating scene from the Gospels today.  For those of us who were raised on a calming, warm, invitational image of Jesus, you know, the type with a smile and a “I love you grin” on His face, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is a highly disruptive story, isn’t it?  After all, we’ve been taught that Jesus is without sin yet here He is, very much enraged at things going on right there in the Temple.   And not only is He mad, but His anger also takes direction, action.  Fashioning a whip out of cords, He attacks the merchants and the money-changers right there in the Temple courtyard. 

            Do you recollect the last time you were mad like that?  I mean angry and took action before you even quite knew where you were going with it?  I do.  I was really hot and bothered about something relating to the kids.  Before I knew it, I was emailing off a nice little bit of hatred towards someone.  Reading the message to my friend, he suggested that I delete the note and never send it. 

            Oops, I said.  I’d already sent it.  I was mad and had what I thought was a good reason to feel that way but the lengths to which I took it were extreme given the provocation. 

            Jesus, on the other hand, acts in what we’ve got to assume is a reasonable fashion.  After all, the offense was not to Him but rather, towards God.  Jesus took great offense to the fact that, somehow, someway, worship of the Father had become so corrupted. 

            Now in order to understand this particular scene, it helps to know a few things.  To begin with, as Jesus enters the Temple, it should be kept in mind that this wasn’t Solomon’s Temple, that one had been destroyed by the Babylonians years prior.  Neither was it Nehemiah and Ezra’s Temple.  That one had fallen into disrepair.  No, the one Jesus entered into that day was one manufactured by none other than Herod.

            This particular temple would’ve had a courtyard, walled in but not the center of the building.  In this courtyard, unclean things were allowed as opposed to the center where only clean things could enter. It was there, in the courtyard, that the merchants and the money changers set up their operations. And, while the text doesn’t tell us why they were there, we can infer from history and from necessity to the Jewish laws. 

            To begin with Passover was a religious rite, expected of all Jesus.  A pilgrimage in which the faithful Jew could come and be cleansed by the blood of the right animal.  They could also pay their Temple tax.  That was why both merchants and money changers were needed.  The merchants were there to sell spotless livestock, a requirement for sacrificial animals.  Well, let’s say you had a perfect goat ah, but alas, you lived far away.  What was the likelihood that your special, flawless goat would be so when you traveled 200 miles with it?  Not so great. 

            So, here’s what you did.  You sold your flawless goat where you lived.  Then, you travelled with your money to Jerusalem.  Then, when you got into the Temple courtyard, you simply bought another unblemished goat for the sacrifice. 

            At such an event, faithful Jews also needed to pay their Temple tax.  Now the Temple tax was required to maintain the Temple as well as to pay off the Romans for their quote-unquote protection.  Ah, but you see, Roman and Greek coins couldn’t be accepted for this particular donation.  Why?  Because they frequently held the image of other gods or leaders presumed to themselves be god.  Not a very kosher currency so the money of the pilgrims would have to be replaced with coins from Tyre – the preferred money of the Temple because they were of good weight and measure and all without an idolatrous image. 

            Now, had everyone been doing everything ethically, there probably wouldn’t have been much of an issue.  Ah, but there were.  Problems that are with both transactions.