The day after Yeshua rode in muted triumph into Jerusalem seemed to be a good start for those who believed that he had come to restore King David’s line. That same Yeshua, hailed as a people’s champion, entered the Temple, and using a whip made of cords, drove out the hordes of vendors that crowded the outer court.
We might wonder what the big deal was. So what if there were vendors selling the items required by the system of sacrifices? After all, it seemed to make sense to have everything people needed right at the Temple when they came to make their sacrifices, right?
Not so. To the eyes of the faithful, something else was going on in that outer court. Far from being a convenience to the worshipers come to honor God by their sacrifices, the vendors in the Temple had become a business that had nothing to do with God or sacrifices. Instead, these people charged outrageous and dishonest prices, offered substandard merchandise, and likely paid significant kickbacks to the Temple officials for the privilege of operating in the Temple.
Worse, how was purchasing a dove or a lamb at a vendor on the way into the Temple offering one’s firstfruits? The entire system of sacrifice had become a perfunctory ritual, based more on history and tradition than faith.
This was the outrage that Yeshua came to address, and to the people who watched him, it seemed that he had come to set the world right again. Indeed he had, but not in the way that they expected. The people sought earthly redress. Yeshua sought to restore the true essence of the sacrifice, where faithful and penitent believers came before God to offer a precious gift in thanksgiving for the blessing of God’s attention and forgiveness to them.
Yeshua also came to do something else. This Yeshua, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, was the Word made flesh. He was and is the flesh and blood incarnation of the Law and the Prophets. As He moved through the courtyard, overturning tables and driving people and animals away, He brought to life the words that had been spoken to the Jews through years of prophecy, words that called for belief in the heart and not hollow ritual.
This is the same Word that He speaks to us now through the Scriptures. Jesus does not care if we go to church or take communion or give a tithe if we do all of those things for any other reason than because we believe that He is the Messiah, the only Son of God, true man, who lived a perfect life, died a horrible death as atonement for our sins, and rose again as the first to be raised to the glory of the eternal life promised to all who believe.
Our God does not care about beautiful churches, incredible sound systems, video projectors, bands and choirs, car washes, bake sales, youth centers, or anything of the like. Instead, He cares about faithful hearts moved to penitence and to constantly seek His will and His way. Anything else is no better than the dishonest moneychangers and greedy vendors of the outer court of the Temple He cleared out just days before His death.
So, this cleansing is the message of Holy Monday. Today, each of us should cleanse ourselves of anything that takes our attention away from our faith, especially those things that cause us to believe we can earn our own way into Heaven by doing better with what we do in our religion, or worse, those things where we take advantage of our fellow faithful and thereby place all of our souls at risk. What should remain is a faithful, penitent heart, yearning for God’s Word and God’s will, and seeking the path that leads us to be united with our Lord in Heaven.
