ALIVE, Chapter 126, Holy Fury

Feeling refreshed from their restful days in Capernaum Jesus and His men began their trek to Jerusalem. Their route hugged the Sea of of Galilee to enjoy the water of which they poured as much as they could into pouches when they left the sea to head south on the dry Jerusalem Road. After a long day’s silent contemplative walk the men set up camp in Rehov. They ate together after praying thanking God for their safety, health, and food. After the meal they sat on the ground surrounding Jesus who taught them privately about God and what He expects from His people. The disciples asked questions and were often impressed by His wise responses. How did such a young man, growing up in Nazareth, gain such wisdom? Who in Nazareth could have taught Him?

Although they knew that this young rabbi was wise beyond His years, and that He was brash when it came to dealing with the Pharisees, and that He had amazing healing powers, they were not yet prepared to comprehend the incomprehensible, that this man Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, the Messiah. They did not know about the virgin birth. Like everyone else, they thought Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary. The brother (i.e., step brother, close friend or cousin) of James and the others. Jesus wanted it that way. His men needed time and experience to comprehend the magnitude of His being and His mission. That could only happen after the crucifixion when they experienced the Resurrection and Pentecost. But for now, it was important to Jesus that He not be regarded as a magician. Without teaching the specifics of what it means to be devoted  to God the Father, to be pure of heart, to love and to trust God, His healings would have temporary and only local effect. Teaching was key. He needed to cleanse men’s minds from false and filthy ideas and assumptions. Jesus wanted to restore the character and heart of mankind, the relationship of humankind to God the Creator as God intended in the beginning. That was the meaning of repentance that John was preaching by the Jordan. The demons of ignorance and base reactions like retaliation, greed, and cheating were to be cast out. First by Him with His teaching and example, and then by each person within him or herself. 

Leaving Galilee marked a new chapter in their adventure of following Jesus. Each disciple who went on that trek sensed this. They were Galileans, a region of many ethnicities, even Greeks and other gentiles. Each man anticipated how different it would be to enter Judaea en masse as Galileans. They were different, lessor beings in the eyes of the haughty Judaeans who prided themselves for their language and sophistication. After all what is a fisherman? Having no knowledge of the skill involved in being a fisherman, gave Judaeans, especially the scribes and Pharisees of Judaea, a sense of superiority and authority that was both ignorant and wrong. Jesus went south to give sight to the blind. 

They arrived in Jerusalem on a cool and windy afternoon.  The first place they went to was the Temple to pay their respects. Jesus didn’t waste a minute to do what He was sent to do there. 

Jesus walked inside first, followed by His twelve men*. He stopped and looked around. It looked like a bazar. There were booths arranged inside the temple. One sold oxen and sheep. Next to it the man sold doves. These animals were being sold for the convenience of the people. A person wouldn’t have to prepare himself to sacrifice an animal for his sins, searching one out and being very thoughtful and discriminating about it, all he had to do was to go to the temple and point, as out of a vending machine and give it to the rabbi as a sacrifice. What kind of a sacrifice is that? Jesus’ eyes scanned the room and saw the fat rough red-faced money changers sitting counting their money and looking for approaching customers; feeling increasingly disgusted by how these Jews perverted the dictates in Leviticus He gradually grew furious. Peter and Andrew saw Jesus seething. Thomas and John, Bartholomew and Judas, Simon and James all fairly oblivious to the uncharacteristic emotions of their Master looked around the large temple in awe of the big city ways, impressed by the efficiency and sophistication of Jerusalem. 

And then it happened. 

Jesus’ temper boiled over. He could not forgive the enemies, hypocrites and the lukewarm. How they infected others who thought they were being helped to make the temple sacrifice easy. Peter watched Him as He slowly grabbed some cords He saw laying around from an untied crate. As He was looking around He kept twisting them both both hands, tighter and tighter, strengthening the cords into a whip. Meanwhile His disciples were meandering around the place looking over all the merchandise. 

Then everyone in the large room heard the crack of the whip. Jesus went ballistic.

"Get out!” He yelled over and over again slamming his whip on the tables! Jesus was like a storm, thunder and lightening emanated from His human frame. He lowered the cord in His left hand while with His strong right arm, He easily lifted the center of the money changer’s table and turned it on its side. Coins flew everywhere. 

Shoppers scattered and evacuated the temple as quickly as they could. They didn’t even bother to pick up coins on their way out. 

Sheep brayed loudly in the chaos as they too followed the shoppers as fast as their four legs could send them from the room. Their owners rushing to catch up to keep them. 

The dove sellers sat paralyzed. There wasn’t room in the stampede of animals to go anywhere. Doves in cages squawked in high pitched cacophony over the braying of the flocks. The money changers were crouched down to the ground in a pathetic attempt to pick up their coins, the right ones with the foreign coins all mixed together. 

Jesus was still fuming, as He looked for the next culprit. The dove sellers! To them He said using His shout as a whip, “Take these things out of here! Don’t you dare make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” 

The disciples who were shopping were quick to walk back over to Jesus, in case some foolish oaf tried to attack Him during his tirade. 

They had never seen Jesus so angry. In fact, come to think of it, they had never seen Him angry at all. Everyone was scurrying about. The money changers heads down eyes focused on the ground and their precious money, thinking nothing of the purpose of the tirade; they just wanted to pick up their money right away before anyone else could. Some ran out of the Temple while others in defiance waited it out, some to see what else would happen and others out of fear.

Bartholomew leaned over to Matthew and said, “Do you remember the scripture that said, “Zeal for Thy house shall eat me up?” Mathew shrugged his shoulder in ignorance.

Within a half hour the room regained a tolerable decibel level. Only three merchants remained to guard their goods. They waited it out and won. With all the animals out of the room and money changers gathering all the coins they could see, one brash and brave man approached Jesus who by then calmed down enough to give the merchants a chance to clear out. 

Whether the man was more brave than arrogant or more arrogant we don’t know, but he approached the seething Jesus and said, “What gives you the authority to come in here to wreck the place?!”

“Did you say What Authority? Think for yourself man! This is a House of worship! Not a marketplace!” bellowed Jesus.

The gutsy man continued, “Show me a sign that God approves of your indignation on His behalf.”

Jesus responded,  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

The arrogant man replied, “Forty six years it took them to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” Then he smirked with self satisfaction, waiting for a come-back, that never came. Jesus turned and walked away in peace. 

You see, it was impossible for the arrogant man to understand that Jesus was referring to the temple of His body.  The man went his own direction feeling like he won that argument. 

…

The fullness of that exchange entered the mind of Andrew who overheard the exchange that day, years later when after three days dead Jesus appeared alive again. Andrew remembered the moment in the temple, and the scripture, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Andrew, who had just seen Jesus and ate fish by the Sea of Galilee with Him sat amazed that all they had experienced was part of a plan that God, the Father had conjured up centuries before it happened. “How peaceful it must be,” thought Andrew, “to be immortal and not  confined by a fleeting life, in order to see and to experience the fullness of events, to see God’s plan blossom from the tiny seed of it. Time can be both a friend and an adversary.” He mentioned these thoughts to the men as they sat around the campfire that evening talking about the miracle of the Resurrection that had happened. Andrew reminded them of that day in the temple. They wanted to keep following Jesus but He appeared and disappeared and they didn’t know where He was going so they simply and peacefully went about their days alert for a reappearance. 

…

After Jesus’s tirade in the temple, when all who were left were the three stubborn and arrogant merchants, and the money changers still looking around for stray coins that had scattered far and wide, and a holy mess of feathers and dung Jesus turned to His men who were still getting over their own shock since they had never seen Him so angry that they were afraid to speak. Every one of them had a concerned and questioning expression on their faces. Jesus said, “Shall we go now?”

No one replied, they simply followed Him out of the temple. 

As it turned out His mother’s house was vacant and so the disciples moved in there. Jesus told them that they were going to clean and paint it and prepare it for her to move in. Everyone was happy for the home-base in Jerusalem. The cooks among the disciples set about to prepare for the Passover feast. They went shopping and started cooking days before. 

Word spread quickly to the Pharisees about what happened in the temple. They were furious and decided that they must be rid of this Man. He irritated and embarrassed them with His magic powers, His disrespect of them, and now with His disrespect of the temple business, He was disrupting their organization and it had to stop. What if everyone became as self-righteous as this young man? This renegade of a man had to be stopped. It was during this conversation that the inception of the plot to kill the young brash man occurred. 

Jesus knew this. He too planned it. Irritating the establishment was His plan. He had to go to the Cross in order to save humanity. 

In fact, days later when they returned to the temple for the services, and Jesus walked in and saw all the tables and stalls back in place, and all the merchants glaring at them in fear, He chuckled to Himself. The disciples looked at Jesus to see if He was going to get angry again, but He didn’t. He knew what He was doing, and although there was no lasting awakening of the merchants, He accomplished His mission which was to make them aware of how they corrupted the effect of the sacrifice. By making it too rote and too easy, the merchants lessened the awareness of guilt that was the essence of the purpose of the sacrifice. Time and human ingenuity destroyed God’s will for their repentance, for their souls. They washed away the nutrients and left only the shell of it. 

*His twelve disciples were Simon Peter, Andrew his brother, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew (also called Levi, the tax collector), James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus (also known as Judas son of James), Simon the zealot (also known as Simon the Canaanite) and Judas Iscariot. The Gospel of John names only Andrew, Peter, Philip, Judas and Nathaniel (who was not named in the synoptic Gospels.)