Holy week; The Cleansing of the temple

When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling.  “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
  Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him.  Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. ~Luke 19:45-48

I want to look at a collection of events that took place in Holy week, to get myself, and hopeful any readers, into a place that is a little closer to Jesus.

I want to look at an aspect to this story that I have never noticed before.

Jesus' passion rises up and he is incensed. The insults that fall on God (that his father's house of prayer should be turned into a place of refuge for those ripping off and exploiting the poor) fall on him (Ps 69:9) and zeal for God's House consumes him. This is not some measured politacally charged symbolic action. He is enraged. The rage that he unleashes was clearly frightening because he succeeded in driving out a hoard of moneychangers without any interference from the temple guards or the priests. Of course at this point he is still riding a wave of popularity and expectation. But the passion is real. Real and all consuming.

What really got him into 'trouble' was not his action against the money changers (which were tolerated as a sort of necessary evil) but the claims that this was his Father's house (and that God was his Father, the claim that ultimately got him summarily condemned). He did not have any authority to do what he did, not in the eyes of the Jewish law at least.

But Jesus, at the start of Holy week has come to claim his own. He has 'Set his face like flint'. He is all business.

If it were just an act, If he were just making a token point, he simply would have moved on, the moneychangers would have waited to see if the coast were clear and come scurrying back to resume their operations.

But Jesus taught every day at the temple. He was going nowhere.

I admire the Jesus we see here so much. Bold, strong, convicted, righteous and Just. And determined, defiant of all the obstacles.

In earlier instances where he was exposed to the threat of death he simply slipped away through the crowd, unnoticed.

How often have we wanted to do that when times got hard and we started taking flack.

But there is a time to stand up. There is a time to be counted amongst the righteous. there is a time to set our faces like flint, no matter what the cost.

Are we seizing hold of those moments? The moments where our actions will cause us to take hold of that for which he took hold of us? Sometimes we have to sit on the promises of God and say 'I am going nowhere'.

Sometimes we have to allow our passion for God to supersede our own inclinations of cowardice. I don't think that this kind of zeal measures out the consequences. It sees the injustice, it sees the opposition, it sees the sin and it takes it on, head on.