Cleaning House
March 10, 2024
Matthew 21:12-17
My house shall be called a house of prayer,
but you are making it a den of robbers.
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After Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, what we celebrate as Palm Sunday, the first thing he does is to go to the Temple - the very thing you would expect the Messiah to do. However, what is about to happen is absolutely unexpected.
Rather than taking charge of what is going on in the Temple, Jesus turns it upside down. He chases out those who operated for financial gain rather than commending them for the services they offered worshippers, he calls them robbers. The Chief priests and teachers of the law are indignant, Jesus is disrupting the systems they created and maintain, the way things had always been.
The blind and the lame who spent their time outside the temple, those who begged from others on their way to the temple, follow Jesus into the temple and Jesus cures them. The children are singing of the Messiah "Hosanna to the Son of David" but the religious elite are aghast.
The insiders have the tables turned on them and the outsiders are blessed.
