It may well have been the final straw. We are in the temple. Jesus goes in to worship and he can barely get through the animal vendors, the moneychangers, and the temple administrators who are counting up the profits. All of them are making a killing on the poor pilgrims who are coming to the Passover rituals in Jerusalem. The temple is no more a place of prayer and adoration and worship and confession and thanksgiving. It has been taken over by money transactions, greed, bartering, trading. It is no more a temple dedicated to worship. It is now a market-place-bazaar.
Jesus loses it. He starts to overturn all of the tables. Mayhem ensues. Animals go berserk. Coins are rolling everywhere. The temple officials gather to condemn Jesus—they have had enough and he, Jesus, must go. Too much is at stake for him to continue.
Jesus overturns the tables. He did it then that day in Jerusalem at the temple and he does it now. What he did that day is a metaphor or symbol of what he still does. He overturns our tables when we turn our own inner temples into practices that undermine our faith, that drain our souls, that corrupt our minds, and that shrink our hearts.
Jesus got very angry when he entered the temple that day. Behind and beneath all of his fierce anger is his love. He wants nothing to distract us, to rob us, to compromise our temple. He cleansed the temple in Jerusalem on that day. How might he right now be trying to cleanse you? How might he right now be overturning some of your own tables? How might he right now be calling you to true worship and adoration and prayer?
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