MONDAY, APRIL 6: For most of us Monday is the start of work week, school week or just the ordinary part of any week. Saturday and Sunday are the “weekend”, which often means a change in schedule. For Jews the Sabbath is honored from Friday sundown-Saturday sundown, so by the time they get to Monday activities they are already well on the way for the usual weekly schedule.
After the Sunday entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples were about the business of being in Jerusalem for the Passover. They were making preparations, visiting sites like the Temple and perhaps reconnecting with folks they knew in Jerusalem. As mentioned in the Palm Sunday conversation, one of Jesus’ Monday activities may have happened in to Temple courts that got his blood pressure elevated, his temper at his peak and gave him an unsettled spirit. Often in recalling that experience we reflect on how those people who were doing the money changing and selling the animals must have felt as they tables were overturned and the daunting whip whirling around their heads and striking with a vengeance and the escaping animals looked for every available opening. We certainly know how the temple leaders felt about the commotion and the activities. Today I invite you to think especially about what Jesus saw, what Jesus said and what Jesus did even beyond the overturning and the driving out both of the animals and the sellers.
Read Matthew 21:12-17: 12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.”
14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,
“‘From the lips of children and infants
you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?”
17 And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
It seems that when Jesus went to the Temple, he was expecting there to be a place of prayer, but instead he saw a market place. There was no solitude, there was no community united in prayer, there was no calling upon the name of God for grace or mercy, there was not prayers for the kingdom of God to come upon the earth. How ever it was that this sight pushed Jesus’ button, he did what he did not just because of what he saw, but what he did not see!
Now imagine if you had just had such a turbulent encounter with folks what state you would have been in or what would you have needed to do to recover? In vs. 14 we are told that in that moment there were people who came to Jesus for healing and that instead of attending to his own need to recover, he did the very same work that God had sent him to do and he healed those who needed it.
In this season of COVID19 there are lots of people overwhelmed by the needs of the world, who easily may desire a break for the disease and the stress, but instead of withdrawing they continue to serve and take care of those who need it most.
It is most interesting to me the role the children play in this story. They have not stopped having the parade that started on the Sunday. They are still gathering around Jesus. They are still singing the song they may have learned from their elders in the street. They are still being the children of God! When the Temple leaders complain about the children, Jesus once again comes to their defense and lifts the scripture text from Psalm 8:2: From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
Wow! What a Monday that would be! I am reminded of a hymn that I first learned as a child in Sunday School and which I often hear on Palm Sunday:
Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear, things I would ask him to tell me if he were here: scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea, stories of Jesus, tell them to me.
First let me hear how the children stood round his knee, and I shall fancy his blessing resting on me; words full of kindness, deeds full of grace, all in the lovelight of Jesus’ face.
Into the city I’d follow the children’s band, waving a branch of the palm tree high in my hand, one of his heralds, yes, I would sing loudest hosannas, “Jesus is King!”
Prayer: Lord Christ, you simply amaze us with the things you see and attention to what you do not see. Look into our lives and hearts. What do you not see, that you can help us find? Give us the ears to hear what you say to us. Amen.