When was the last time you walked into a space and thought, “This is not at all what I was expecting”? I grew up going to a historic Presbyterian church in Pontiac, MI. It is one of the oldest churches in the state. The building is magnificent. It is a gothic style church with a massive pipe organ and gorgeous stained glass at the corner of the two main roads in the downtown of the city. Any time I walk into First Presbyterian Church of Pontiac I am left with a sense of wonder and reverence.

It was a magical place to grow up in my faith.

Church for me was shaped by this building and the people found within.

When I left home I entered into a more evangelical faith paradigm. I will never forget the first time I entered into a mega church. From the outside it looked like a mall. The inside was warm and modern. They had a full cafe and bookstore. Commerce was happening everywhere I looked. Even at the end of the worship service you were encouraged to visit the bookstore and cafe.

This was a very different church than what I experienced growing up. It was not at all what I expected.

The next conversation that Jesus has in the gospel of John took place just before the Passover in Jerusalem. The conversation happens in the Temple courts and he’s not real pleased…

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person. John 2:13-25

So, we actually have a couple of interactions in the story and I think that we have to take them both together because they form one complete story.

Jesus comes up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover because that’s what a good Jewish person did. When he enters the Temple courts he apparently grew angry when he saw what was going on. There was the buying and selling of animals for the sacrifices that were to be made for the Passover. This should not be surprising because people would travel from long distances to come to the Temple for Passover. The odds of traveling with an animal over a long distance would have been difficult and costly particularly in that it also had to be without blemish. So, people would simply purchase their animal when they got to Jerusalem. These markets for a long time had been set up across the valley near the Mount of Olives. But, at this point in time (ca AD28) they had moved them into the Temple for greater convenience.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the markets. There was nothing inherently wrong with the buying and selling of animals for sacrifice. So why was Jesus so mad?

The other bit of commerce that we see happening in this story is that of money changers. Again, this was an important convenience for people who were traveling in on pilgrimage from across the Roman Empire. These pilgrims would arrive with various currencies and needed to pay their Temple tax (this helped with the upkeep of the Temple and was paid annually at Passover). They had to use the local currency of Jerusalem. Just like when we travel today in the European Union we change our currency from American dollars to the Euro. People would set up shop and for a little percentage would change the money for the pilgrims.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the money changers. So why was Jesus so mad?

He was angry because they had set up shop inside the Temple courts. The Temple was the meeting place of God and people. It was to be a place of worship, contemplation, and prayer. It was not to be a market or a place of commerce.

The sellers and money changers had desecrated this holy place, his Father’s house.

Worship and sacrifice are the point and purpose of the Temple. But, by mixing them with the buying and selling, the people had desecrated the very thing that they had come to do.

When Jesus is confronted by the leaders they ask, “Where do you get your authority?” D.A. Carson in his commentary on John makes the salient point, “First, they display no reflection or self-examination over whether Jesus’ cleansing of the temple and related charges were foundationally just. They are therefore less concerned with pure worship and a right approach to God than they are with questions of precedent and authority.”

It is almost like they kind of knew that this was messed up, but hey, it was convenient and worked. They want to know, “who do you think you are?” This almost feels like some sort of bad TV show plot. The audience knows what the twist is well before the characters in the show do.

Jesus' mysterious response of “Tear down this Temple and I will rebuild it in three days,” really throws them. Understandably. John gives us the hint, thankfully. Jesus, like he often does in John is speaking of something deeper than the immediate physical reality. He is pointing to the spiritual.

It is his resurrection that will ultimately prove his authority.

But, let’s not miss the key thing here. The underlying focus of this story is not that Jesus is against the market. Jesus is not against the money changers. Jesus is upset at the desecration of worship because it has been intermixed with commerce. Convenience and ease had taken precedence over keeping the worship in the Temple holy.

As I look around the American Christian subculture what we have built looks much more like a religious industrial complex than it does pure worship. So many of our church buildings have become littered with the equivalence of animal markets and moneychangers. Why? Convenience and control. We can control what people read if they conveniently buy only the books we stock in our bookstore inside the church (as one example).

So much of what we do, like the buyers and sellers in the Temple, are done with the best of intentions. The problem is that we don’t ask ourselves, “should we?”

More times than not, I think the answer likely is, “we should not.”

Jesus, is concerned that people worship in spirit and truth (we will hear more about that in a future conversation). This scene makes it clear that as we approach the place of worship it is time to put commerce aside so that we might enter into a holy and reverent space.