MONDAY: THE CLEANSING

Well, good morning everybody. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. And you know something? I love church. Do you agree with me? I just love church. I was just raving about this to somebody over at Loft. Here's what I love about church. I mean, where else can you go in the world where you're going to get amazing, free, pro-level music? Wasn't the music today just wonderful? And all kinds of different varieties and so on. And hopefully messages that inspire and classes that teach you, but also, you know, help when you're down and out.

You know, we have that Benevolence Fund. We help hundreds of people every single year. People every single week who need help when they can't make ends meet, free groceries at our Wednesday People's Pantry, free support groups if you're going through grief or struggles with mental illness or alcoholism or drug addiction. I mean, I could go on and on and on. I just think church, this church and also just the concept of church. I just love it. It is awesome. Except when it isn't, ask anybody who is not a Christian why they are not a Christian. And many, if not most of them will say, well, because of church. Because of churches that hurt rather than heal. Because of all the scandals. Because of Christians who don't act like Christ. Because of what I call toxic religion.

And I just want to say it's a pretty good bet that there are people in this room right now or people joining us on the live stream who have been hurt by toxic religion and toxic Christians. And as a pastor, I want to say I am so sorry. That is not what Jesus meant the church to be. In fact, in the passage of the Bible we're going to look at today, you're going to see that Jesus actually fights against toxic religion. And in fact, of all the social ills of his day, this is the one that Jesus really takes a stand on and establishes a platform for and offers something much better.

Grab your message notes. Seven Days is our series during Lent on the way up to Easter. It's a series on the final week in the life of Jesus Christ before the cross. Each week we are looking at one day in that week as told primarily in the Gospel of Mark. Last weekend it was Sunday. Jesus rides into Jerusalem. I remember massive crowds welcoming waving their national symbol, palm branches and sort of a reenactment of their last great revolution when a man named Judas Maccabee is 200 years before Christ, rides into town and goes up to the temple mount and kicks the Gentiles out. The non-Jewish Syrian Greeks. Cleanses the temple from their impurity and the people are clearly anticipating another revolution like that.

And all the while Jesus is in the center of the storm, humble and meek and riding on a donkey. Today it's Monday and Jesus goes back up onto the temple mount. And to paraphrase Jason Porterfield, say goodbye to gentle Jesus and say hello to angry Jesus. It's like in a moment he transforms from Gandhi to Bruce Lee, from Mother Teresa into Indiana Jones, you know a whip is his weapon and he has a tipper tantrum or you could say a temple tantrum. The hour of mercy has passed. The day of judgment is here. Or anyway, that's the impression you get from kind of Christian pop culture.

Just one problem with what I just described. It's all wrong. Even though that impression of what happened on Monday is pervasive. You know one of my personal interests, you probably picked it up if you've heard me speak is art history. I just love it. And I was intrigued to learn this week that every single known classic painting of the cleansing of the temple shows Jesus as violent and hurting people. Let me just show you some examples. Jacobo Bassano painted Jesus whipping a man. El Greco painted several people, writhing in pain under his whip. In this one by Giotto, it looks like Jesus is about to punch this guy in the face. Even Rembrandt, Jesus lashes people who are completely terrified by him. In every image of this event in art history, Jesus violently hurts people. That's all fiction.

Now an incident at the temple did happen. The Monday before Jesus was crucified. It's recorded in all four gospels. In not one does it say Jesus was violent. In not one does it say Jesus hurt people. In not one does it even say he was angry. So what really happened that day? There's two very important reasons that we need to figure this out. First, this image of what happened on that Monday has been used sadly by Christians throughout the centuries to justify violence. Famously, some Catholic priests justified the Crusades because hey, Jesus got violent to protect the temple mount in Jerusalem. So we should too. Let's go get violent to protect the temple mount in Jerusalem. Saddle up.

Later on, some Protestant reformers used this idea to justify killing heretics. And just this past week, I wasn't even looking for this, but I saw a Christian author saying, "Well, Jesus used violence when cleansing the temple, so," and here's a quote from him, "is civil war in America, the temple cleansing we must pass through to achieve greater national purity?" I never thought in my life I'd see a Christian leader seeming to advocate for civil war. See, this is why this is so important. If we don't understand what Jesus actually did that Monday, we can justify horrors.

Now the problem is a lot of Christians steer clear of these verses because they kind of find them awkward or embarrassing or they don't jibe with their picture of Jesus in the rest of the Gospels. And that's really too bad because when this story is clearly understood, it is beautiful, it's powerful, it is healing, and it really explains how Jesus stands against toxic religion. So let's solve the mystery and let's see what really happened. According to scripture on Monday, the week Jesus died. Three ways Jesus takes a stand against toxic faith. You can jot these down in your notes if you're joining us on the live stream. TLC.org/notes is a way that you can get those.

The first thing we see here is that Jesus sees past the externals. He sees past the externals. Look at Mark 11:12. "The next day," this is Monday, "as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry and seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf," remember that, "he went to find out if it had any fruit." Now when he reached it, he found nothing but leaves. Say that out loud with me. Nothing but leaves because it was not the season for figs. "Then he said to the tree, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And his disciples heard him say it. And it starts to die and the next day they find it completely dead." Now that's awkward. It doesn't even say it was the season for figs. So why did Jesus curse the fig tree? I mean, did he just wake up grumpy that day? Man, he was in a bad mood on Monday. For years this was on my list of things to ask Jesus about in heaven. Does anybody have a list like that because I do?

And then I discovered this. I was in Israel very recently last year at this same season Passover and our guide showed us how even before fig season, figs produce these little knobs and in Arabic they're called taksh. And you can eat these. In English they're called breba figs. You're walking past, you could snap off some taksh if you got the munchies. They fall off before the real fruit comes in anyway. So you're not like destroying the crop. And here's a little detail I learned. If a tree gets very leafy in the spring without any taksh, that's a sign there will be no figs on that tree that season because it means there are too many leaves. Fig leaves are huge. There's too many leaves and the fruit's not getting enough sunshine to develop. Too many leaves, no figs.

Now remember the context. This happens as they walk into town, the temple mount looming impressively in front of them and it's just had a makeover on an awesome scale by King Herod. The first century writer Josephus says quote, "It was covered with plates of gold and at sunrise reflected back fiery splendor and made those who looked upon it to turn their eyes away as they would at the sun's own rays. It was super impressive. It was gold plated. It had 10,000 priests ministering 24/7. And Jesus looks at all of this and says, "Yeah, all leaves, no fruit." All that activity, all that beauty masked corruption. See, remember what the temple was supposed to represent, kind of the bridge between heaven and earth, the place of God's presence and the sacrifices there, the means of atonement. But that beauty was getting lost in this maze of distraction and corruption. All leaves, no fruit.

Now, how do I know that's the point Jesus was making with the victory? How do I know he didn't just want to snack and he got mad? Well, Jesus, and he does this whole day as you will see, he is reenacting a scene from one of the Hebrew prophets, in this case from the prophet Micah, who wrote this in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, Micah 7. He says, and the prophets always did this street theater, right? You see all of them, God calls them or they just do it on their own. They like, they walk into town in some crazy costume or they do some crazy thing to get attention for their prophetic utterance. And remember, prophet in the Bible doesn't usually mean somebody who foretells the future like it does now in English. It means somebody who's speaking the words of God, right? Like a zealous teacher.

And so they do these kind of object lessons to get people's attention. So Micah wanders into town and he says, "What misery is mine! I'm like one who gathers summer fruit. There's no cluster of grapes to eat. None of the early figs that I crave." And then he uses this as a metaphor, kind of a parable for how beautiful yet corrupt the temple is in his day. He says, "The ruler demands gifts. The judge accepts bribes. The powerful dictate what they desire. They all conspire together. But the day of your watchman has come, the day God visits you." Like you're not getting away with it. God's going to come and visit you. And Jesus is recalling this parable from Micah and saying, "This is that day."

Remember Jesus told us, "Beware of false prophets, toxic religion, false teachers. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ravenous wolves. But the good news is he told us how to spot purveyors of toxic religion. You'll recognize them by their fruit. Not their skill, not their talent, not the charisma, not the ratings, not their number of followers, not how cool they dress, not how funny they are, not how intense they are. That's all leaves." Yet that's exactly how we judge whether or not, "Oh, we love a speaker or a teacher or somebody, some influencer." Jesus is saying, "Are they showing the fruit of the spirit, love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, gentleness?" Man, we would avoid so much hurt from toxic preachers if we followed this teaching. Jesus sees past the externals.

Now, Jesus is just getting started. All this is foreshadowing. Here we go. On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were buying and selling there. More on that later. He overturned the tables of the money changers, what? And the seats of those selling doves, what? And would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. What is this all about? Well, to help you figure it out, here's a model of the temple courts in Jesus' day. And the place he enters was known as the court of the Gentiles, kind of a plaza. And Gentile is the Jewish word for a non-Jew, a foreigner, in other words, this was the one place up there that the Gentiles, the Romans, Greeks, Africans, Arabs, could come and worship.

Now, here's the thing. The original temple design way back in the Old Testament did not include a separate court for foreigners. Everybody wanted to come up to the temple. They were all together, except for the priests behind the holy place. Historians say that Gentiles became segregated because in those days, the days of Jesus, the first century, some devout men had become increasingly focused on purity laws. And Gentiles, by their very nature, were considered pure. I mean, who knew what these Gentiles had just been up to? So the barriers went up. And this was very strict. There were numerous signs along the barrier. Archaeologists found a couple of them, like this one. Jesus would have seen this sign that day. And I've actually seen this one in the Istanbul Museum and taken a picture of it. And I even actually have touched it, but don't tell security.

But here's the translation of this sign. "No foreigner is to enter within the barrier around the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be himself responsible for his ensuing death." And we'd like to welcome you to the after party. If you survive, I mean, man, Jesus would have seen these signs. This was the sign that was up there in Jesus' day. Now watch this. In Jesus' day, the Gentiles were squeezed out even from their own area. So already they're segregated, but then they're further squeezed out by merchants selling animals for the temple sacrifices at vastly inflated prices. In fact, I found that one rabbi a few years after Jesus said the price of doves or pigeons was inflated there, not double, not triple, not quadruple the going price, 100 times the going price for the convenience of getting a dove up on the temple mount. It's kind of like buying french fries at a Giants game.

But anyway, and they also, there were these money changing booths. You could only spend special temple money on the temple mount. So you had to get your normal money exchanged. And of course, that was also a money-making racket. Now check this out. Historians say that in Jesus' childhood, this animal market was on the way into town and the Pharisees ran it. But then in Jesus' adulthood, Caiaphas, that's the high priest who would condemn Jesus to death later, noticed how much money the Pharisees were making and put his own animal market right inside the temple courts. That was an innovation. And one historian I read this week believes Caiaphas made that change right around the year. This story takes place in the Bible.

So Jesus walks up. The temple leadership's already corrupt and now he sees this innovation of Caiaphas. There's all the animals up there where at least the Gentiles had even if it was segregated had some place to worship and Jesus says enough. That brings me to the whip. Only the Gospel of John mentions it and John says Jesus made it when he got up there out of cords, out of materially found there. Now the word for cords is the same word used for reeds or bristles or maybe hemp. So it was not a leather Indiana Jones style whip. It was a switch that Jesus was using to herd animals, not hit people. I mean if Jesus had been truly violent like in the pictures, do you really think the Roman soldiers would have just looked on passively? No, they would have instantly arrested him. The enemies of Jesus wouldn't have been looking for a reason to arrest him for five more days.

And not one of the false witnesses at his trial says Jesus was violent. They say things like he claims to be king and he claims he's going to destroy the temple but nobody said and he used a whip on us because he didn't. He used it to herd the animals out. So what I'm saying is the zeal Jesus demonstrates here does not justify injuring or killing anyone because no one was injured or killed. What's happening is Jesus sees people who really want to find a way to God being pushed away by the barrier, then pushed away by the animal stalls and then pushed away by the money changers, booths barrier after barrier after barrier and Jesus is making room for the excluded. That's what Jesus does to toxic religion. He blows it up, makes room for the excluded and he himself makes this point very clear, next verse, and as he taught them, now let me just stop there for just a second.

This is kind of an important phrase too because he does all of that. He doesn't turn over all the tables and then start a riot. You know, come on everyone. Let's get the merchants. Don't let them escape. He stops and teaches. It's another sign that he wasn't raging, right? It's sort of like now that I've got your attention and this is very very relevant right now in this cultural moment. When people on the left and the right are being radicalized and excusing violence. And I've heard him use this as an excuse. This story, well, Jesus did it. Jesus was not radicalizing people for hostile mob action. Again, this was like a piece of street theater, a one-man demonstration, just like the prophets in the Old Testament did.

And after that riveting attention-getter, he teaches forcefully, intensely, passionately, with conviction, but not violently. And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written, 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?'" And Jesus here is quoting another Jewish prophet, Isaiah 56. God says, centuries before Jesus, "I will also bless the foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord, who serve him and love his name. I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and I will fill them with joy in my house of prayer. My temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations." And that means all ethnicities, all races, all languages, all tribes, all countries, I'm going to make it a house of prayer for all nations for the sovereign Lord who brings back the outcasts of Israel, says, "I will bring others too, besides my people Israel."

From the very beginning, the message was not just meant as a national message. It was an international message. And so what I'm saying is, Jesus goes up to the temple mount and he does the opposite of what many people were expecting. He doesn't drive the Gentiles out. He makes room for more Gentiles. Jesus makes room for the excluded. And so here's the question, am I joining Jesus in his mission? Am I building bridges instead of barriers? Because listen, just like then, the human tendency of religious people, and I would say all people, is even if we mean well to segregate and silo ourselves into increasingly pure groups the way we see it, kind of the right ones, people just like me. And throughout his ministry, Jesus does the exact opposite. And that's what he's doing here too, with this big demonstration.

And so how can we be like him? A few years ago, I emceed a panel here at TLC on race and religion. And there were black and Asian and Hispanic and Jewish participants on the panel. And one man, Jewish man, brilliant cardiologist, educated at Oxford and Princeton told me this. René, he said, "It was anti-Semitism that I encountered as a Jewish man from Christians that kept me from even examining the claims of Christ for 25 years." He said, "I used to quote Gandhi, 'I love your Christ, but I hate your Christians.'" But then he said one man, one guy, a professor at Princeton who was a Christian, invited him to dinners with his family, invited him to concerts, and eventually invited him to church. And he told me, "René, I am a Jewish Christ follower today because one Christian took the time to build long-term bridges over that barrier."

So can you do that? Can I do that? Build bridges and not barriers. It takes intentionality. It doesn't happen by accident. It takes time. It takes relationship. But that's our mission. This is why God leaves us on planet Earth after we're saved, and we're not just kind of like raptured instantly to be reconcilers, barrier-breakers like Jesus, not to withdraw into our silos. This is not easy. It is not always comfortable, but this is our calling. So Jesus, when it comes to toxic religion, he sees past the externals. He makes room for the excluded. And finally, Jesus defends the exploited. Defends the exploited. He said, "My house is to be a house of prayer for all nations." And then he adds, "But you have made it a den of robbers."

And here for the third time in a row, Jesus is quoting an Old Testament prophet, first Micah, then Isaiah, and now Jeremiah 7:11, who says, "Don't you yourselves admit that this temple, which bears my name, has become a den of robbers? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the Lord, have spoken." What he's saying is these toxic religious leaders think they're getting away with it, but they will not escape the judgment of God. I was watching a documentary about animal babies. It's the cutest thing. They showed mamas guarding their little ones, like this grizzly bear mama, guarding her cubs, or this cheetah mama, guarding her young against a pack of hyenas that was circling around them. And look, you can just look at the look in her eyes. "You are not touching my babies." Well, I imagine that was kind of the look in Jesus' eye, right? He's not violent, but he's fierce. He's intense. He's zealous. "Hands off my babies!" Because he was fighting a predator.

They were predatory. Again, Josephus, the first century Jewish writer, had very harsh things to say about the high priest back then. He wrote, "The high priest was a great hoarder up of money. His servants took away the tithes by violence, beating up anybody who wouldn't hand them over." Those are the people who were violent on the Temple Mount, not Jesus. "Beating up anybody who wouldn't hand them over." And nobody could stop them, so that elderly priests supported from those tithes died for lack of food. And Jesus sees this kind of corruption, and he says, "You're a den of robbers, and God's going to judge you." Now, how do you think the high priest took Jesus' criticism? Look at the next verse. "The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching."

Let me ask you a couple of questions about this verse that are very important for a couple of reasons. First, who was looking to kill Jesus specifically? What's your answer? Shout it out. The chief priests and the teachers of the law. Who was amazed at Jesus and loved what Jesus was saying? The crowd. Here's why this is so important. For centuries, anti-Semitic Christians have blamed the Jews for killing Jesus. That is unbiblical, unhistorical, and unholy. The vast majority of the Jewish crowd loved Jesus. He was saying out loud what they were seeing and thinking. It was the corrupt, elite leadership class, and then when eventually, by the end of the week, the Romans, who had it in for him. Very, very important to make that distinction.

Then secondly, yes, Jesus criticized that leadership very deservedly. But did you notice he never, ever shamed the crowd? Every time he looks at a crowd, Jesus is described as having compassion on them and seeing them as harassed and helpless and seeing them as like sheep without a good shepherd. Here's why this is a very important example for us. Please listen to this. You and I might see people that we know, friends, family members, neighbors, following a toxic ideology, maybe a cult or an abusive church or some political ideology that you think has been radicalized, left or right. If you shame them, attack them on social media or in person, you only alienate them and push them further and further toward the weirdos and give them no way out.

To the crowd, you need to have a posture of grace like Jesus. And here's what this looks like. I was listening to a woman who was raised in a very cult-like church, the infamous West Borough Baptist Church. Does that name ring a bell? That's this tiny cultish church that gets a lot of national attention because they often show up at the funerals, for example, of people who die of HIV/AIDS and picket those funerals with signs that say things like "God hates gays" and "This is God's judgment on you." And they also go around picketing rock concerts saying, "God hates" with signs that say "God hates sin" and "You will be judged by God and you are going to hell" and so on.

Well, they were out picketing at some rock concert the day after their founding pastor died. And this woman that I heard speak who is a part of that church sees a sign held up by Christian counter-protesters on the other side of the street. And these people are not yelling back. They're not screaming back. They're very calm. And the sign they were holding up changed her life. Would you like to see their sign? "Sorry for your loss." And that act of grace on the part of those people treating even hate-filled protesters like human beings was a crack that let in the light. She said, "For the first time, I saw what grace looks like." The way to reach people and even de-radicalize people is through empathy and love. If you just yell back at them, they're going to be pushed further away.

The leaders needed to be confronted. The followers needed to be loved. And that's exactly what Jesus does. So verse 19, "The sun is setting. When evening came, Jesus and His disciples went out of the city." Sneak preview. On Tuesday, Jesus goes back, back to where they want to kill Him, back to where they hate Him, and He deliberately engages in dialogue with the leaders. He doesn't just yell at them and criticize them and go, "My work is done." He goes back and for a whole day engages in dialogues and debates and conversations. And He might say, "Well, that didn't do any good because the chief priest still wanted to kill them." Yeah, the chief priest, Caiaphas, and his father-in-law, Ananias, as you will see later. But the Bible says in Acts 6:7, "Many of the priests ended up being Jesus' followers, and many of the ruling elite too, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea." So what Jesus says on Tuesday actually persuades some of them. Wouldn't you like to know what it was? You'll see it next week.

But look at these three points. I really hope that if you've been trapped in a life-draining version of Christianity, you will hear Jesus saying there's something better than that for you. Remember we said the temple was supposed to represent the bridge between heaven and earth and the means of atonement and the symbol that binds people together. That was the temple's purpose. But now in Jesus we have all these things, and that is the moment we remember at communion. Now let me close with this. I need to remember that this story tells me if I ever feel pushed away by religion, Jesus welcomes me in. He makes room for me.

Emily Elizabeth Anderson posted her own story online about leaving a very legalistic church. She said, "Instead of a stream of living water, my faith had become a barren wilderness slowly choking out every bit of life within me. Instead of freedom, I was being suffocated by my perfectionism. I finally found the courage to start attending a new church I'd visited a few times before, but I was too terrified to continue as it didn't line up with my extreme fundamentalist standards, but oh my goodness, as I attended each week I heard a gospel of grace preach for the first time. I began to understand why the gospel means good news. I learned that I have a father who loves me unconditionally. He doesn't get mad at me when I wrestle through my faith and ask questions, and I learned that I am enough not because of anything I do, not for following a legalistic list of do's and don'ts. I am enough because Jesus is enough. He didn't just come to reform the temple. He came to replace the temple as the means of atonement, as our path to God. She says, "This is freedom. This is good news. This is amazingly beautiful." Amen?

Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? Father, thank you so much for delivering us from human toxic religion. May our faith not just be about externals. May we bear true fruit. May we build bridges and not barriers. God revive us. Do whatever it takes to transform us as people and us as a church into the kind of place Jesus you came to start. Detoxify us. We invite you, turn over tables, drive out distractions, expose corruption, prune branches, do whatever it takes to revive us so all people can worship you here. That's what we want at Twin Lakes. That's what we long for. That's what we pray for here and at all the churches in Santa Cruz and around the world. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.