“Oh my God, what happened?” I’ve heard this phrase come out of my mother’s mouth multiple times in my life. I think I hit the peak of hearing it when I was in college. At one point it seemed that every time I called her it was to inform her that there was an accident – whether it was a broken ankle while surfing over spring break, a dislocated shoulder from snowboarding down the stairs, or a herniated disc from an auto accident days before graduation.
I think I first discovered that I was accident-prone when I was seven. My dad had just told me to clean my room. I decided to start with the towering bookshelf in my room that reached for the ceiling. It easily was two of me.
So I started ripping everything off of the shelves that I could reach… and then realized the only way to clear the shelves that I couldn’t reach was… to climb.
I reached for a high shelf to grab with my hand as I placed my foot on a lower shelf. Pulling all 50lbs of me I climbed to the top like Spiderman. And as I started to clear off the very top the bookcase I noticed it started to rock, and wobble, and teeter…
And it lost its balance… and so did I. I fell to the floor with my back against the carpet. When I opened my eyes all that I could see was a monstrously tall dark wood construction picking up speed as it came crashing down onto my head.
My head broke the fall of a solid oak bookshelf. My forehead split open… you could see my skull. I was told there was quite a mess. Ironic because what I desired was cleanliness.
God desires cleanliness too. And ironically a long time ago that required a mess. Back then the way to be clean was to make a mess. A bloody mess. One that you would alert the animal rights activists for.
You see, there weren’t always Christians. Christian means ‘little Christ’ and Christ is not Jesus’ last name it’s his title. Messiah, Son of God. And so what about all the people who lived in B.C?
What about all the people who lived before Christ?
Before Jesus came people who chose to follow God were just “Children of God” or “followers of God” and in order to follow God you would follow the law also known as the Pentateuch, or the Torah.
The law is filled with the different ways to become clean, which was necessary for walking with God. One of these ways is by killing animals in place of yourself. Because if there was sin, there had to be death. God is the definition of perfection and to accept anything less than that is denying who he is.
If you had a glass of water and dropped even the smallest amount of gasoline in it. It’s not drinkable because it has become contaminated. Sin contaminates God. God is pure and receives clean things. You become clean by making a bloody mess as an animal dies in your place.
You would buy or bring your animal to the place of worship. This was called the Beit YHWH (translated as ‘House of God’) aka: the temple.
And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.
When Jesus reached Jerusalem there was a big party and it was called Passover. This party brought between 300-400,000 people into Jerusalem.
And when Jesus entered the temple he began to “drive out” those who sold. The Greek word is ekballo which means forcing to leave. This is the same word used to describe Jesus driving out demons from the afflicted. He used a scourge, which is like a whip used for punishment to drive out the sheep and oxen being sold for sacrifices.
He did this because the animals were being sold at outrageous prices. It’s kind of like when you go the movie theatre to see a movie and you’re forced to buy their bucket for $10.50. Only a movie theatre can get away with that. And only the temple could get away with this.
When entering the temple you had to pay a tax and use the appropriate monies. Much like the issue of pesos, eros, and the dollar. When they exchanged currencies people were being cheated. So Jesus knocked the moneychangers coins onto the floor and flipped their tables over. This is uncharacteristic of Jesus thus far. Angry Jesus!? We don’t like Angry Jesus!
I think he was angry, but still in control. I don’t think his pigment turned green and he hulked up and ripped right out of his man-dress. I think he experienced controlled anger.
The temple was being used for something other than it was created for. Jesus drove out what contaminated the temple. He cleanses it. Because Jesus cleansed where God dwelt. And Jesus cleanses where God dwells. Some people believe this old temple is being replaced by a new temple. The Bible explains that he’s building a new temple and we are it. God lives inside of all of us.
Do you ever feel like what you’re doing is something other than what you were created for?
Jesus cleansing the house of God has major implications of who Jesus is saying he is. He’s claiming to have the authority to cleanse God’s house, he’s claiming to be God in the flesh. He’s claiming to be the one that all these dead animals were killed for.
This would be the equivalent of someone marching into your workplace and claiming to be the expert at whatever you do and tell you that you don’t measure up. In fact they were going to come in and take over because you weren’t good enough.
Some people don’t believe. Some people choose not to believe. Because when you’re faced with the offending reality, you have to make a choice as to how you will respond to it.
What will you do with your choice?
So my dad came rushing into my bedroom, he threw the bookshelf off of my head. I couldn’t feel anything because I was in shock. I could hear my mom, “Oh my God what happened?”
He wrapped me in a blanket as he ran next door to have a neighbor drive us to the hospital. I barely remember climbing into that 1970’s light brown Buick. The ER doctor took me right away into the operation room for stitches.
They put a sheet over my face with a hole exposing the wound. As they started to stitch I asked my dad why they were sowing a sheet to my head. The doctor laughed at my naive question. Less than an hour later I walked out of the hospital looking like the spawn of Frankenstein with stitches on a diagonal across my forehead.
On the way home my dad asked me what I was doing climbing that bookshelf. I told him that I was cleaning my room like he told me to. He said,
“But there’s some things you just can’t do because you’re too little. He said,
“I can see what you can’t see”
“I can reach what you can’t reach.”
“I would’ve helped you, all you had to do was ask.”