In the Temple – Take Two

Different rulers who visited the temple had different reactions. Alexander the Great didn’t enter the Holy or the Holy of Holies; instead, he paid for a sacrifice that the high priest, Jaddas, offered on Alexander’s behalf. Nearly a hundred and twenty years later, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, another Greek, entered the Holies and sacrificed a pig on the altar. Another hundred and sixty years later, Pompey entered the temple and didn’t desecrate it but instructed the high priests to resume their sacrifices. Nearly one hundred years later, Jesus entered the temple, looked around in amazement, and left (Mark 11:11).

The following day, however, he returned with a vengeance.

“He threw the merchants and buyers out of the temple. He tossed away the tables of the money changers and the seats of the merchants. He freed the doves/pigeons. And he wouldn’t let anyone with pots and pans travel through the temple.” (11:15–16)

Instead, he taught them, saying,

“Is it not written that my house is called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a cave of thieves/robbers/insurrectionists.” (11:17)

Isaiah predicted a time when the temple would no longer be a possession or place of worship for the Israelites but for the foreigners (or Gentiles) and eunuchs (the mutilated ones) – who were once forbidden to enter the temple (Isa 56:3–6). Through Isaiah, YHWH said,

“I will lead them to my holy mountain and invite them into my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. My house will be called a house of prayer for the nations.” (Isa 56:7)

Jesus grieved that instead of the temple being a place for anyone from any nation – even those mutilated, the eunuchs, and considered “unworthy of God’s covenantal blessing – could come in and pray, it had become a merchants’ place, a mall, a hawker center, and a place to find a bargain! Jeremiah predicted it would happen (7:11), and it had happened.

The chief priests and the scribes heard of Jesus’s commotion and trouble-making, and they sought to kill him (Mark 11:18a). In their minds, he was a troublemaker, an anti-institutionalist. But they were smart – they feared the people who were amazed at Jesus’s teaching (11:18b). After a long day of teaching, Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem (11:19).

A few years later, a eunuch was reading Isaiah, very near this passage – Isaiah 53 (Acts 8:27–36). He didn’t understand what he was reading. Just then, God brought him Philip, who explained that the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 was Jesus, and the time had come for Gentiles and eunuchs like him to come to God’s temple and pray. That eunuch gladly accepted the message, took baptism, and went away to Ethiopia happy and rejoicing in the Lord. He, too, entered God’s temple, the house of prayer, and worshipped God.

Institutional religions and faith are different. Whereas Judaism became an institutional religion, Jesus sought a place of worship where anyone could approach God in faith and pray. Sometimes, our churches can become religious institutions rather than places of worship for anyone who seeks God. May we always keep it a place of worship, not a den of thieves.