Jesus in the Temple - Reflections on Monday of Holy Week
By Richard Bryant
You know that feeling,
When you walk into a place that is supposed to be sacred,
Holy?
Quiet?
Safe?
Instead, it feels like a mall.
Or worse, a stock exchange.
That’s the temple.
That’s what Jesus walks into.
First day of the week.
The city’s swelling with people: pilgrims, seekers, the hopeful, the desperate.
They’ve come to find God.
To bring their sacrifices.
To say their prayers.
To touch the mystery.
Instead, what do they get?
Scales.
Coins.
Receipts.
Booths. Barkers. Animals in cages.
People shouting over people.
A system where some people always win
and some people always lose.
So Jesus,
He makes a scene.
He doesn’t just say, “This isn’t ideal.”
He doesn’t whisper a prayer and move on.
He doesn’t post a vague tweet.
He braids a whip.
He throws chairs.
He knocks over the ATM.
It’s loud.
It’s public.
It’s messy.
It’s not what you’d call “on brand” for Sunday School Jesus.
But it is love.
Because love—real love—is not always polite.
Love tells the truth,
Even when the truth wrecks the furniture.
Because there’s a kind of religion that’s not about God.
It’s about control.
It’s about protecting the institution.
It’s about profit margins and power structures.
And Jesus doesn’t tolerate it.
He interrupts it.
He shuts it down.
Here’s the point:
It wasn’t the Romans he flipped out on.
Not the outsiders.
Not the sinners.
It was the insiders.
The ones who had turned the temple into a turnstile.
A tollbooth.
A barrier between people and God.
Maybe.
Maybe you’ve been on the other side of that table.
Maybe you’ve felt the weight of someone else’s rules.
Maybe you’ve been told you need to clean up before you can come in.
Maybe you’ve been charged interest on grace.
Just maybe,
Jesus is flipping those tables for you, too.
Clearing out the noise.
Making space for presence.
Making room for you.
Because the temple isn’t about barriers.
It’s not about purity codes or buying your way in.
It’s not about who belongs more.
The temple was supposed to be a house of prayer.
A place of welcome.
A space for all nations
All people. All stories. All wounds. All questions.
Jesus made a scene.
Sometimes, the most sacred thing you can do
is cause holy trouble.
To say this system is not God.
To say this gate was never supposed to be here.
To say you belong, without needing to buy your way in.
May you see the tables in your own life
that need flipping.
The systems that need disturbing.
The habits that need overturning.
May you hear the sound of crashing coins,
Not as destruction,
But as the beginning of freedom.
The Rev. Richard Bryant is an elder in the North Carolina Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished with permission from his blog, Elevate the Discourse.
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