My first memory of hearing about Jesus was my mother reading the story of the Master throwing the money changers out of the Temple (see Matthew 21:12, 13). I couldn’t have been more than three years old, but the story made a distinct impression on me. As I pictured Jesus, scourge in hand, driving out the money changers and turning over the tables, I thought I knew where the story was going. It was going to be a parable about good manners.
But then it turned out that Jesus’ seeming rudeness had not been inappropriate. The point of the story wasn’t one of manners at all. Years later, reading the account in context, I saw that the story wasn’t about appropriate or inappropriate anger; it was about the way Christ, Truth, rebukes whatever would deny the supremacy of Spirit, divine Love. That is what Jesus was illustrating.
In his last days, Jesus rode a colt into Jerusalem and crowds hailed him as the Messiah—whom many expected to be a military figure or warrior who would raise an army and drive Roman rule out of Judea. But instead of driving out the Romans, Jesus went to the Temple and drove out those who exchanged foreign coin for the local currency and those who overcharged the poor for sacrificial animals. As he was doing it he said, “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
