This week’s readings are all from Mark chapter 11. Click here to see a full listing of each day’s reading and the full chapter of Mark 11. Full readings of day’s smaller segments of the readings will be posted on this site during the week.
Today’s Reading
Then they came to Jerusalem. Jesus entered the temple area and began to drive out those who were selling and buying in the temple courts. He turned over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. Then he began to teach them and said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have turned it into a den of robbers!” The chief priests and the experts in the law heard it and they considered how they could assassinate him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed by his teaching. When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. (Mark 11.15–19 NET)
Hmmm…is this the 100% human Jesus or the 100% God that gets angry…I am not sure it makes a difference as they were a “den of thieves and robbers” within God’s house…but hmmm
It cannot be expressed enough how dangerous what Jesus did in the Temple was...except that we know it ultimately gets him killed. There is a long tradition among the Hebrew prophets, as well as some contemporaries of Jesus, of speaking against Jerusalem and against the Temple: the emptiness of superficial worship there, and, more specifically, the corruption and injustice of the leaders. Jesus is also challenging everything at a volatile time in Judean history. Rebellions and brigands have started in or used the Temple area as a base. Roman soldiers were stationed just a few hundred yards away in the Antonia Fortress and patrolled the area closely during Jewish Holy Days.
It would take a long post to cover all of the political and cultural dynamics happening in these few verses. It is amazing. And, for Jesus, it is a defining moment leading to his death.
Thank you for the visuals yesterday, so good! @Travis Bruno I also appreciated what you wrote so much. This is such a defining moment, wow. I hadn't thought of it like that. I know Jesus was doing everything upside down and different than anyone would have thought or imagined, but thanks for all that explanation Jimmy. Helps me understand it a little better even. I also think it helps me understand why Jesus was so very upset, without fully knowing all the cultural and political dynamics.
I really do appreciate all the description both from Jimmy and from Travis, it helped me really contemplate more on this moment. Not to take away from anything anyone else has already commented, and of course impossible to know, but as the son of God, as the lamb who was set apart before His birth into this world, knowing everything that has come before and what is coming in the next few days...along with the talented but still human companions with Him. Is it wrong to wonder if what we are seeing is actual emotion here from Jesus? I think we all wonder if God gets sad/angry/frustrated with us as we keep on just "doin human", and when I read this I wonder how much in common with the dad who loves his kids sooo much, but still has to go to the garage or take a walk alone, and then comes back inside and hugs everyone and says I love you after the emotion has passed.
Posted by: @silverfx23
Is it wrong to wonder if what we are seeing is actual emotion here from Jesus?
I don't think it's wrong to wonder that at all. I think Jesus clearly did have emotions, just like human beings do and just like the God of the scripture does. The God of the Bible has joy, hopes things, gets frustrated, gets angry, is sad and laments, and even has outbursts of emotion that has pull-back and regret later. All of that is in the scripture, but I think it makes us uncomfortable, and so we don't lean into those scriptures very often.
The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote that the Hebrew prophets felt the pathos of God and that it was often indistinguishable from their own, that God choose them in part because they were wired, in their own personalities, to feel the emotions and thoughts of God—thoughts and emotions that God wanted expressed through them to and for the sake of God's people. In some sense, Jesus is the ultimate Prophet, as the image of God made flesh, expressing in words and actions the mind and emotions of God.
@jimmy @silverfx23 That was definitely something I think I faced for the first time, when we went through the OT a couple years ago… and it is odd to think about.
But just like Jesus’s teachings often have to do more with the heart than the action… I think I am starting to see our emotions & reactions the same way. Our anger at injustice, our despair at the brokenness of the world, the tendency for our hope to wane when what should be fails to be… our emotions are also part of the image of God. We can find ourselves in an “accurate” place in our emotions sometimes, compelled to action out of alignment with the way God sees things. And of course, we often lose touch with the reason for our emotions, as God designed, and get caught up in selfishness and deceitfulness because of our flesh and the way the Adversary works against the Kingdom.
when I read this I wonder how much in common with the dad who loves his kids sooo much, but still has to go to the garage or take a walk alone, and then comes back inside and hugs everyone and says I love you after the emotion has passed.
I think that is a great analogy for what God does in scripture.