Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten JourneyMuestra

Holy Monday, April 15

Mark 11:12–23

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

On His way to the Temple Jesus cursed the fig tree for failing to bear fruit — symbolic of Jerusalem’s failure to produce the fruit of fidelity and justice. In the Temple, Jesus staged a bit of prophetic theater, symbolically destroying the temple and borrowing the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who six centuries earlier denounced worshipers who practiced injustice as self-deceived robbers who thought that the Temple gave them some kind of magical protection from the judgment of God. Just as Jeremiah predicted the destruction of the first Temple, now Jesus is predicting the destruction of the second Temple. More than anything else, it was this interference with the Temple operation that motivated the chief priests to accelerate the plot to murder Jesus. This is religion at its worst.