In today’s Gospel reading (John 2.13-22), we are confronted with an angry Jesus, which I find rather refreshing! So often we are used to thinking of Jesus as gentle: “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” as the old hymn puts it.   If Jesus didn’t bite in this passage, he surely hissed?!  He certainly got angry. Was his anger justified?  And if he is our role model, are we also called to get angry sometimes?

Let’s think about temples for a moment. The purpose of temples around the world, no matter what faith or creed has erected them, is to provide a means and a place where people may come into contact with God, and experience his grace and his love.  Temples are places where people go to give thanks to God for all that he has done and to ask for his forgiveness of their sins. They are places where they go to hear God’s word and receive guidance for their lives.  The Temple in Jerusalem was no different. It was built to be a place where the people could go to encounter God; a special place for them to go to hear his word, experience his grace and forgiveness and to reflect upon his love and goodness.

So the Temple represented much more than a building. It represented God’s presence, his availability to all who sought him, and his love for all who called upon him.   Yet, as Jesus detected, something had happened to this good place. It had become a place where it was difficult to hear God and to experience his goodness.  The Law of Moses concerning the sacrifice of animals was still very much in operation. Most often, religious practice at the time meant you brought a young male sheep, or a kid, or a pair of pigeons to the temple. In the old rural days, this had been quite easy to do but City dwellers weren’t likely to keep those kinds of things hanging around, so the entrepreneurs of the day spotted a business opportunity!

The Temple of Herod became the Marks & Spencer’s of all Temples! Cattle and sheep and birds could be bought there and if you didn’t have temple currency available, you could exchange your Roman money for Temple money right there in the Temple’s outer courtyard. All part of the service, to make things easier for the worshippers.

We need to remember the Temple itself was relatively small. It was the colossal terrace on which it stood, the mightiest of Herod’s building works that would have overwhelmed the pilgrim by its scale - as it still does. We also need to remember that only the priest went into the Temple. Other worshippers went to the Temple, not into it. They said their prayers and offered their sacrifices outside.

So picture the scene when Jesus walks into this enormous, far from peaceful place. He sees people selling animals and birds.  He sees the moneychangers at their counters with their constantly changing rates of exchange.  He hears their noise, the shouting, the bargaining, the bragging.  He hears the cries of the animals as they’re being pushed and shoved around. The place would have been swimming with the blood and guts of slaughtered beasts, and reeking with the stench of their carcasses. It would have had all the devotional atmosphere of an abattoir!  And all this - in His Father’s House! This Temple, this House of Prayer. No wonder he gets angry.

So “making a whip of cords”, as our text says, probably from his belt, he lashes out, flailing at the merchants and the money changers, tossing over their tables and flinging their coins to the ground. He opens the cages and sets the birds free! He runs about, chasing the cattle and the sheep and all their owners from the courtyard.  And all the while shouting: “Stop this. What have you done? Get these things out of here! You’ve turned my father’s house into a market place. You’ve made it a den of thieves. Get out, get out!!……………..”

What he was doing was rejecting man-made religious practices. Oh, it was all put there, at first, with the best intentions. It was their interpretation of the requirements of the Jewish Law, at the time. It was put there to help people who came to the temple to seek God’s will for their lives and to thank him for his love. But it had all gone wrong.

So what of us, today? Perhaps this is a reminder of the need to monitor our religious practices. To make sure that our activities - worship or otherwise - in this place, help us, and others to meet with God. The litmus test must be to ask ourselves, “Do our activities point us to God?”  Those who are in Lent groups are doing this, in a way. It’s good to be meeting with each other to review our life balance of work, rest and play, seeking from Scripture whether these match God’s good intentions for us and for all that he has made.

Today’s “cleansing the temple” theme links with the ministry of healing, which is recognised as an important part of our church life together. Another question might be: are there things in our own lives or the life of our church and community that need to be driven out, because instead of bringing us closer to God they prevent us from meeting him?   Our Healing Services provide space for prayer and reflection; a place for us to articulate our deepest needs or the needs of others to God and to receive his gifts of healing, peace and forgiveness. There is a Healing Service at 6.00 pm this evening, which is open to anyone if you’d like to come along.   Jesus likened the Temple to the temple of his body, which he said would be destroyed and in three days rise again. At the time, no-one understood what he meant. It was only after the resurrection that his disciples remembered him saying this. Only then did they believe the words Jesus had spoken. Only then did they realise the only question that really matters is, where do we meet God? And the answer to that question, which John makes clear from page one of his Gospel, is (John 1.14): we meet him not in temples, but in the one who “pitched his tent among us”.

As 21st century Christians we travel again this Lenten road towards Jesus’ Passion. It is a familiar road - but familiarity can make us complacent.  Today we are reminded of Jesus’ ability to get angry - to hiss like the snake we thought about earlier! Is this a nudge to get excited about a peace or a justice issue that’s been getting under our skin? Or to stick up for others when we encounter mistreatment?  Or is it an invitation to apply the litmus test to our journeys of Christian discipleship: to cleanse our selves of any unnecessary clutter between God and us? So that, by Good Friday, any hindrances can be put to death and, by His grace and mercy, we, too, may rise again with Christ on that glorious Easter morn.