Not long ago, an unsolicited “junk fax” came in and caught my attention:

After learning that this day-long workshop would only cost $395 (+GST), I channelled my anger appropriately by putting the fax into the recycling box!  However, it did connect me to a recent experience of anger: the sense of fear, revulsion, sadness, and yes, anger I felt when I read about the 21 Coptic Christians who had been captured by ISIS in Libya and who were beheaded along the shores of the Mediterranean, as a warning to the “nation of the Cross.”  But beyond sharing my sadness and outrage with a small group of friends or through social media, what could I do?

“Tolerance for diversity” has been a largely positive achievement of our modern, secular, pluralistic societies.  Yet at the same time, the dangerous underbelly of the “permissive society” is the loss of our moral bearings, our capacity to be outraged at actions which offend against human dignity: what Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI has called “the dictatorship of relativism.”  What, if any, are the limits of tolerance?  Must we accept everything that goes on around us – in our families, our social circles, our nation – in the name of “tolerance”?

Is there anything in the world that should legitimately elicit from us a response of “righteous anger”?  Even in our permissive society, there is almost universal recognition of the absolute unacceptability of say, child sexual abuse, or violent forms of pornography.  But beyond this, almost everything else seems up for grabs.  So “where do we draw the line?” Adultery? Polygamy? Massage parlours and legalized prostitution, re-baptized as “the sex trade”?  What about the widespread practice of abortion, and the current turn to euthanasia and assisted suicide – and the clear intention of government to force doctors to refer for these services, overriding their rights of conscientious objection?  What of the trafficking of women and children into forced prostitution, slave labour, child armies, and terrorist cells?  Or the horrific persecution of Christians and other religious minorities – not only in the so-called Islamic State, but in Saudi Arabia and North Africa, in China and North Korea?  The destruction of the environment and exploitation of vulnerable peoples engaged in by Canadian-based mining companies throughout the developing world?  What of the disappearance and violent deaths of so many aboriginal women and children?

There are so many examples of injustice – some global or national, some very close to home that we may even have observed personally.  What it boils down to is this: Are there not situations in this world that should arouse our anger?  So much so that we cannot sit passively and just let them happen?  So much so that our righteous anger stirs us to action, to say “no more”, to actually do something about it?

This is the situation Jesus confronts in the Gospel today.  We meet today not “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”, but a passionate, angry Jesus, aflame with zeal for his Father’s house.  This isn’t just a case of Jesus having a bad day and “losing it”, an indication that he needed to shell out 395 shekels for a good “anger management seminar.”  In fact, one thing the Gospels – especially the Gospel of John – make quite clear is that Jesus knows exactly what he is doing and why he is doing it.  But we who read this text 2000 years later may wonder: Why was Jesus so upset by the money-changers and merchants in the Temple?  Why did he take it so personally?  What was this “zeal for his Father’s house” that stirred him to action, turning him seemingly into a one-man SWAT team: a fire-breathing, whip-wielding zealot?

Jesus’ gesture is more than simply a legitimate critique of the unholy alliance between religion and worldly commerce.  John’s Gospel understands this event not just as a statement about the Temple and what should go on within it, but about Jesus’ own identity.  In other words, the Temple is purified not primarily by the chasing out of the money-changers and animal-sellers, but by the very presence of Jesus. His Body is the new Temple, the new dwelling-place of the Holy One.  And what makes Jesus angry, first and foremost, is anything that violates human dignity, that destroys that Temple which is the human person – body, mind, and spirit.

To properly appreciate the symbolic depth of Jesus’ gesture here, it helps us to understand why the Temple was so central to the identity of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus.  The Temple carried a deep religious significance.  It was far more than just “a beautiful building”, an inspiring place of worship. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the Tablets of the Law, was enshrined in the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem. Today’s reading from Exodus presents us with the original gift of the Law to Israel by God, summed up in the “Ten Words” (deka-logos).  We know these as The “Ten Commandments,” but they were more than mere legal prescriptions.  They were God’s gift to Israel, spelling out in the form of a moral code the concrete implications of the covenant bond guiding Israel’s relation first with God (1st Tablet: 1-4), and outlining the right relations to prevail among God’s people (2^nd Tablet: 5-10).

Throughout their time in the desert, the Ark was a tent, carried from place to place, symbolizing God’s presence with a nomadic, wandering people. Eventually, when they settled in the Promised Land, and had become a powerful kingdom, a tent was no longer seen as “good enough”: the construction of a magnificent Temple in Jerusalem – envisioned by David, completed by Solomon – was seen to be necessary.  Under Solomon and his descendants, Temple worship in Jerusalem became a central aspect of Israel’s life.  What followed eventually was corruption, the division of the nation, and eventually, a succession of invasions, conquests, deportations, and returns.  At various times, the Temple was sacked, desecrated, destroyed even; for lengthy periods of time, no worship or sacrifice could be offered there.  Most recently, the Temple had been enlarged and redecorated by King Herod – a task that took 46 years, at a tremendous cost, both financial and human, given Herod’s violent, tyrannical personality. 

Huge, white, gleaming, visible from all over Jerusalem, the Temple was the religious, political and economic center of Jerusalem.  The people took pride in its beauty, but they feared the religious and political authority it embodied. And much as Rome or Lourdes or Mecca are economically dependent on religious tourists and pilgrims, Jerusalem’s economy was dependent on the whole system of Temple worship: not just the money-changers and sellers of animals for sacrifice, the scribes and the priestly class, but also the restaurants, merchants, and innkeepers: the whole “religious pilgrim industry”, if you will.

It is against this backdrop of the immense religious, political and economic significance of the Temple that we need to situate Jesus’ intervention.  Jesus was not having a bad day and “losing it”, nor was he prone to exaggerated religious sensitivities.  The “zeal” that consumed Jesus was his sadness – and yes, also his righteous anger – that the Temple designed to be a place of worship of his Father, had become centered on human money-making.

That a place of inclusivity and welcome, that should have been drawing people closer to God and one another, had become a source of division and exclusion, distancing people from God in categories of “clean” and “unclean”, “pure” and “impure”.  And finally, that the religious structures – the economic support of the Temple as building – were treated as more important, for all intents and purposes, than the God who was worshipped there, and the people, in whom God also was living.  No wonder he was angry!  No wonder he spoke out!

It doesn’t take a huge leap to transpose from this situation to our own life today – to our church, to our world.  As we reflect this year on sacramental living – not just the passive reception of the sacraments, but putting into practice in daily life the message and promise they embody – we are challenged by Jesus’ prophetic gesture.  Beyond the initial commitment of “Church attendance and financial support”, we are invited to a living relationship with Jesus Christ, responding to his call to action on behalf of the world.  The focus is not the mere fulfilment of religious “duties”, but the nurturing of that relationship with Christ, healing and transforming us from within.

A few weeks ago, in her Coffee and Conversation series, Anna showed a short video by Rob Bell entitled “Store”.  It was a reflection on the difficult relationship many Christians have with anger: either seeing it as something frightening, and thus to be avoided; or indulging it and letting it simmer into resentment or boil over into rage.  The problem, he suggests, is not that we experience anger; rather, it is what we get angry about, and what we choose to do with that anger.   He says:

“Anger is simply an emotion.  It’s your body’s way of telling you that your will has been blocked, that what you want to happen isn’t happening.  One response to anger is that it’s essentially all about us.  Our pride, our ego, our own little kingdoms are threatened – and we act to defend these. We become violent, we break things, we find ourselves saying and doing things we would never do otherwise – and it frightens us.”

“But when Jesus gets angry, he identifies an injustice larger than himself.  There is something divine in his anger, because there are some things that should make us angry, that are worth getting angry about.  Jesus channels his anger into action: actions of prophetic truth, as in the cleansing of the Temple; actions of healing and restoration, as when he healed on the Sabbath in opposition to the Pharisees: deeds that make the world a better place.” 

Let me make a confession.  I don’t like anger.  I don’t handle it well.  Angry people make me uncomfortable.  I am much more likely to unleash my anger at myself – or at inanimate objects around me – than against other people.  I find this image of a whip-wielding Jesus clearing the Temple pretty scary.  Yet at the same time, I am also inspired by Jesus’ passion, by his courage to be himself, to speak and act on behalf of those who were being cheated and exploited, and not care so much about what other people might think. 

The Gospel calls us also to speak and to act against all that is destructive of human dignity, what violates the “temple of the Spirit” that is the body and soul of each human person.  No one person can respond to all of these things: whether it be rape or pornography or human trafficking or racism or sexism or homophobia or bullying or abortion or euthanasia or religious intolerance.  But what makes me angry may be an indicator as to which one I am being called to do something about.  If God is truly to be found in all things, we can even find him in our anger, and if we invest in a cause bigger than ourselves, we can move from simple rage to the kind of righteous anger that brings about healing and transformation. 

Around the world, members of 12-step programs like AA pray daily the Serenity Prayer, attributed to Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  It is a very appropriate prayer, for so often, we are inclined to the reverse,  We accept things that are intolerable, that could be changed if we put in enough effort, if we worked together to bring about the change.  Yet at the same time, we worry and fret – and get angry – over so many things that are either inconsequential, or which we have no power to change.

Rob Bell concludes his meditation on anger with a powerful prayer: