Fruitlessness rarely ends in something positive. As I drive around Florida I see a countryside that has fed so many in years past. There are still vast expanses of cattle being grazed here. Citrus still goes on for miles. Strawberries dominate my corner of this state.
But there are large areas where the orange groves are now covered with weeds and vines, the trees having died down to their roots. There is a bacterium that is attacking these plants, causing the fruit to grow small and bitter, eventually killing the tree. Billions of dollars are at stake. And farmers and scientists are working hard to find a cure.
And this means there are millions of orange trees that are being bulldozed, piled and burned. Since at this point there is nothing that can clean the tree of the bacterial infection, there is only one way to go forward, and that is to start over from scratch. New trees replace the old ones. You might say, not much lost. But large mature trees produce hundreds of oranges, while small new trees produce only a handful. It takes years of growth to recoup the growing capacity, which means years of lower yields.
Jesus enters the area in Jerusalem that is space meant for gathering and for worship preparation. This is not an area inside the Temple, but just outside. I might liken it to the foyer in many large churches.
In this space people are engaged in for profit activities. Over the years scam artists had set up shop right under the noses of the priests and Levites, those charged with executing the worship plan that the LORD has instituted. They were there at the permission of these leaders, and probably got a cut of the profit.
Part of this activity stemmed from a legitimate practice prescribed in the Old Testament Law. When anyone brought an animal to be sacrificed to the LORD, usually as part of a prescribed ritual designed to remind the Israelites that they needed mercy, they had their animal inspected. It had to be spotless and without defect in order to be sacrificed.
So out of the kindness of their hearts, and the profit they could get by selling them an “officially accepted animal” to replace their defective animal, these entrepreneurs set up shop right in these large waiting and gathering areas. And of course most animals did not pass inspection and had to be replaced, often with an animal that they had flunked a few minutes before. It was a Ponzi scheme, bait and switch.
The other side of this equation was money changing. In order to give a donation to the Temple, you had to exchange your secular money for official Temple money. You brought your dollar and bought Temple dollars. Of course your dollar ended up buying less than a dollar’s worth of Temple money, because those who made the exchange charged a large fee for the transaction.
Jesus comes in and ends their practice. They are stealing from God’s people right under the noses of those who ought to be protecting. Instead of spending time preparing for worship, people had to engage in corrupt business practices. No wonder Jesus rebelled against this corruption.
The Arnold Journey 