In this morning’s gospel we hear the marvellous story where Jesus enters the Temple in Jerusalem and overturns the tables of the money changers. People often think this story shows that Jesus was against those churches that have a small bookstall in the back, because he didn't agree with conducting commercial business in a place of worship. But this is not what the story is about.

Jesus' anger at the money changers and the people selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifice was not because they were trading in a religious building, but because the Jewish law required that people approach God by sacrificing an animal and, so as to keep the whole process pure, they were required to change their normal money into special Temple money which was then used to actually buy their animal for sacrifice.

Jesus was angry at a whole process which set up barriers between people and God, and indeed made it difficult for people without sufficient financial means to purchase an animal at all. Rather he wanted to show that anybody and everybody could approach God directly, and none of this pseudo-religious paraphernalia was required.

PIcture above: Extract from Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple. Artist A.N. Mironov. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.