Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Days In-Between预览

Monday

Mark tells us that when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Sunday, he went to the temple courts. You get the sense that things were already closing up because it says that since it was already late, Jesus went out to a smaller suburb called Bethany just outside Jerusalem until the next day (Mark 11:11). This brings us to Monday, sometimes called Holy Monday, when Jesus comes back to the temple.

Jerusalem was the capital, and the temple was its center. The temple was the focal point, the seat of spiritual authority. It was also the seat of political authority for the Jews and an economic center. Think of something like the US Capitol Building in Washington DC combined with the Vatican, combined with the Federal Reserve, and you’ll get the idea of how important the temple was. Once, God’s presence filled the temple. It was where God met with Israel and Israel met with him. But now, after hundreds of years, the people had been in exile – at first a physical exile, but still a spiritual exile – hoping, waiting, and yearning for God to return and fill the temple again.

On his way back to the temple, Jesus passes a fig tree. Because it wasn’t in season, it didn’t have any figs. Finding nothing but leaves, Jesus curses it: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again” (Mark 11:14). This will be strangely prophetic for things to come later this week and beyond.

When Jesus arrives at the temple, the Gospels tell us he starts overturning tables and driving out with a whip those buying and selling sacrificial animals. It’s Passover, and this was big business. You can imagine Jesus shouting in the middle of the chaos: "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers."

Jesus is quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah. Hundreds of years earlier, Jeremiah was warning Israel that God would judge them and that God would send them into exile. For centuries God pled with them through his prophets to return to him. But they tuned him out. Their hearts were hard and far from God. They traded God for idols, and turned things associated with God, like the temple, into idols too. They were less concerned with God and more concerned with their own agendas. Jeremiah warns them not to trust in the temple like a lucky charm to save them. But they did. And God left the temple, handing them over in his absence.

Jesus calls the temple “my house.” God has returned to his temple, only to find it as corrupt as the days of Jeremiah. The irony is that the return of God is what the religious leaders said they hoped for. But upon seeing Jesus, they wanted their own version of how they thought God should return, rather than its reality.

Monday's events are recorded in Matthew 21:12-22; Mark 11:12-19; Luke 19:45-48; and John 2:13-22.