They came to Jerusalem, and on entering the temple area he began to drive out those selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.

You ever had one of those days growing up as a child.  Nothing seems to go right; too lazy to clean up after yourself; snide remarks to your Mom; just a bad day over all.  My brothers and I as we grew older, were all living “downstairs” at our house – not the basement (that was unfinished portion of the downstairs) and we weren’t the most tidy of people.  Mom came “downstairs” to do laundry (in the basement) and scolded us for the unkempt manner of our rooms and told us we had an hour to clean it all up.  We, being the mature men that we were, proceeded to have a pillow fight or play crab soccer or something along those lines for about 55 minutes of that hour and starting pushing clothes and toys and games under the bed for the last 5.  At the conclusion of the 60 minutes, some schmuck among us went upstairs to tell Mom we were done cleaning.  She came down for an inspection and – did I tell you this was a bad day?  Mother proceeded to do her version of “cleansing the temple”.  She pulled drawers out of dressers and dumped them on the ground; she pulled sheets of mattresses; pillow cases off of pillows; ran her hand across shelves and dumped all of that onto the floor.  The four of us (Joe and Jay were too young to be allowed to live downstairs) stood there with our mouths agape, our eyes wide open, in utter disbelief of what had just transpired.  Then, instead of saying you have an hour to clean THIS MESS up (her translation of rebuilding the temple in 3 days), she dropped the bomb on all of us standing there…”You have until you’re father gets home to have this clean.  I wouldn’t want to be you if it isn’t done!”  We just got dealt the “Dad will cleanse the temple”, AKA our gluteus maximus’ (a little Latin on a Friday morning) when he sees the mess.  We got the message and we cleaned the mess and the downstairs looked great for a couple of days anyway.

What is the point?  Sometimes it takes a fit of rightful anger to realize what you’re doing is wrong and needs to be put back on course.  Jesus demonstrates that in the Gospel this morning.  The House, His house, must be clean and kept that way.  We are all sinful and we all play a part in messing up the house.  So we must all play part in cleaning up the house and making it clean again.

Do something great for our Lord today – cleanse your temple.  Spend sometime thinking about what it is with you that could use a good cleaning.  The King is coming – no better time than now to spruce up the House of the Lord.

God’s will, not mine, be done.

Be not afraid; just have faith.

Jesus, I trust in You.

He must increase; I must decrease.

But you man of God chose righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience and gentleness.  Compete well for the faith.