Suddenly

“And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 3:1b)

On Palm Sunday we commemorate the day that Jesus Christ entered into Jerusalem in the fullness of his messianic mission also known as the Triumphal Entry. The narrative is found in all four gospels (Matthew 21; Mark 11; Luke 19; John 12:12-19). He had been ministering for at least three and a half years and had been in Jerusalem before but had not come in with the crowds. On this day, he came in surrounded by two crowds—the crowd following along with him from Bethany down from the Mt. of Olives to Jerusalem for the week leading up to Passover and the crowd of people in Jerusalem who, having heard that he had raised Lazarus from the dead, went out to meet him. The crowds shouted and sang “Hosanna!” while spreading the cloaks on the road in the expectation that he was entering as a king. They waved palm branches and added them to their cloaks in the road alluding to the last time that Israel had thrown off the yoke of a foreign oppressor (1 Macc. 13:51) in hopes that he would cast out the Romans. But that was not God’s plan.

The date palm was surely a symbol of Israel as “a land flowing with milk and honey” and represented national victory. However, there is another place that we find palm trees in Jerusalem besides in victory parades… they decorated the walls and doors of the temple itself! This was Jesus’ destination that glorious day… his Father’s house.

 

The accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, conflate the entrance of Palm Sunday with the cleansing of the temple with happened the next day. Ironically, it is in Mark, the Gospel of Action, where events often happen “immediately” (35 times), that the author makes a special note that, “And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve” (Mark 11:11). Why is this important? Because the "cleansing of the temple" did not happen in a fit of anger but after a night of thought and prayer.

Jesus had come suddenly into the temple, and the priests and leaders of Israel had not recognized “the day of their visitation.” So the next day, saddened (Luke 19:41-44), but with a wholehearted effort, Jesus re-entered the temple and drove out those who were abusing the people who desperately needed it to be “the place of prayer for all peoples.” In Mark 11:17 Jesus quoted from this passage in Isaiah 56:6-7,

The court on the modern
 Temple Mount, Jerusalem.

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
    and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
    and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
    for all peoples.” 

The Outer Court, or Court of the Gentiles, had been entirely co-opted by the sacrificial concession business at the sanction of the High Priests. It was noisy, smelly, and crowded with injustice. Not only were the people being oppressed economically with the “dishonest scales” condemned so often in Proverbs and the writings of the prophets, but those who had no covenant access to the other sections of the temple essentially had been denied access to meet with God. Where could they pray and who would hear their cry? These, the unprivileged and dispossessed, would have included all God-fearing Gentiles, as well as any of Israel who were ritually unclean (including the blind and the lame).

Jesus came that day, on a mission from God in answer to their prayer, “Hosanna!” (lit. "Save now!")  to restore the temple to them by driving out the merchants and moneychangers and by preventing profane and secular short-cutting through sacred space. Jesus restored the temple of God to the people for a place of prayer! 

I love that for a moment, we get to see the Temple functioning as it was intended. Matthew 21:14 pulls back the curtain of history for us to observe, “Then the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.” The Messiah, God with us—healed them (answered their prayers) in the temple and they praised him for it.

Of course, when there are “wonderful things” to be seen, some are always “indignant” and this was no exception.  

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?"

And Jesus said to them, "Yes. Have you never read,

'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

     You have perfected praise'?"   (Matthew 21:15-16)

As bothered as I am by the attitude of the priests I am encouraged by the first word of Jesus’ answer…”Yes.” He heard what the poor and marginalized were saying. He heard both their prayers and their praises. That gives me hope for myself and the church today. God hears his people! 

On that day, he restored the temple to them by making it again a place of prayer for all peoples, and for the blind and the lame he restored them to the Temple…for now, there was nothing to prevent their full participation in the covenant community.

Jesus restored the temple to them, and them to the temple…suddenly. 

Today, as the church, we need to be cleansed afresh by the Spirit of Jesus so that we might be more fully than ever a place of prayer for the nations, a place where desperate people meet God for the first time and praise him for having been heard.