Room for the People Pushed Out
“On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’””
— Mark 11:15-17 (NIV)
Only the outermost court of that huge walled platform was open to non-Jews. A stone barrier closed off everything past it, and Josephus reported that its notices stood in Greek and in Latin: a foreigner who went further was killed for it. One of those stones was later found whole and another in pieces, and the lettering can still be read. That outer ground was as far as a foreigner could come and pray. Mark does not say where in the complex the trading stood, though that same ground is the likely spot. Pilgrims arrived from all over the empire carrying whatever silver their own cities minted, so exchanging it was ordinary work. A pair of pigeons was what the law allowed when a lamb was out of reach, and in other cases what it required of everyone, whatever they earned. The line about the nations comes from Isaiah, who had promised foreigners a welcome in that very place. The word behind the charge meant armed bandits who robbed travellers on the road, not petty thieves. He had walked through the whole place the evening before and left without touching it, and by the evening of this day the chief priests were looking for a way to kill him. He cleared the floor for the people everyone else had pushed to the edge.
Something in your day switches itself on without anyone deciding it. For some people it fills every free minute; for others it fills the silence. Maybe your phone takes the first ten minutes of your morning and the last ten of your night. Maybe the television goes on early and stays on, because a flat with sound in it does not feel as empty. Maybe you are waiting for someone to call you back, and you check the screen every half hour. Under that noise someone stops being heard, and some days it is you, or the quiet you used to pray in. Jesus made room in the one place the outsiders were allowed to stand, and you can take one piece of yours back today.
Switch one thing off until bedtime
- 1Choose the one app that interrupts you most often and switch its notifications off now, from this moment until you go to sleep tonight. Do it straight away instead of waiting for the next alert to appear: open Settings, then Notifications, pick that app and turn it off, or choose mute for an hour or mute until tomorrow if your phone offers it, and switch it back on in the same place tomorrow. Leave calls and messages from people on, and leave on anything tied to your children, someone's health or your job: you are muting one app, one group, one feed, not the people who need to reach you.
- 2If what runs in your background is a television or a radio, do not try to go the whole day without it. Eat one meal today with it off, or switch it off for half an hour after your evening meal and stay in that quiet. And if no device runs in your background, name the thing you reach for the second it goes quiet, a podcast while you wash up or a video on a second screen, and leave it off for that same half hour today.
God, my day is loud, and most of that noise I let in myself. Today I am switching off one thing that keeps interrupting me, and I want to stay in that quiet until I go to sleep. I do not know what will move into that space. Help me not to fill it straight back up out of habit. And help me hear whoever I have stopped hearing, including you. Amen.
Today I switch off whatever runs in the background of my day, and I stay in that quiet till bedtime.
Why did the outer part of the complex matter so much?
It was as far as a non-Jew was allowed to go. A stone barrier closed off everything beyond it, and Josephus reported that the notices on that barrier were in Greek and in Latin, warning foreigners that going further meant death. One of those stones has been recovered whole and another in fragments, and the lettering can still be read. This was the one spot where a foreigner could come and pray.
Why were money brokers and bird sellers there at all?
Pilgrims arrived from across the empire carrying whatever silver their own cities minted, so exchanging it was ordinary business. Pigeons were what the law allowed in place of a lamb when a lamb was out of reach, and in other cases what it required of everyone, whatever they earned. Mark does not say where in the complex the trade stood.
How does switching something off connect to this passage?
The trade was not an attack on the sanctuary. It simply filled a space that had been set aside for something else, and the people with nowhere else to stand lost their room. Background noise works the same way in a day. One evening without it shows you what moves into the gap and who starts getting heard again.