Liberal v. Conservative

Ezekiel 22:26 Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. 

John 2:13-16 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” 

Matthew 21:12-13 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”

Dear Jesus, 

Conservative versus liberal ideologies are nothing new. In Ezekiel's youth, temple worship was polluted by compromising, tolerant priests who refused to recognize the difference between the holy and the profane, the clean and the unclean, the righteous and the sinful, true worship and idolatry. These sins of the priests, along with the failures of the prophets and the people, were at the heart of Israel's rebellion that landed them in oppression and captivity. They "profaned my holy things."

During Babylonian captivity, the Hebrews, under the leadership of Ezekiel, the prophet, searched their hearts, the Scriptures, and their history in order to understand how they had violated God's covenant with them. They started synagogues for the purpose of studying the Hebrew law. A conservative group of holy men, scribes and Pharisees, emerged from captivity as the spiritual leaders of the nation. These scribes and Pharisees were the leaders of a spiritual and national revival movement in Israel for the next 400 years. 

By the time You appeared upon the scene in the first century, two political factions dominated Hebrew life and culture. The Sadducees were the political moderates and liberals. The Sadducees practiced appeasement of the Roman occupying presence in Israel in order to protect their political party. The Sadducees controlled the high priesthood in the Jerusalem temple. Although they were the minority party of the Jewish ruling body, the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees rarely lost a battle they wanted to win against the conservative faction of scribes and Pharisees.

The scribes and Pharisees were among Your chief opponents--lawyers, students, scholars. These pietists prided themselves in their scrupulous observance of the Hebrew ceremonial law. Their laws reached far beyond the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, to include oral tradition, interpretations, and explanations of that law. Their addendums were massive, and carried the same moral obligation for the people as the Law of Moses.

So the chief priest and the Sadducees were in a struggle for the control of Your nation with the conservative scribes and Pharisees, all under the watchful eye of Rome. This power struggle set the Sadducees and Pharisees up for a fight with You, the Son of God.

You must have watched the exploitation of the people at temple all of Your life. The Sadducees controlled the chief priest position. The chief priest turned this power into a racket. His priests must inspect sacrifices people brought to temple in order for the sacrifice to be approved as without blemish and be permitted to be slaughtered and burned as an offering on the temple altar. The chief priest appointed the inspecting priest. The complicit task was to disapprove a prescribed percentage of the perfectly acceptable sacrifices, purchase them at a cut rate price above the powerless protests of the worshiper, only to introduce the newest acquisitions to the temple herd and resell them to a worshiper as an unblemished sacrifice a few days later.

The Sadducees had the scribes and Pharisees over a proverbial barrel. The conservative Pharisees had no moral authority to protest the enforcement of holiness in the approval of the sacrificial beasts. The Sadducees could simply hide behind their claim that they were fastidiously enforcing the Hebrew law. At that point, the Pharisees' protests failed, for legalistic enforcement of the Law of Moses was what they insisted. 

The Sadducees' combat with the scribes and Pharisees put the masses of the populace in a losing position. The chief priest was the winner economically. The Pharisees continued to insist upon fastidious adherence to the law. The people were the losers. 

You understood what was going on. I think that You had watched the exploitative process all of Your earthly life. I imagine You were first exposed to the process as a twelve-year-old boy. Perhaps, You and Joseph had even suffered the refusal of Your perfect sacrifice at the hands of the chief priest's corrupt inspector. Perhaps this was the topic of conversation that delayed You from the return trip to Nazareth. I don't know. I imagine that Your memory was so seared by this event that You had to do something about it. Not once... but twice.

Scripture records Your cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Your earthly ministry in John 2, and at the end of Your earthly ministry in Matthew 21 and Luke 19. I find it interesting that You bookended Your ministry with cleansing the temple. It must have been important to You!

Here is my observation. You transcended the trap of the liberal v. conservative political continuum of Your day by emphasizing holiness, prayer, healing, and spiritual power. You were not co-opted by political pressures into a personal compromise. You rose above the entrapment of politics and spoke wholeness and hope into an abusive situation. 

Hmmmm...

Think about that.

What does Your principled action have to say to inform me about how I should live in this present age? 

You were not reactionary. You thought and felt deeply about the matter of Father's house for many years. You loved the Father, the people, and true worship. You opposed everything from the left and the right that limited access to the Father through His house. You opposed the profiteering that had polluted the place of prayer. You loved the Father, the Father's house, prayer, and the people. You oppose the powerful on both ends of the political spectrum because they turned Father's house of prayer into a place of power, profit, and exploitation. 

What are the bonds that enslave people today that keep us from knowing our Heavenly Father. What are the barriers to prayer in my life today? Do I oppose barriers to accessing Father with the same urgency and persistence You showed? 

What about my temple? The temple of my heart? Is my temple polluted with profiteering and self-interest so that true fellowship with Father is compromised? Is my temple double-minded? Does self compete with my spiritual life? Jesus, drive the double-mindedness from our hearts and enthrone Yourself as the single object of my affection. 

The the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Amen.