A House of Prayer for All Nations

Observe. Jesus drives out the buyers and sellers, overturns tables, and will not let anyone carry merchandise through the temple courts. Then he teaches, quoting Isaiah 56:7: my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. He adds, from Jeremiah 7:11, that they have made it a den of robbers.

Interpret. The commerce was happening in the court of the Gentiles, the one area where non-Jews were permitted. The trade may have been legal and even convenient, but it occupied the space set aside for outsiders to seek God. Jesus' anger is not against buying and selling as such. It is against a religion that had crowded out the very people it was meant to welcome. Isaiah's vision was of foreigners joining themselves to the Lord. The temple had turned that vision into a marketplace.

Apply. The question for any congregation is whether the outsider can find God there or has to push through the stalls. Habits, in-jokes, unspoken dress codes, a service that assumes everyone already knows the words can be tables that need overturning.

Where in your church or your own faith has convenience crowded out welcome? And what would it cost to clear that space?