About ten years ago, I went with my family on a trip to Switzerland. One day we took a trip from the city of Lausanne to visit Geneva, where we toured the International Museum of the Reformation. I loved walking through the displays on John Calvin’s life and his work in this great Swiss city. I’m rather certain that I bored my family to the point of tears with commentary on the Reformer’s writings, which I had read from the displays. In many ways, it felt like I was having a moment of existential connectivity with Calvin. Then we arrived in the final room of the museum, the gift shop. Something just felt wrong to me about there being a gift shop in the International Museum of the Reformation, and I thought of Jesus’s words, “Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”
At the time of Passover, devout Jewish males were supposed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and offer a sacrifice to celebrate the night when God’s wrath passed over them and fell instead upon the Egyptians, the event that led to the exodus from Egypt. Traditionally the sacrifice was to be a year-old male from the sheep or goats of a person’s own flock. This gift you gave to the Lord was to be a personal one. The act of sacrifice was not to be one where you simply spent your money to offer something to God. Instead you provided a young animal that you yourself had raised and nurtured, often knowing that this lamb or kid would be given to God.
Jesus’s anger in the temple courts that day centered upon the manner in which the people had lost sight of their personal relationship with God. Even as he cleansed the temple, the Messiah sought to show us that He Himself would one day become a sacrifice for us and remove all barriers that separate us from our Creator.