Angry Monday

not meek, not mild . . .

Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”? But you have made it a den of robbers.’ And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. Mark 11:15–19

In the 1989 film Jesus of Montreal, a small group of actors is invited to reinvent the traditional Passion plays for Holy Week. Though the actors are not particularly devout, they engage fully with the gospel stories in order to bring them to life, and in doing so, they seem to capture something of the radical nature of the gospel. By contrast, the church where the Passion plays are performed is portrayed as utterly hypocritical, an institution that has lost touch with the power of its own message. Abandoning the outdated tableau style of the traditional play, the actors portray the gospel stories realistically. But, as their rehearsals and performances progress, they begin to have parallel experiences in everyday life, almost as if engaging with the gospels with such honesty cannot fail to have a transforming effect on them. In one scene, we see the actor who plays Mary Magdalene in the Passion going to an audition for a part in a TV advert, and the actor who plays Jesus, who has nothing better to do that day, goes along to keep her company. At the audition, she suddenly finds herself on the receiving end of the kind of abuse that has been all too common in that industry – they begin to order her to take off her clothes, which was not what she signed up for. But, as they objectify and disrespect her, the other actor is infuriated, and steps in fearlessly to protect her. He trashes their studio, turning over tables and tripods, smashing expensive equipment, breaking cameras and computers, his anger growing with every step. This is not a calm, dignified protest; it is an act of criminal violence.

I have often showed this film to groups of theology students. On one occasion, as the credits rolled, one of them voiced what many of us must have thought – that part of the culture that has accrued around traditional Christianity includes the idea that you are not allowed to get angry, or feel passionate, or care so much about an injustice that it leads to radical, unorthodox action. But this scene from Jesus of Montreal delivers an image of the kind of passion and commitment to the cause of righteousness that made Jesus fearless in the face of power.

Temple worship involved offering sacrifices – sometimes of money, which had to be in the right currency, and sometimes of animals. Which kind of animal you were expected to sacrifice would depend on whether you were rich or poor, and consequently traders set up stalls in the entrance to the temple offering currency exchange and the sale of animals and birds. But these were not offered altruistically as a service to the worshippers, but as a means of making as much money as possible.

According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, the day when Jesus turned over the tables in the temple was the day after Palm Sunday: “Angry Monday”. Jesus must have seen these commercial stalls plenty of times on previous visits to the temple, and he had preached on the Temple steps plenty of times before. Why he waited until this particular day to destroy the tables is not explained, but his action is one of outrage at the sight of injustice and commercialisation masquerading as religion, and he seems to have decided that, on this occasion, a peaceful demonstration was not enough. This time he did not stand and preach; he began to trash the stalls, and scatter the merchandise. His outrage, it seems, was not only over economic injustice, but that such injustice was blatantly on show in the temple – the place that, more than anywhere else, symbolised the presence of God.

People sometimes speak of a contrast between the ‘God of the Old Testament’ as full of wrath and judgement, and the ‘God of the New Testament’, as kind and forgiving, liberating and pleasant. In fact, this is only a short step from the fourth-century heresy of Marcion, who believed that the God portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures should be abandoned altogether – and also had his own views over which portions of the New Testament he believed we should retain. But in any case, the idea that there is such a radical difference in the character of God between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian writings of the New Testament is nothing more than a caricature, based on a highly selective reading of each.

One of the good things about this anecdote is that it holds love and forgiveness together with a level of anger against injustice and corruption. Without this kind of anger, love would be so weak as to be almost meaningless. If by ‘wrath’ we mean uncontrollable, victimising, bullying anger, then we certainly need to eliminate it. At the same time, though, we can see this story as a corrective to that caricature. There are countless instances where God is described in the Hebrew Scriptures as forgiving, tender, loving and kind, while here in the gospel we see the flash of anger that shows us that true love is more than soft, sentimental feelings -- it knows when to be tough when it needs to.

I am in no way recommending that we should go out and commit random acts of criminal violence in the name of Jesus. I do think, however, that we should register Jesus’ level of anger, and also understand that on this occasion his behaviour would have been perceived as socially unacceptable. In Holy Week we sometimes tend to paint Jesus in pastel colours, as the lamb led to the slaughter. But the level of emotional and physical strength displayed here shows that, faced with continued injustice, he acted boldly, despite knowing that his actions were putting him in considerable danger. However difficult it is to define holiness, one thing is clear: it does not mean being weak and feeble, meek and mild.

adapted from Giving It Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day.
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