2. The criticism of ‘the temple’

2.    The criticism of 'the temple'
Luke

Now Jesus returns to the temple. What is to be done with it—the old inherited religion of his people? What happens to men's beliefs and ideas when Jesus comes to inspect them?
    'He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold' (19:45). The title traditionally given to this passage is 'The Cleansing of the Temple'; and that is exactly what happens. Jesus comes to cast a critical eye over what the Jews have made of their very special [Luke, Page 182] relationship with God.8 He finds much that needs cleaning up, much grime and rubbish that needs removing. Most of the episodes that follow in chapter 20 are, on the surface, attempts by the Jews to entrap Jesus. But each is turned by him into an exposure of them. The faults and evils of their traditional, distorted, religion are mercilessly revealed.
    The evils which had accumulated in Judaism in the time of Jesus are not peculiar to the Jerusalem temple. We may all find, as Jesus enters our own 'temple' and inspects our faith and life, things that need to be thoroughly cleaned out from it.

a.    Man-centred religion (20:1–18)

'Tell us by what authority you do these things', Jesus is asked by the Jewish leaders (20:2). The point at issue both in the argument in 20:1–8 and in Jesus's parable in 20:9–18 is, What right does Jesus have to speak and act as he does?
    The argument turns back from the question of the Lord's own authority to that of the authority of the herald who had preceded him, John the Baptist. John's prestige was as high as ever, through it was now two or three years since his death, and the chief priests dared not disparage it. The trouble was that his authority and his Lord's would stand or fall together; the chief priests could not give the impression of allowing John's claims without seeming to allow Jesus's also. Thus their attack along that line was frustrated. Jewish malice raged unabated, however, and provoked Jesus's parable about the wicked tenants in the vineyard.
    The Jewish leaders may not have known how to answer the argument, but they certainly did not fail to understand the parable (20:19). It replied to their original question (What right had Jesus to speak and act as he did?), and told them plainly that he had every right. The vineyard in the parable is Israel;9 and whereas the Jewish leaders are the tenants whose responsibility is to care for it, Jesus is the last of a long line of messengers sent by the owner to call the tenants to account. He is, indeed, the most important of all the messengers, for he is the owner's own son. Jesus has every right to criticize the temple. In fact he is himself (to change the metaphor) the most important stone in the temple (20:17).

[Luke, Page 183]

    It is not hard to see, in the way that they try to call him to account when in fact it is he who challenges them, the common attitude in which we reserve to ourselves the right to have the last word. This (we say) I can believe; that I will even obey; but the other I am not prepared to accept. In the last analysis it is I who decide what does and what does not belong in my temple. I am ready to challenge even the right of Jesus to the final authority there.
    It is not 'clever' people alone who think like this, though they perhaps stand in particular danger of doing so. The 'I know best' attitude is the result not of education, nor of intellect, nor of commonsense, nor of intuition (although any of these may foster it), but simply of the basic pride of the human heart.
    This kind of religion must be swept right out. We cannot afford a man-centred 'I'-centred faith. We must 'respect him' (20:13), for the temple from which the chief corner-stone is 'rejected' (20:17) cannot be far from collapse. He must always have the central place and the last word.

b.    'Religious' religion (20:19–26)

The question about Roman taxes was another attempt to discredit Jesus, which like the first one rebounded on the questioners. They wanted him either to endorse the paying of tribute, which would make him a traitor to patriotic Judaism, or to condemn it, which would make him a traitor to the occupation forces of Rome.
    But the answer of Jesus did three things. It evaded their trap; it established the principle of the Christian attitude to the state, which has been normative for the Christian church ever since; and (most important from our point of view, in the context of Luke's Gospel) it exposed another evil in the temple.
    For the Jews' assumption was that you must be either loyal to the Jewish faith, or loyal to the Roman state. Their narrow view could not take in both at once. But Jesus's reply is that we must 'render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's' (20:25). His kind of religion is one which embraces all of life, the secular as well as the sacred, and has something to say about every part of it.
    Thus he repudiates 'religious' religion, which divides life into a number of watertight compartments, and confines its thoughts of God to those areas it thinks appropriate—Sundays, church buildings, co-religionists—while Caesar's world is something totally unrelated. This area belongs to God, that one belongs to Caesar. Now I [Luke, Page 184] too speak in terms of these different areas, says Jesus; but the way I see them is not the way you see them. You must learn to live in both areas, and relate each to the other, and realize, indeed, that true faith in God will spill over into Caesar's area, and into every other besides. Compartmentalized religion must go.

c.    Unbiblical religion (20:27–40)

Next comes a question based on Scripture. 'Moses wrote' (20:28, quoting Dt. 25:5) that a childless widow should marry her late husband's brother, in order to bear children, if possible, so as to preserve the family name; and the Sadducees, 'who say that there is no resurrection' (20:27), concoct the ridiculous story of the seven brothers who each in turn married the same woman, and would thus cause problems in the resurrection life—if there ever were such a thing.
    It is noteworthy that the query which has a 'biblical' basis is the one which receives (according to the first two Gospels) Jesus's sharpest rebuke: 'You are wrong, precisely because you do not know your Bible.'10 And he proceeds to demonstrate, by a type of argument which we might think unusual but which was to them very familiar, that the resurrection was clearly implied in the Scripture which they were claiming to have read.11
    Their religion is full of half-baked notions of what the Scripture says. But it is no use your quoting the Bible at me, retorts Jesus, when you have obviously not studied what it really does say. A religion which sits so loose to Scripture, for all its pretensions to the contrary, has no place in the temple. Like man-centred religion and 'religious' religion, unbiblical religion must be swept out.

d.    Thoughtless religion (20:41–44)

Now it is Jesus's turn to ask a question. He holds up before his audience a theological belief of the Jewish leaders: namely, the view that the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, will, when he eventually comes into the world, be a descendant of King David. For, as against that, the Scripture says (again he turns to the Scripture) that the [Luke, Page 185] Christ is David's Lord. As David's descendant, the Christ will be in a sense his inferior; as his Lord, he is obviously his superior.
    'What?' they might have said; 'Do you mean our leaders are wrong in that also?'
    'By no means', Jesus would have replied; 'that is not at all what I intend. My question is, How can they say that the Christ is both David's descendant and David's Lord? It happens that they are quite right to say it; but why? On what basis do they hold that view?'
    And 'no no was able to answer him a word', recounts Matthew (Mt. 22:46); while Luke simply ends his paragraph with Jesus's unanswered question!
    This really will not do either. After three exposures of their perversions of true religion, Jesus brings up one thing, at any rate, in which they are right, only to show that they have no idea why they believe it.12 And how much religion is of that kind! Among a mass of sub-Christian, non-Christian, or even anti-Christian beliefs, a man suddenly reveals that at least he has something right—and then gives the game away by being quite unable to give any grounds for believing it. 'Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.'13 A thoughtless religion is as unworthy of the temple as any of the distorted kinds we have seen hitherto. It is no use accepting truth without thinking it through—swallowing it without digesting it.

e.    Showy religion (20:45–21:4)

Lastly Jesus denounces the kind of religion which is merely outward show. The scribes like to be noticed and honoured, while in fact, beneath the religious trappings, their morality will not bear examination: they are quite prepared to use their influence to satisfy their greed, and 'devour widows' houses' (20:47).
    Some commentators think that the story inserted next by Luke, that of the poor widow and her tiny gift to the temple treasury (21:1–4), has no connection with 20:45–47 apart from the fact that they both mention the word 'widow'. But it is not hard to see in this woman an instructive contrast with the scribes Jesus has just condemned. For he, who knows the hearts of all men, perceives that the two coins she has put into the temple offering are actually 'all the living that she had'. Her total devotion, which no-one but Jesus [Luke, Page 186] would have realized, is the exact opposite of the Jewish leaders' religion, all show and no heart.
    Theirs is the fifth type of religious rubbish which 'will receive … condemnation' (20:47) and he cleared out of the temple. Such is the kind of thing which Jesus found defiling old-style Jewish worship, and which spoils the beliefs of thousands of people even today.