Theological Journal - April 6: Toward the 8th Day (Monday)
Jesus Judges the Temple On Sunday Jesus enters and claims kingship over the holy city. On Monday he enters the temple and claims rule over it. In both cases, his coming as king means judgment for a largely faithless city and religious institution. We don’t see this clearly when we call the former his “triumphal entry” and the latter his “cleansing of the temple. These well-established names for these events obscure more than they reveal. Only in the most ironical and paradoxical sense are either of them like their usual names. “But what we often call Jesus’s triumphal entry was actually an anti-imperial, anti-triumphal one, a deliberate lampoon of the conquering emperor entering a city on horseback through gates opened in abject submission” (Borg, The Last Week : 574-576). We saw that yesterday with regard to the entry into the city and the power struggle initiated with Roman and Jewish authorities. And by the end of the week that conflict sweeps up the cheering crowds and even his...