Should We Give Up Calm Instead Of Chocolate?
This week the lectionary gospel passage features Jesus's celebrated outburst in which he clears out the temple entrepreneurs with a fiery rant: "Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" (John 2:16). In today's supercharged political atmosphere, such a rash statement might have led Jesus' opponents to frame him as a socialist -- but in this installment of The Immediate Word, team member Mary Austin notes that Jesus' fury is directed not at the commercial transactions themselves so much as it is at their exploitative nature.