Seeing in spite of ourselves

Stanley Spencer’s painting titled “Christ Overturning the Money Changers’ Tables” primes us, its viewers, with a certain set of expectations. Read alongside the gospel accounts it depicts, the title tells us all we need to know about what we see: Jesus is about to flip this sucker.

If we let the title direct our interpretation, we’re left with a fairly straightforward encounter with the painting. We might even be tempted to dismiss it after a quick glance, perhaps in the way we would a familiar passage of scripture. But the temple protest scene that Matthew, Luke, and John recount, familiar as it might be, nevertheless contains a measure of strangeness, offering a glimpse of a Jesus whom we might not immediately recognize.

In Matthew, Jesus enters Jerusalem humbly, seated atop the colt of a donkey. No sooner does he dismount than he strides into the temple, flipping tables.

In Luke, Jesus looks longingly at the temple, prophesying its coming destruction because the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the ones whose tables he’s about to overturn, don’t know “the things that make for peace.” His face still wet with tears, he enters the temple and expels the money changers.

John’s placement of the temple protest is especially jolting, occurring as it does on the heels of Jesus’ turning water to wine during a wedding celebration.

Who is this whip-wielding Prince of Peace? Aware of the temptation among some readers to hastily assume that Jesus performs an act of violence that, therefore, condones their own violence, author and professor Chris Green cautions, “Surely what Christ did in the Temple was an embodiment of what he taught on the Mount of the Beatitudes and what he suffered on Mount Calvary—not their negation or subversion. . . . [W]e have to face the fact that the desire to cut this one moment out of the seamless garment of his life exposes the ugliest sin in us.”

The gospel writers invite us to enter into the tension that they have expertly created, to pause and ask, “Why does Jesus do this?” Perhaps sensing our discomfort, a Helper intercedes.

In Matthew and Luke, help comes in the form of Old Testament allusion. Both accounts have Jesus quoting the prophet Jeremiah, whom we find at the gate of the Lord’s house speaking out against those who perpetrate all manner of injustice only to return to the temple-turned-den-of-thieves and exclaim, “We are safe!”

In John, help comes not only through Old Testament allusion (Psalm 69) but also through authorial intrusion. “Destroy this temple,” Jesus claims, “and in three days I will raise it up.” John taps us on the shoulder, whispering, He’s talking about his body, and, Be sure to remember this later.

Despite these helpful nudges, we still don’t know all there is to know about what Jesus is up to in the temple. We do know, however, where all of this is headed. In four days Jesus will bear the whip in a different way en route to his crucifixion. Somehow, the cross both informs Jesus’ actions in the temple while also being the event to which the temple protest points.

If pausing to interpret the text serves us well in the task of seeing a more complete picture of Jesus, perhaps we could extend the same courtesy to Spencer’s painting.

As with the accounts of Jesus’ temple protest, there is plenty in the painting that we don’t see. Jesus’ expression, for instance. The scene seems oddly serene compared to the commotion of John’s telling. No animals, no bewildered merchants, scattering like so many rats. And what happened to the whip?

Allowing ourselves the freedom not to restrict our interpretation to the painting’s title might lead us to ask, “Is he overturning this table, or might he be setting it back upright?” For all we know, Jesus is preparing a dinner party. Perhaps he’ll even invite a moneychanger to dine with him.

While we’re adding to the list of things we don’t see, we might start to notice something remarkable about what we do see. Here is Jesus, arms outstretched, bearing up this slab of wood. We can almost feel its weight. Seen in this light, the painting alerts us to the possibility that even the temple protest is cross-shaped, cross-directed, cross-foreshadowing.

The gospel writers’ varying accounts of Jesus’ temple protest encourage us to pause with the Spirit’s help to watch and listen for explicit cues about how to interpret the scene faithfully. Matthew and Luke want their readers to hear echoes of the prophet Jeremiah, inveighing against those who oppress the disadvantaged and the shed innocent blood (Jer 7:6). Likewise, John eagerly informs his readers that the temple has been radically relocated, and when the disciples later see him raised up, wounds and all, they’ll hear echoes of the scriptures and of Jesus’ words.

But if Spencer’s painting teaches us anything, it’s that faithful interpretation might also involve lingering long enough to notice what we don’t initially see or hear. John tells us that the disciples believe the scriptures after recalling the words, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” but the disciples aren’t the only ones who remember Jesus’ words. Matthew tells us that others, perhaps unaware of the things that make for peace, parrot these same words in testimony against Jesus during his trial before Caiaphas (Matt 26:60-61).

If that weren’t enough, while John tells us that Jesus pours out the moneychangers’ coins in the temple as a witness against those who shed innocent blood, Matthew lets us hear the tinny sound of thirty pieces of silver being emptied onto the floor of the temple sanctuary (Matt 27:5). With Jeremiah’s prophecy and Jesus’ temple protest still echoing in our ears, we overhear Judas, himself a dishonest merchant, confess, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood” (Matt 27:4).

Lingering with the text helps us to notice particular ways that Christ’s action in the temple is utterly consistent with “what he taught on the Mount of the Beatitudes and what he suffered on Mount Calvary.”

However, pausing in this way also forces us to confront our own inconsistency: we remember rightly and believe the scriptures, only to turn around and misuse them, twisting the words of the one to whom they bear witness. We recline at the table with the Prince of Peace only to excuse ourselves that we might carry out our premeditated betrayals. Like an inverted version of the effect Spencer’s title has on his painting, our presumptions prime us not to notice certain details.

We reflect during these 40 days leading up to Easter, knowing that even when we’re the ones mangling our witness and departing in haste, the cross is never completely absent from the picture.