When you stay a long time without cleaning up a room, everything in it begins to look like a trash. It becomes messy because nothing is in order, everything is out of place. And you know one thing? It is so easy to mess up a room, it takes little or no effort. But it is very difficult to put it in order. It takes quite an effort. The very treasures we bring into the room become the trash we take out later.
I was watching some good-spirited Christians the other day assisting in cleaning up the church as they usually do. I saw their efforts in making sure that everything is in order, with furniture moved here and there, books taken to different positions, as the vacuum cleaners went round sucking up dust and dirt with their suction powers. I admired the wisdom behind their sense of decency and the power behind their efforts and vigour. I noticed with amazement as in a matter of minutes, something that was messy became classy. I recognized that something is a mess when it is in the wrong place but becomes a treasure when it is put in order.
What makes the difference between trash and treasure is the way it is handled. The very things we treasure are trash in a wrong place. It only takes wisdom and power to put them in order. There is a wisdom and power behind every cleaning up: Wisdom tells what best to do, as power goes ahead doing it.
This power and wisdom reflect in Jesus’ actions against those defiling the temple with their business transactions. Jesus acted like the trash man by clearing up the holy place of unwanted items. These items were treasures for those merchants, but they were at that very moment not in the right place. So, they lost their values. Remember that Jesus knows the value of these treasures. He was born in a cattle manger, pigeons were offered at His presentation, he extolled the good shepherd in his teachings and told Peter to get the coins from the fish for the tax. But these treasures at this moment lose their values because they are in the wrong places. That is why he is encouraging us to clean up the mess, even when they look valuable.
When everything is placed in order, their values manifest, but when they are out of place, they lose value. Just like money, a currency is valuable when it is used in the right place. It is useless in another country unless you change it. So, Jesus is telling us today to put our houses in order by throwing out these useless treasures that distract us from the real values of life. He is challenging us to bring order into our lives by destroying the temples of messy treasures and building up a life of integrity for the common good. Order is not created by power alone, that is why dictators never show good leadership. Wisdom alone cannot bring order either, because it is an empty idea if it is not activated by power. We need both wisdom and power together to clean up our lives in this season. The radical actions of Jesus in the temple demonstrate how God’s foolishness trumps human wisdom. For He is the personification of the wisdom and power of God that is expressed in the Ten Commandments, the dos and don’ts about how best to clear up the trash of disorder from our lives.
