Do I believe in Moneychanger repentance?

(I think it has been my long assumption that the Monday in the temple was condemnation, not Jesus’ trying yet one more strategy to turn people around. Why would he change?)

The couple was young
and the baby in the mother’s arms
slept in spite of the temple noise.
They’d traveled long.
and the time to present him
came in Passover,
when the festival made everything
so much more expensive.

This week their coins no longer
covered a pigeon’s cost,
even though they had saved carefully.

So, it always is for the poor
with variable pricing,
pay-day loans, food deserts.

Yet, when the prophet from Galilee
kicked the legs out from under
money-changers tables,
calling out “House of Prayer,”
and a gold coin
rolled to their feet,
they didn’t pick it up.

They had been raised not to take
what did not belong to them.

The miracle this day,
long unrecorded,
is that someone, maybe only one someone,
had not just the table, but the heart,
kicked out from under him.

“Here,” he said, holding a cage
out to the crowd-stunned couple,
“the finest bird and please
take these coins as well
for your Passover in the city,
more for your journey home.”


God, remind me
of how very differently money works
for those who are poor,

then toss my life around
and change my heart,
to expect change among the rich. amen

Peter Koenig, Peter Cleansing the Temple (Art in the Christian Tradition) Vanderbilt Seminary