December 3, 2013

A Four Year Old’s “Really Real Superhero”

Matthew 21: 12 - 22

When I read the story of the “Money Changers in the Temple,” I always feel as if I’ve read a “Good Guy vanquishes the Bad Guy” story because my mind always drifts back to the thoughts I had as a child about this Gospel Reading. As a four year old, growing up in the days of “Black & White” television of the 1960s, I saw this as a story of a “Superhero.” 

When I was first read this story, I was told that the Money Changers were cheating people who didn’t have much money. Even worse, they weren’t supposed to be “Inside” the Temple courtyard at all. They were supposed to be working “Outside.” I knew that my spade and hoe were “outside toys,” and they did not belong “inside.” I could get in trouble for that. Hmm, I queried, “Was Jesus like Superman coming?” A smile came back to me with the words, “No, Superman is pretend; Jesus is real. Jesus is God.”  “Wow,” I thought in my four-year-old mind. “A really, real Superhero God. Some people must think Jesus is just the Clark Kent person. Some people know He is really God in disguise.”

In my four-year-old thoughts, I also wondered why someone, like a policeman, didn’t get the Money Changers out of the Temple. The answer I got was that the Temple had Priests, like churches have Priests and Ministers, who “policed” the Temple. “Where were they? Why didn’t they throw the bad guys out?” My four-year-old mind actually was sad when I found out that the “Boss Priests” were also part of the bad guys.

Now, when I look at this passage as an adult, I see that it was the children were praising Jesus with their cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David.” It strikes me that the kids saw the “Superhero,” the Superlative Hero! The kids saw that justice had been done; the children saw the healing Jesus performed in this passage and understood God’s mercy.

As I read commentaries on this passage, I’m struck with something else: these Money Changers, with the Chief Priests’ blessings, were most likely in the “Court of the Gentiles.” This was the only place where people like me, who were not members of the tribes of Israel, would have been allowed within the Temple Compound. It wasn’t just the Jewish people who were being cheated! The Leaders were blocking the access of the Gentile peoples to a special connection with God, a “thin place” as my Celtic ancestors would have said! I am even more grateful that even before His death and resurrection, I have yet another example of Jesus exerting Justice for people like me, the “strangers among Israelites” in the truest of Jewish tradition!

Connecting my adult self back to my four-year-old self, I see my “really real Superhero,” resplendent with mercy, justice and healing, coming rushing in to protect me and save me! Yup, in this world and the next I see Jesus shielding me from the evils and wrongs of others, as well as forgiving me for the wrongs I have and will generate upon myself and others. I’m too little and weak to do that on my own, by myself, at any age. I am thankful that in today’s Psalm, I am reminded to trust that…

⁷ But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
    will enter your house,
I will bow down towards your holy temple
    in awe of you.
⁸ Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
    because of my enemies;
    make your way straight before me. (Ps 5: 7 & 8)

Marje Sullivan