Holy Week | Monday
The Monday of Holy Week was a day of fury by the King.
12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. 15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. 19 And when evening came they went out of the city.
Mark 11: 12-19 (ESV)
Two things happen on Monday of Holy Week that show us Jesus was a King capable of great fury at evildoers.
The first is an unusual incident that happens as Jesus enters the city that morning. Jesus has been staying in Bethany with Lazarus, and he’s returning to Jerusalem and the temple that Monday morning. Spying a fig tree along the way, our Lord goes to it, seeking something to eat. But when he draws near to its branches, he sees that they contain only leaves, no figs. It’s at this point that our Lord “curses” the tree, saying in effect: “May you never bear fruit again.”
Why does this tree deserve to be cursed? - we might wonder. Well, Jesus is making the tree a kind of symbol of something else: something far more displeasing to him than a fig tree without figs. His cursing of the tree becomes a parable - an acted-out illustration - of something much more terrible.
You see, for all the joyful celebration of him by the crowds the previous day, Jesus knows very well that there is precious little faith in the city. Jesus had come to Jerusalem as he had come to that tree: desiring to find fruit - the fruit of faith in him. Yet as he had been disappointed by that tree, Jesus would be crushingly disappointed by Jerusalem, even weeping over it (Luke 19: 41-44). And the day would come soon when Jesus would bring judgment on that city just as he had judged the symbol of the city: the fig tree.
The second incident occurs as Jesus enters the temple that morning and does not like what he finds there. Who were these money changers and pigeon sellers, and what were they doing? These were men who made a living off of the many Jewish travelers who came from around the world to worship in Jerusalem at Passover. They exchanged foreign money for local money, for a handsome
fee. And they sold animals for sacrifice to those who could not bring their own animals from faraway places, again, for a hefty profit. Jesus sees in this apparently very lucrative business a desecration of the temple itself: turning it from a “house of prayer” to a “den of robbers.”
So once again, as Jesus kicks over the counter-tops and bloodies the backs of these businessmen, he shows himself capable of true fury at evildoers. And notice, too: in this “cleansing of the temple,” as it has come to be called, Jesus was acting every bit the part of a righteous king in Israel. He’s doing exactly what a true and faithful Son of David would do as a faithful king. Remember how many times we read of the righteous kings of Israel tearing down the altars of Baal, destroying high places, and cleansing the temple in Jerusalem. Every noble king of the line of David was a “Puritan” in his own right: he sought to purify the worship of Israel. Jesus was showing himself to be a true son of David by doing the same thing on that Monday long ago.
For Discussion and Meditation:
When you think of the Monday of Holy Week, you should think of the fury of the King.
And this should remind us that the meekness of Jesus that we will see a few days later at his trial and sentencing and execution is surely not due to some lack of courage or strength of personality. We don’t have a “gentle Jesus” because he’s not assertive enough to be anything else! We have a gentle Jesus because his compassion for sinners is ordinarily a check on his righteous fury at their sin, this side of Judgment Day. But here we are given a glimpse of something else in Jesus, an exception to that rule.
Monday is the day you see that Jesus was more than a lamb being led to slaughter that Holy Week. He was a lion: the lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). For such a one as this to die for our sins, it would not be due to weakness. It would be due to his willingness to lay down his might and power - and rage at sinners - to endure the wrath of God for our sins. The lion would lay down his life meekly, like a lamb.
