Holy Week, Day 2

On this day, Jesus strode into the temple in Jerusalem and lit the fuse.

He turned over the merchants' tables, scattering money from here to yonder. Picture the vendors scrabbling for their coins before the wall-to-wall people there could pick them up.

He set free the birds that could be uses as sacrifices for those too poor to bring a lamb.

He picked up a rope and used it like a whip on the merchants and maybe to drive the animals out of the temple.

Smell the manure, hear the deafening noise of thousands of people who thronged the temple and the city during this Passover week, and feel Jesus's anger as he railed against the people who had made His Father's house a den of thieves.

And then feel the anger also of the rulers of the temple. They viewed Jesus as a rebel who was trying to turn the affections of the people away from the true religion, one who broke the rules so carefully set up by scribes over the centuries.

Picture Jesus there, then; and here, now.