This Necessary Week

Brian and Kathy Emmet

This week, a very different set of Connect Devotionals because this week is unlike all others.  

On Sunday, we “welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem,” joining with that long-ago crowd in lifting our praises to the Messiah.  If we’re not attentive, we might skip past all that the Gospels insist on telling us about this week, and find ourselves leapfrogging to Easter: Palm Sunday praises straight to Easter joy, with nothing in between.

This week we are invited to slow down and follow Jesus all the way through the twistings and turnings of this week.  According to our four Gospel writers, everything in this week matters, nothing is “thrown in” accidentally, all of it is pointing Jesus, and we who seek to follow him, to the cross.

Each writer this week will invite you to explore a different passage:  the “cleansing of the Temple” (Monday), the argument about paying taxes to Caesar (Tuesday), the “great commandment” (Wednesday), the Last Supper and Gethsemane (Thursday), and the culmination of this week on Good Friday.  We hope that what we write will invite you to a deeper engagement with these Scriptures, as well as with the entire narrative of this week that began on a joy-filled Sunday and ended on a terrible Friday we now call “Good.”

We hope you’ll read what we write.  Even more, we hope you will dive into what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote!

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When a Distraction Isn’t a Distraction

Debbie Kiser

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” He said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers’” (Matt. 21: 12-13).

Those notification sounds from your phone. The nagging feeling you left the stove on. The reminder list floating around in your head. Non-stop distraction. We’ve all been sidelined from pursuing x, y, or z because a, b, or c distracted us. Soon enough, we can’t recall what we were praying for or what we were going upstairs for. 

Jesus makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week. Since we know where this week ends, as does Jesus, we might expect Him to enjoy, maybe even encourage, this (short-lived) adoration. Instead, He heads for the raucous Temple courtyard. Basking in adulation would distract Jesus from His path to the cross, but is cleansing the Temple also a distraction?

Merchants, in cooperation with priests, have set up money-changing booths and animal-selling stalls with inflated prices in the courtyard where Gentiles are allowed to pray. In fact, this is the only place they can pray. Think how easily we’re distracted from prayer in a quiet room; imagine the distractions of merchants hawking their wares while you’re trying to pray. Whereas the priests see people entering the Temple court as an economic opportunity, Jesus sees them - and ministers to them - as people in need. Hasn’t this always been His purpose?

So, no, this cleansing is not a distraction from Jesus’ loving pursuit of people or even a distraction from His sacrificial journey to the Cross. What He does here - challenging the religious status quo - keeps Him in the crosshairs of the religious authorities, as He’s been for almost three years. 

You know who else isn’t distracted? It’s the poor and needy in the Temple courts. While the priests and merchants are likely furious and yelling at Jesus, those who need His healing touch aren’t distracted by the upheaval. Amidst the overturned tables, “the blind and the lame came to Him, and He healed them” (21:14). Does Jesus find them a distraction from His righteous anger? No. The needy are never a distraction to Jesus. Not even when He’s in agony on a cross. 

Where do you see yourself? Numbered among the “poor and needy,” desperate for Jesus’ touch? Or among those too distracted by work and marketplace noise to see what needs cleansing or overturning? What would a less distracted, more focused “you” look like this Holy Week?