Moneychangers and the Cleansing of the Temple

The pursuit of wealth and material things is something most of us consume ourselves with day after day. Hoping to win the lottery is a national pastime. Why do we allow ourselves to get caught up in wasting so much of our energy wishing for money. Money has no value in and of itself and it certainly doesn’t grow on trees. Money is a unit of exchange for our own service and creativity. When our thoughts are aligned with our willingness to serve and create, we suddenly become money magnets. How can this be?

When our thoughts are focused on how we can serve others with what we create, we move into action. It is these actions that produce abundant wealth. When we focus our thoughts on the desire for more and more money we become obsessed with a different intention.

Let’s look at the famous story of Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers. This account can be found in the New Testament, John 2:12. Jesus goes to the temple in Jerusalem and finds men exchanging money and selling stuff. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” It’s interesting to not that he spoke to those who sold the doves. Doves represent spiritual messengers in the Bible.

In a later verse Jesus refers to his body as the temple. “But the temple he had spoken of was his body“.

Let’s apply this situation in our own lives. If our bodies are the temple, then we need to cleanse them. We need to overturn the tables and scatter the coins and stop fixating on the greed of wealth. We need to stop commoditizing spiritualism and get the “doves”, or false spiritual messengers out of our minds and off our television sets. No one likes greedy banks and TV preachers begging for money.

There is nothing wrong with making money, or buying and selling. It is how we think about it that is the key. Cleanse the temple of the mind from greed and envy by choosing to serve and create. This will lead to blessings and abundance beyond measure.