The children in the temple
Matthew 21:12-16
12 Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’
14 The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry 16 and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
We end our week-long conversation about children with this text.
On Palm Sunday Jesus arrived in Jerusalem to the shouts of the crowd and then went to the temple. His arrival at the temple caused three things to happen that were out of normal. First, Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers and the dove sellers. Second, the sick came to be healed. Jesus had been staying away from Jerusalem, so the sick of Jerusalem had not been able to get close to him to ask to be healed, until now. And third, children were running through the temple singing/shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David.”
It was this third thing that the chief priests and the scribes name as what they were upset about: the children joyfully praising that the Messiah has come (the reference to “the Son of David” is reference to the Messiah.) Jesus defends the children with a quote from Psalm 8:2, that God uses children to proclaim the truth about himself in the world, to proclaim God’s praise.
This passage fits well the theme of children we have been exploring in the last week: the special care to be offered to children and the example they are of humility. The children in the temple care little about looking proper, they are focussed on one thing: to praise the Messiah who God has sent. No, they don’t know everything that that means, but they do know that one worthy of their praise has come and so that is what they do. Again, we are invited to be like children, this time to offer the same joyful celebration that the children bring, praising Jesus the Messiah who has come.
PRAYER:
Lord, help us to welcome you with the same joy the children showed, teach us to praise you without worry about what is proper, that we might lose ourselves in awe and wonder for your great glory revealed in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.