Articles in this section are from the past 6 to 12 months,
OF MONEY CHANGERS AND CHURCH ORGANISTS
There are no painters more closely associated with Americana than Norman Rockwell and Grant Wood. Rockwell’s covers for Look and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as his illustrations are the images in our collective memory. When we remember Rosie the Riveter, and Ruby Bridges we remember his paintings of them. Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” is, undoubtedly, the most recognizable image in American art. Both men also share the experience of being tossed on the heap of the irrelevant and maudlin, only to be reconsidered by later generations for the darkness in their work that had somehow been missed.
Wood is a satirist, and Rockwell a journalist, but both men had serious critiques to make about American society. In Wood’s hilarious and unsettling “Parson Weems Fable,” he portrays the popular and completely fabricated story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. It is blunt-force irony that a story about truth-telling is a lie, and so he paints the story as happening on a stage behind a theatrical curtain. In the painting, little George has the body of a 6 year old, but the face of the Gilbert Stuart painting on the one dollar bill. In the background slaves are picking cherries – exposing an even larger lie than Parson Weems’ fib about George’s little hatchet.
In Norman Rockwell’s painting “Freedom from Fear,” part of “The Four Freedoms” series inspired by a Franklin Delano Roosevelt speech, Rockwell paints a couple putting their children to bed. They are a boy and girl, maybe 5 and 7 years old. Mom is tucking in the blanket, and dad is quietly looking down at the kids. The series, painted in 1943, was a vivid reminder of the blessings of being a free people, of why we were fighting. The thing is - the painting is filled with fear. To be a parent is to be afraid for your children, and those fears are clearly on the dad’s face. No wonder – in his hand is a newspaper whose headlines read: “Bombings Kill…./Horror Hits….” On the ground a grey-striped pajama top reminds one of the uniforms Jews wore in the death camps. Even a doll lies on the floor like a corpse. There is no freedom from fear.
Both paintings juxtapose the way things ought to be with the way they are as a protest to their incongruity. That’s fine. We should always take a hard look at the way things are, and strive to make things the way they ought to be. We should never be satisfied with coming up short.
The problem is that we often blame God for this incongruity. The fault is ours. God didn’t invent lying, slavery, or genocide. We did. God makes things the way they are supposed to be. We sin and make them the way they are. When I was a young man preparing myself for ministry I knew I would have to defend the faith (the doctrines of the New Testament), and faith (the existence of God), but I had no inkling that more often than either of these defenses, I would be challenged about the goodness of God.
My only assertion in this little piece is that God is good, and that the way things always fall short of how they ought to be is about us, not about Him. God makes things the way they are supposed to be. We make them the way they are.
Oh taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Psalm 34.8 ESV
And Jesus entered the Temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the Temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers. Matthew 21.12-13 ESV
There are no instructions about moneychangers and livestock salesman in the Temple – not in the Law of Moses. The Old Testament is silent on the subject. The reason for this silence is that when Moses’ law was delivered by God, it was delivered to an emancipated people who were about to build a nation together. That nation would be built in villages, by farmers. People would provide most of their own needs through what they raised in the pasture, the vineyard, the orchard, and the field. Their society didn’t offer specialized careers beyond priests, kings, and soldiers. Jews lived in Palestine. There were no synagogues in the major cities of the Mediterranean. There were no Jewish women making a good living selling luxury items to retired Romans in Philippi. There was no Philippi. Every family that came to Passover could bring their own animal, or had their own Judean coins.
In Jesus’ day Jews coming to the Passover could have come from as far away as the Indus Valley, or the Iberian Peninsula. Few, if any, could have transported animals for sacrifice, even if they had them. Would a tent-maker from Tarsus have kept sheep? Probably not. Nor would that tent-maker have had in his pockets the Judean coins needed to purchase an animal for sacrifice when he arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover. And so the presence of animals for purchase, and of moneychangers to provide the correct currency was necessary for many of Passover’s attendees. They provided needed services – for a fee. It is easy to understand why Jesus would be offended at the temple being turned into a marketplace. Especially as the accusation He makes above indicates that folks were being cheated by the salesmen and money-changers. But I think it is also a matter of the times. The fullness of time had come (Galatians 4.4). The days of the Mosaic Law are over. Jesus has fulfilled all that the Law promised, and initiates something new – the Kingdom of God.
This story is really disturbing (I mean it!).
John Scott Harrison was a successful farmer, businessman, and a member of Congress (1853-1857). While serving in Congress as a Whig, he opposed the extension of slavery into the West. His real distinction, however, is that he is the only man to be both son and father to a president. Scott’s father was Old Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison. Scott’s son was President Benjamin Harrison. But that’s not the disturbing part.
When Scott Harrison died in 1878, he was given a tasteful and refined funeral service, and buried in Cincinnati, Ohio. That very night grave robbers took his corpse and sold it to the Ohio Medical College, in Cincinnati for dissection. One of his sons had business at the school, and, passing by a classroom, looked in and saw his father’s corpse dangling by a rope, being prepared by the medical students. Of course, Scott Harrison was identified and reburied, but his family never recovered from the shock.*
The fate of Scott Harrison’s body reminds me of the fate of the Rich man’s soul in Luke 16. As a rich man, with a family, he would have received a lavish burial with paid mourners, and glowing eulogies. But while his family thinks of him as secure and well placed in a dignified tomb, he lifts up his eyes and finds himself in hell. Shocked, desperate, worried about those he left behind, no relief or comfort is given to him – only torment and more torment today, tomorrow and forever.
The poor man he ignored day after day at his gate, by contrast, lifts his eyes to find his suffering ended and eternal comfort given to him. The reversal of their fortunes is so complete that in Death it is the poor man whose name we know – Lazarus – while the rich man is an anonymous soul in hell. We are not told of Lazarus’ happy surprise at finding himself suddenly in such absolute bliss, but we do not doubt such feelings overwhelmed him.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that, regardless of our sentence, we will all be surprised on judgment day. When the lost are condemned for not feeding, clothing, visiting, etc…Jesus, they will ask in desperate shock at their condemnation, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, naked, sick…?!” When the saved are welcomed into bliss for taking care of Jesus, they will ask the same question, with the same intense surprise.
One of the most famous photographic images from American professional sports is the shot of Babe Ruth standing bat in hand at home plate, ball-cap respectfully held at his side, his head slightly bowed, and his number 3 fully visible at the center of the shot. It was June 13, 1928; the twenty-fifth anniversary of Yankee Stadium, the house he built, and they were retiring his number. He would die soon, and had to be helped to even walk to the dugout. He couldn’t tie his shoes by himself. Photographers from around the world were there that day, and took a lot of photographs, but the one we remember was taken by Nat Fein of the New York Herald Tribune. * He wasn’t, a sports photographer; he usually took snaps for special interest features – man bites dog stuff – but the photographer scheduled for the event took ill, and at the last minute he was sent.
Back in those days the press had a respect for our heroes, and refused to print shots of the Babe struggling to get out of a car, or having his shoes tied for him. When the special moment came, the Babe grabbed a bat belonging to the Cleveland Indian’s Bob Feller to use as a cane, and walked by himself to home plate. The capacity crowd rose and roared, and the flashbulbs twinkled, catching the broad face of the great man. Fein, however, knew that the important thing to get into the shot was the #3, which was only on the back of his jersey. He took a low angle, which included the crowds, the row of Yankees standing on the 1st base line, and which made the Babe, though bowed a bit, look like a giant. It is a perfect shot, aesthetically, narratively, and functionally.
