Geezer Rock & Our Faithful Response to Injustice

                                                   The Cleansing of the Temple -- Alexander Smirnov

 How can people be so heartless?

How can people be so cruel?
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feeling?
How can they ignore their friends?
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needed friend?
I need a friend

Do you remember this song? It's Easy to be Hard by Three Dog Night and if that makes any sense to you then you may be as geezery as I am because it was a hit in 1969. It was a lament which struck a chord with me at the time and through the years with its words caring about strangers and the realities of evil and social injustice. 

How are we supposed to feel about the injustices of the world as Christians? Is it acceptable to experience indignation and anger and to what extent? As we watch from afar the atrocities in Ukraine should we be satisfied with reports of the destruction of Russian tanks and the young men inside them? 

On the Monday of Holy Week we often reflect on what has been glibly described as Jesus' "temple tantrum", his angry response to money-changers in the temple complex of Jerusalem. It was a prophetic act which may have intensified the reaction of authorities, and he was dead by the end of the week. None of the gospels suggest that Jesus physically harmed the people who exchanged the money of Jews who travelled from across the Roman Empire for the Passover. But he makes a statement which couldn't be ignored.

However this event is interpreted -- there are many scholarly takes on what happened and its implications-- its clear that Jesus was expressing righteous anger. Yet he didn't choose to escalate that anger into violence or rally his followers into an uprising. The night of his arrest in Gethsemane he cautioned his disciples against taking up the sword in his defence.

In the midst of the heartlessness and cruelty of the world it seems appropriate to be angry at injustice in all its forms. Yet I know that living in perpetual outrage is not the answer, nor is "an eye for an eye." We can prayerfully seek the way of Christ who was aware that the violence which seems to be inherent in the human condition is not the answer. 

 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. 

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.”

Here's a "blast from the past" video of Three Dog Night singing Easy to be Hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrD14jqTtAE