Holy Monday - Cleansing What We Have Cluttered

Throughout Holy Week, we walk with Jesus toward the Cross, allowing His actions to reveal what true devotion, true obedience, and faith in action look like.

According to the Gospel reading for this day, Jesus enters the Temple and disrupts what has become ordinary but unhealthy. 

The Temple in Jerusalem had become a money-making enterprise for the High Priest and his family. Pilgrims arriving in Jerusalem to make a sacrifice often had to purchase animals for the ceremony, but they could only do so with money minted by the Temple.  

In order to change their coins into the shekels used by the Temple, they had to pay fees to Temple-approved money changers, many of whom also sold the animals.  All of this took place in the outer courtyard of the Temple, and the practice was exploitive toward those who were poor.  

Jesus begins turning over the tables of the money-changers, and seizes a leather whip to drive them out of the courtyard.  It must have been a fantastic scene with coins rattling on the stones, animals running amok, and undoubtedly a mad scramble by many to pick up money from the ground.  

Then Jesus proclaims: 

“My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers.” (Matthew 21:13)

This moment is not merely about anger—it is about restoration. Jesus is reclaiming sacred space.

Biblical scholar N. T. Wright notes that this act was not random but deeply symbolic: Jesus was announcing that God’s presence could no longer be confined to a corrupted system. The Temple had become cluttered—not just with commerce, but with misplaced priorities.

And so it raises a question for us: what have we allowed to clutter the sacred spaces of our lives?

Like those in the Temple, we rarely intend to drift. It happens gradually. Good things—responsibilities, routines, even religious practices—can crowd out the very presence they were meant to serve.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us that God’s vision was always broader: “a house of prayer for all nations.” A place of openness, connection, and transformation.

Yet how often do we turn faith into a transaction rather than a relationship?

Richard Rohr writes, “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” Jesus’ action invites us into that lived transformation—one where faith is not contained but embodied.

Holy Week begins, then, not with comfort but with disruption. It is an invitation to let Jesus overturn what no longer serves love. It is a call to examine our hearts, our habits, and even our assumptions about God.

And yet, this disruption is grace.

Because when Jesus clears away the clutter, He makes room to restore what has been lost.

May we allow Christ to cleanse what we have cluttered, so that our lives may once again become places of prayer, mercy, and presence.

Prayer

Cleansing God, overturn what needs to be overturned in me. Clear away what crowds out Your presence. Restore my heart as a place of prayer. Amen.

Reflection Questions

1. What “clutter” has accumulated in your spiritual life?
2. Where might faith have become routine rather than relational?
3. What would it look like to allow Jesus to restore your inner life?