The account of Jesus driving the money-changers out of the Temple is well and widely known.

When it happened, and under what circumstances, and with what results varies from Gospel to Gospel. This morning's version is from St. John's Gospel. John places this incident very early on in Jesus's ministry. The other Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke place this right after the events of Palm Sunday, and show that it was one of the major things that hardened the religious authorities determination to crucify Jesus.

Taking all the Gospels together, we can't be quite sure when this Temple cleansing happened, but we can be sure of the surrounding context and two related events. Related in temper and feel as well as in time. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem for the triumphal entry on what we now call Palm Sunday, he pauses and looks out over city from a vantage in the hills that stand about Jerusalem. He pauses and stands and looks . . . and weeps.

From Luke: "And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace. But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will surround you and hem you in on every side and dash you to the ground, because you did not know the time of your visitation . . . And he entered the Temple and began to drive out those who sold."

This is the great lament over Jerusalem before the cleansing of the Temple.

St. Mark, in his Gospel, writes of the day after he entered Jerusalem, when he is coming back into the city after having spent the night in nearby Bethany: "On the following day when they came from Bethany, Jesus was hungry, and seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to it to see if he could find any figs. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it: "May no one ever eat fruit from you again. And the disciples heard it."

This clue is left dangling until after the cleansing of the Temple. When they pass by that very same spot on their return, they see that same fig tree is withered to its roots. Peter says: "Look, Master at the tree you cursed". Jesus did then look at the dead tree and remarked, "if you have faith you will have power. Whatever you ask in prayer, it will be yours". Yikes!

People often say, that is scholars and commentators and Biblical theologians often say, that the cleansing of the Temple is a powerful and compelling example of Jesus expressing anger. I say nononono - you want anger, real anger, you look at that fig tree business.

In all three events, on or near Palm Sunday, I think we can see three clear and distinct and distinguishable instances of Jesus in deep emotion - perceiving, responding, speaking, acting in anguish, sorrow, dismay . . . and, yes, anger.

Three occasions, three events, three examples: The lament over Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Temple, the cursing of the fig tree.

First seems to me to be an example of ineffective lamentation from a distance and with little or no involvement.

The second seems a pointless, even unreasonable anger (he himself knew it was not the season for figs!)

And the third and final instance, an effective, righteous indignation that makes a point that accomplishes a specific, if painful, good result that is done for the Kingdom of God.

Some silly fiction out there that Christians should never really get angry, really angry. Oh yes they do - and should. But we can do that well, or not so well, compellingly or, well, pointlessly.

Christians can stand afar off commenting sadly - genuinely but listlessly lamenting with sorrow and weariness. But nothing else or more. A lament heartfelt, genuine, loving, concerned . . . but uninvolved, so distanced and nuanced and ethereal that nothing changes, nothing happens. Now Jesus, of course, can save by his worry from the hillside, but mere humans can't. For us the lament, unaccompanied by courageous action, is lyrical, beautiful, and ineffective

O we can, and do, misplace and misdirect our anger.

We risk and sometimes do, abuse an utterly innocent victim - a bystander, a witness, a circumstance. Furious at the piece of furniture on which we stub a toe, angry at some circumstance that is morally neutral, bitterly and vindictively disappointed at "fig trees that don't bear figs" when we know perfectly well it is "not the season for figs". Jesus' seemingly cavalier, even off-hand, words leave the impression that he and his followers after him, have the power to curse as well as bless, to hurt as well as heal. To damage, wither, destroy, by a word or a glance or a comment or a scheme something beautiful and innocent.

But above all Christians can do what was done in the Temple by their Lord. But it is painful. Anger and action - effective, engaged, real on the part of Jesus and on the part of those reproved. Yet something important and devout and genuinely "cleansing" has gone on.

But note why Jesus does this, driving them angrily out of the Temple - not because he doesn't like money-changing, less because he doesn't like money-changers or had some personal vendetta, not simply, or only, because he knew that all of this was inappropriate. No, rather because Scripture forbids it, and he quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah in his devout determination to establish that this behavior in the Temple is wrong.

Jesus will storm into our lives, and we hope he does more than lament, we pray he does other than to curse, but we ought to be warned that he probably will, and most likely should, strictly, strongly resolutely, confront, reprove, correct, cleanse us - force us to face our shortcomings and our outright sabotage of the Kingdom of God.

We are all money-changers in some fashion or other, we have all misbehaved in the house of God in his holy Temple at some point in our lives.

The people he finds in the Temple are in inevitable conflict with him and his perfection - the people in Mt Mk and Lk are so upset that they determine to get rid of him, but they wait like Satan for an opportune time - fearing the people. The Temple audience we saw in At John, this morning's Gospel, is just as startled, equally affronted, but more cautious - more reverent. They have at least a faint supposition that it might be of God, so they would like to see a sign. John's gospel continues the story and later recounts how out of their number emerges quietly a thoughtful and considerate man, an honorable man, Nicodemus, who wants to pursue this new insight into the purposes of God, wants to weigh what contribution all of this can have to his perception of the truth. They are silly, stubborn, pigheaded, but they are not vindictive, not malicious. Just perturbed and put-out.

They are not happy with the reproof but will at least see if somehow it has something of God in it, and one of their number, Nicodemus is saved by the conflict: he actually enters into and emerges out of this major set-to a better, finer man, who has now glimpsed something of the Kingdom of God. He will later help Joseph of Arimathea save Christ's body from desecration, he brings a load of burial spices that would literally have cost a fortune: 100 pounds of myrrh to preserve the body that will later rise.

Those furious, malignant money-changers of Matthew, Mark and Luke's accounts are not people we want to take on as role models.

The more ambiguous Temple hierarchy in St. John's account are also not people we would want to accept as our models either, but we may have to, realism and honesty may require that we acknowledge kinship with them and get on with it.

Three types of anger. I know which one I would choose to be part of, involved with, chastened by, and saved and enlightened and redeemed because of. I do not want to be mourned, pitied, grieved and lamented from a distance. I do not want to be cursed up close and left to wither and die. That leaves the third version, and frankly I don't much long for that either. I don't want to be cleansed, with the bad and the wrong and misdirected and the misguided in me driven out of my wee Temple, but guess I do think that that kind of righteous, passionate, forceful, strong, uncompromised action by Christ in the Temples of our lives is going to be good for us.