Why Did Jesus Die?

“In the temple precincts [Jesus] came upon people selling oxen and sheep and doves, and bankers were doing business there too. He made a whip out of rope and drove them all out of the temple area, sheep, oxen, and all; then he knocked over the bankers; tables, and set their coins flying. And to the dove merchants he said, ‘Get these birds out of here! How dare you use my Father’s house as a public market!’” (John 2:14-16)

There is a lot of imagery during Holy Week, of Jesus as the “Lamb of God”, an innocent, being led calmly to slaughter on the cross. During the passion readings, which you will hear on Thursday evening and Friday at noon, Jesus is, actually, fairly calm and non reactive.

But in this story, which happens at the beginning of the week before his death, Jesus is anything but lamb-like. 

Jesus is angry. Jesus is reactionary and violent. Jesus goes into the area around the Temple in Jerusalem, and sees merchants trying to sell animals for ritual sacrifice, and the money changers exchanging foreign currency to buy these animals, likely at unfair rates, and Jesus flips out. He yells at them (according to Matthew 21:13), “My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers!”

In the typical Christian experience of Holy Week, we start with Palm Sunday, the pageantry and expectation of the Messiah, the Anointed, coming triumphantly into Jerusalem, only to die and then be resurrected on Easter. Many Christians miss the death part, if they don’t come to church on Thursday or Friday, and so they miss out on the emotional roller coaster that Holy Week can be. 

But even more so, if we skip the stories of that week, we miss the point that Jesus’s death wasn’t just for later Christians to make theological points about salvation. Jesus’s death was because he was angrily shouting out for justice, turning the tables over on systems of inequality, and crying out for a new relationship with God--ironically one of reverence and piety, not sacrifice.

Make no mistake, this week is about the brokenness and pain of Jesus’s suffering and death. But we should never forget the very human events that brought that death about. Jesus gave his life because he was unafraid to cry out against injustice, to call people to account for their oppressive actions, to fight for a transformation of the world toward greater justice and mercy. 

May this be our guide as we follow his example.