Holy Week and the Theme of Corruption
Photo by Florinel ZONE on Unsplash
As we approach Holy Week, I find myself thinking about two themes that run through the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ final days: that of corruption and sacrificial offering. In terms of corruption, it isn’t difficult to imagine why this is on my mind.
On a fitful night in January 2026, I woke up around 3 a.m. and began scrolling the homepage of The New York Times. On the front page was an editorial reporting that just one year into his presidency, Donald Trump had definitively used the office to generate at least $1.4 billion for himself and his family (others believe the real figure may be closer to $4 billion).
The graphics team clearly had fun with the project. As one scrolls down the page, reading one example after another of corrupt dealmaking, animated wads of cash rain down the screen. Each stack represents the American median household income of $83,000. And as deal after deal was revealed, the stacks piled higher and higher.
Over and over again, money shows up in the narrative surrounding Jesus’ final days and in this sequence of events, corruption is hardly a marginal detail in this story. Indeed, it appears to be one of the few things that makes gentle Jesus furious.
None of this helped me get back to sleep. But it did underscore how corruption has become part of the background noise of our civic life. We now inhabit a milieu in which brazen examples of “cashing in” are normalized, and citizens—and even our churches—have grown numb to them, often remaining silent about a matter that affects us all. The editorial closes with a kind of lament:
“The demands of avarice gradually corrupt the work of government as officials facilitate the accumulation of personal wealth. Worse, such a government corrupts the people who live under its rule. They learn by experience that they live in a society where the laws are written by the highest bidder.”
In light of this, is there anything our faith tradition has to say about what some are describing as this new Golden Age of Corruption?
As a matter of fact, corruption comes up often in the New Testament, from mentions of bribes and extortion to critiques of officials who use their positions to exploit the poor. But perhaps nowhere does this theme appear more insistently than in the stories surrounding the last week of Jesus’ life.
Jesus’ cleansing of the temple (Mt 21:12-13; Mk 11:15-17; Lk 19:45-46) and the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot for thirty pieces of silver (Mt 26:14-16) are certainly the most obvious examples. These two moments anchor the narrative of Holy Week, helping explain both the why and the how of Jesus’ crucifixion. Yet as one reads carefully through the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ final days, many other references emerge. Jesus warns about scribes who “devour widows’ houses” (Mk 12:40; Lk 20:47). He condemns religious leaders who see the gold of the temple as more sacred than the temple itself (Mt 23:16-17). In John’s Gospel, Judas is revealed to be the disciples’ treasurer, one who steals from the common purse (Jn 12:4-6; 13:29). And after the resurrection, authorities bribe the guards to spread false witness (Mt 28:11-15). Along the way, the Gospels also wrestle with other corruption-related issues, including the use of “blood money” to purchase the potter’s field (Mt 27:3-8) and the soldiers’ casting lots for Jesus’ last remaining property at the crucifixion (Jn 19:23-24; see also Mt 27:35, Mk 15:24, Lk 23:34).
To be sure, each of these examples merits its own exploration—something that is frankly impossible in a short blog post. For example, while there is a range of opinion about the precise reason behind Jesus’ protest at the temple, his words and actions in all four Gospels depict a startling fury directed at the money side of the temple system. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus calls the temple “a den of robbers” (Mt 21:13; Mk 11:17; Lk 19:46)—that is, a place where stolen wealth is stored. In John’s account, Jesus famously fashions a whip of cords, drives out the merchants and money changers, overturns their tables, and declares that his Father’s house has been turned into a marketplace (Jn 2:14-16). Summarizing the importance of the temple cleansing in Jesus’ final days, the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch writes: “[Jesus] provoked a disturbance in it, protesting at what he saw as its misuse for commerce and profit, and it was the goal of his last fatal public appearances. Then he was arrested in Jerusalem, put on trial and executed along with two common criminals on a hill outside the city, by the ghastly Roman custom of crucifixion.”
Over and over again, money shows up in the narrative surrounding Jesus’ final days and in this sequence of events, corruption is hardly a marginal detail in this story. Indeed, it appears to be one of the few things that makes gentle Jesus furious. In this way, money and corruption emerge as a central force shaping the events of that final week. And if that is the case, shouldn’t it also be central to how we tell the story of Jesus’ last days during Holy Week?
In case I haven’t yet persuaded anyone from the biblical angle, let me try from the pastoral one.
As the New York Times editorial begins to suggest, corruption by leaders—governmental, religious, and otherwise—has a way of degrading society in general. Everything becomes up for sale, and this is an exhausting, disorienting reality to live within.
Indeed, in Sarah Chayes’ 2020 book On Corruption in America (which opens, incidentally, with an extended reflection on Jesus’ cleansing of the temple), she argues that corruption fuels societal instability, anger, and radicalization. Drawing on her experience as a journalist and international expert on corruption, first in Afghanistan before noting similar patterns in the United States, Chayes argues that rising corruption is a key factor in growing polarization and extremism. When people feel that their interests are no longer represented by elected officials, but only serve special interests, there is a collective sense of frustration, hopelessness, and despair–all of which are pastoral realities affecting the hearts and minds of those who pass through our doors on Sunday.
Thus Jesus’ response to corruption (anger and protest) and the way the Gospels uphold sacrificial offering functions almost as a kind of counterpoint to the ethos of corruption. For in the same breath that we hear Jesus denouncing scribes who devour widows’ houses, we see him honor a widow who gives her last mite in offering to God (Mk 12:38-44; Lk 20:45-21:4).Even as Judas prepares to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, an unnamed woman scandalizes the disciples by anointing Jesus with costly oil, an offering the Gospel of Matthew implicitly values at roughly three times the sum (Mt 26:6–16; Mk 14:3–11; Jn 12:1–8). And even as soldiers are bribed to spread false witness after the resurrection (Mt 28:11-15), the women who visit the tomb bear a costly, faithful witness to the resurrection. Speaking of his death and resurrection, Jesus describes it as the fullest of offerings, a kind of ransom payment for the liberation of humanity (Mk 10:45).
Gregory of Nazianzus in the fourth century captured the push and pull of these themes in Holy Week when he wrote: “He is sold, and cheap was the price—thirty pieces of silver; yet he buys back the world at the mighty cost of his own blood.” Can this be a message of hope? I believe so. For there is a deeply pastoral dimension to the directness with which the Gospels name our society’s degradation of everything to something that can be bought and sold, reducing what is holy to that which can be purchased on the cheap.
The Gospels reflect on this corruption unflinchingly while still offering a vision of hope – for even this is somehow redeemed through the one who was bought and sold, bore the cost, and rose again for the liberation of humankind.
