Hotter than a Two Dollar Pistol

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. (Matthew 21:12-17 ESV). I suppose it might be of some interest to begin today with the orign of the idiom, “hot as a two dollar pistol.” The idiom was used in the 1944 movie “Trocadero.” An interesting but little recognized bit of pop culture came about in this movie about a newspaper columnist in search of a good news story for his Sunday column. In the story, the club decides to move from the traditional big band sound to add a swing band, a genre of music that was hot back east but not nearly as well known on the west coast. Slipped into the dialogue, you’ll hear the comment about someone being as hot as a two-dollar pistol. But, the actual goes back further than that. From what I could find quickly in the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalogue, pistols sold for sixty-eight cents and up. Even in 1897, sixty-eight cents was not going to buy you a very well made gun. History relates that a good pistol cost the equivalent of nearly a month’s wages for a cowboy; in the 1870s, a cowboy generally earned $25 per month. Back in 1873, the Colt Peacemaker, also known as the gun that won the West, sold for $17. Obviously, a poorly made gun that kept burning paper in it would become hot at best (and blow up in your face at worst) with each shot fired. And a poorly made gun would be one the manufacturer intended to sell at a cut-rate price. A pistol that sold for $2 wasn’t much of a pistol at all. In fact, it was a bargain basement pistol that no self-respecting cowboy would be seen carrying. In the end, the expression was primarily used to mean hot as in temperament. When Jesus cleared the money changers from the Temple area, some would say he was as hot as a two dollar pistol; they would be wrong. This action was both calculated and justified. Jesus saw unscrupulous men using a necessary service as a mean of defrauding earnest people coming to worship. That happens all too often today in some of our churches. Leadership defraud people by wrong messages steeped in guilt, shame, or fear; they take advantage of the tender hearts prepared by the Holy Spirit for a message of grace through their personal rants designed to further their agenda rather than God’s design for forgiveness and restoration. I wonder if Jesus were to walk into our homes or churches if he would have any tables to overturn? We would all do well to use today to reexamine our motive and message to those around us. Lead people to the grace of God in Christ. They won’t go wrong there!