Exodus 20.1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1.18-25; John
2.13-22
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but
first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was
crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the
cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
THE cleansing of the Temple is unusual in that it is recorded in
all four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke place it within the last
week of Jesus's life, as he enters Jerusalem to die (Matthew
21.12-17; Mark 11.15-19; Luke 19.45-48). John's Gospel takes a
different approach. Here, it is set at the very beginning of
Jesus's public ministry, immediately after the first miraculous
sign of his identity as Son of God at the marriage at Cana (John
2.1-12), which is explicitly located close to the feast of Passover
(John 2.13).
There will be two more Passovers in John's chronology: the
first, soon after Jesus feeds a great crowd who have gathered to
hear him teach (John 6.1-14); the second as he comes to the end of
his ministry. This description is protracted, and moves from a meal
in the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus six days before the
festival (John 12.1-2), to the crucifixion on the day of
preparation for Passover (John 19.31). The New Testament scholar
William Barclay points out that this provides a frame of about two
years from Jesus's baptism to his death.*
John's architecture seems to encompass the meaning of everything
that Jesus will do, from the overturning of the tables until the
moment he announces from the cross "It is finished" (John 19.30).
What it describes is the enormous endeavour of setting right
the human relationship with God. Jesus was not objecting to the
customary practices of money-changing, and selling sacrificial
animals. Nor was he proposing any challenge to the Mosaic law that
first established a covenant relationship between God and God's
people (Exodus 20.1-17). His anger was aroused by the corrupt way
in which the money-changers charged excessive commission for
converting into Temple money the coinage brought by faithful Jews,
who were making perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime Passover visit to
Jerusalem.
Equally, he took exception to the inflated prices charged for
animals and birds within the Temple precincts, and the inspectors'
regular rejection of creatures purchased outside in order to ensure
their own revenue stream. And then, as Barclay notes, there was the
noise as all this commerce was carried out in the Court of the
Gentiles. The reference to Zechariah's vision of a Jerusalem in
which the Lord's house would no longer be a marketplace is apt on
two levels (Zechariah 14.2; John 2.16). It speaks to the immediate
present, and it indicates a new order, still to be realised, in
which the worship of God will indeed be "in spirit and in truth"
(John 4.23).
The Gospel-writer makes no attempt to persuade us that this was
fully understood at the time. In fact, the account makes conscious
use of the devices of memory. The disciples remembered, possibly
years later, a verse from the psalms, "Zeal for your house will
consume me" (Psalm 69.9), adding to the episode a note of righteous
anger. Interpreters of this verse suggest that the psalmist may
have been committed to the rebuilding of the Temple (sixth century
BCE); and its recollection here makes an elegant transition from
Jesus's actions to the Temple itself. As a sign of authority for
what he has done, Jesus promises to rebuild the Temple in three
days, if the Jews should demolish it (John 2.19). After the
resurrection, the disciples "remembered that he had said this", and
understood that "he was speaking of the temple of his body" (John
2.21-22).
All this literary patterning and quotation puts shape and sense
on events too enormous and imponderable to confront in any other
way. Paul, however, takes the opposite strategy in preaching the
gospel, writing to the Corinthians that Christ did not commission
him to employ "eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might
be emptied of its power" (1 Corinthians 1.17). It is too late to
please those who have already failed to "know God through wisdom"
(1 Corinthians 1.21). Instead, he proposes something manifestly
foolish: the story of God crucified (1 Corinthians 1.23).
That is the challenge of the collect of the day, composed
originally by the scholarly American priest, William Reed
Huntington (c.1882). If we can persevere with the paradox and risk
of the cross, we will find ourselves on "the way of life and
peace".
*The Daily Study Bible (Revised Edition): The Gospel of John,
Volume 1 (St Andrew Press, 1975)
