Jesus Clears The Temple
JESUS CLEARS THE TEMPLE
JOHN 2:13-25
How can we show something of Jesus’ zeal for God and against injustice?
Jesus now goes up to Jerusalem, where John shows that he presents the challenge of his person and work to the Jewish leaders. He has just demonstrated, by his sign at Cana, the superiority of the new religion over the old. Here he makes a symbolic purification of Jewish worship as an indication of the coming of the Messianic age. The Lord of the temple comes suddenly into his temple (Malachi 3:1-3). He finds at the very heart of Judaism, in the very place which the Lord had chosen to make his name dwell, commercial exploitation and corruption. This allowed for a kind of “instant religion” where everything was on hand—convenient for the “worshiper,” no doubt, but governed mainly by the profit motive. True religion withers in such an atmosphere, as many, visiting so-called “shrines,” have discovered.
The prophecy of Zechariah 14, which had spoken of the Lord’s reign over all the earth and the pilgrimage of all nations to Jerusalem to worship him, ended with the words: “And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day” (Zechariah 14:21). The zeal of Jesus for God’s house and honor was such that he was prepared to use strong methods to drive out those who were profiteering from the need of the people to have animals and birds for sacrifice. There are times when Christians too may be called to forceful action.
The Jews demand a sign to authenticate his action and he gives them an answer which they misunderstand (cf. Mark 14:58). The temple, as the symbol of God’s presence with his people, was theologically redundant, as the Word had become flesh and was tabernacling among men (John 1:14). It was doomed to destruction in due course, paradoxically through their possessive attitude to it (John 11:48; cf. Luke 13:35, “your house”). But the new temple of Christ’s body had to go through death to resurrection before it could be a spiritual temple and body of believers (1 Corinthians 3:16; 12:27). As always there was a mixed response to him and some very superficial “belief.” At that stage Jesus was not ready to trust himself to them as he now so graciously trusts himself to us.
Note The chronology of the cleansing of the temple creates a problem as the Synoptic Gospels place it just before the Passion. The evangelists were not bound to write in a strict chronological order, and it may be that John has put it here as a “programmatic” incident symbolizing the nature of Christ’s mission, or that the others have put it for conciseness in the one visit to Jerusalem which they record. But there are sufficient differences of detail to allow the possibility of two separate cleansings.