If I were to ask you how Jesus was feeling on the day he cleansed the temple, what would you say? Would your answer be, “Jesus was angry.”?
On Monday, as I started working on this text, I thought about what it might mean for us today; I read several commentaries. Some challenged me to think about Jesus, not as angry, but as intensely invested in the worship and praise of God. Why?
If we look in the book of Deuteronomy, ch. 14, it is written, and here I paraphrase, that if you are going to worship in the place where the Lord’s name has been designated (in later times, that would be the temple), and you live a long ways away, don’t bring your sacrificial animals with you. Instead, sell these animals at home, take the money you have received, go to the place of designation (temple) and buy what you need—meat, wine, and strong drink. Then you will eat it in God’s presence and with your family.
Knowing this passage from Deuteronomy, one has to ask, after reading about Jesus cleansing the temple, “Why is Jesus angry?” After all, isn’t that what the law encourages you should do, buy what you need for celebrating Passover when you get there? What better place to do your one-stop shopping than right there in the temple courtyard?
As I worked to prepare for this sermon, after more conversation and thought, this is what I came up with.
Chapter 14 of Deuteronomy continues to give further consideration to the priesthood, the widows, the orphans, and the stranger. In other words, when you eat, you will share what you give to God with all of those who are around you.
The Deuteronomy text deals with justice— social justice for the community, and humane treatment for the animals. Certainly, one is to bring the best that one has to give to the Lord, and the best cannot be the best if the animal has been driven for days, even months on the road. Therefore, share the abundance of what you have with the people where you live.
Then taking the money received from the sale of your abundance, go to the place of designation, Jerusalem, and buy what you need. In this way, your home community benefits from the good quality of your animals and goods while the economy of the place where you are going benefits too. Beyond the benefits to the communities, the traveler’s burden is lightened, and the journey can be much faster. It is a win-win-win situation.
So, again I ask, when Jesus enters the temple courtyard, why does he get upset?
For Passover, we know that the meal will need a lamb or goat, wine, and yes, strong drink. This is the big blowout celebration of Jewish life. There are other big occasions, but Passover is the event that puts the Hebrew people in relationship with God. In fact, the Passover event is the central event of Judaism. The Passover event and the years in the wilderness are for Jewish people what Easter, Baptism, and Communion are for Christians. Without Passover, Judaism would not exist.
Some think Jesus is concerned that the local farmers have been taken out of the equation by the temple selling the animals. Instead of distributing the abundance of God’s creation among all of God’s people, the temple has become the primary beneficiary of what the people bring. The temple has gotten into the business of making money instead of being the source of expressing God’s work of presence and justice. The problem is that, during the Passover season, when worship and celebration of God’s activity among God’s people and in the world, the temple courtyard has become for them the Wisconsin Dells without any water parks.
Others suggest Jesus is concerned over the money itself. The coins of the world had images of rulers and animals stamped on them. They came from Rome, Egypt, Persia, Syria and more. All of these places would have used Roman imperial coins, but they had their own money as well. These coins as well as the Roman coins had images of people or animals on them. They were therefore considered idolatrous.
Because the people were very careful to remember the first commandment, You shall have no other God, in the holy place of the temple, the “idolatrous” money they brought with them could not be used. Within the temple confines, they only used temple money with abstract scrolling, maybe wheat or other botanical, maybe nothing at all, but no images of people or animals.
The money used on the road had to be exchanged for these temple coins which were then used in the temple marketplace to buy the animals for sacrifice and to pay the tithe, the temple tax. Here again, the problem was that the money-changers were making money in the process which decreased the pilgrim’s ability to celebrate and share God’s gift of abundance.
So, again I ask, when Jesus enters the temple courtyard, why does he get upset?
The work of the temple was to be the center of worship and to help the poor. It was there to aid the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Therefore, we can say social justice is at the heart of this passage.
In some ways, the temple was the welfare system for that time. If the temple did not administer its funds for the care of the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger, some understood the temple was stealing from these people of need. So, the whole issue of justice is going on in the midst of this story.
There is one more thing I learned this week that I would like to share with you today. If we read this text thinking that the way Jesus feels in the context of the other Gospels is how he feels here in the book of John, we do an injustice to the Gospel of John. In the other Gospels, the cleansing of the temple and the disruption and dismissal of the temple’s righteousness, comes at the end of the Gospel, in that time we call Holy Week, and is the reason for Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. In these three Gospels, Jesus displays a righteous anger that dismisses the sacrificial practices as being empty and useless ritual behavior.
But, in John, while the cleansing of the temple occurs at Passover just as in the others, this is a Passover at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. In this gospel, it has more to do with clearing the decks for the battle between light and darkness for the sake of the world. Here the actions of Jesus, the light of the world, are a corrective. Jesus says, “You shall not make my father’s house a market place”, but he makes no declaration of thievery or deceit.
One translation from Greek describes Jesus using a “whip of cords” in cleansing the temple. It can also be translated as “a scourge made of bull rushes”. In this sense, by using bull rushes, Jesus has made something more like a broom than a whip and is driving the animals out by swatting them and sweeping up after them. It is more like spring cleaning in order that worship, that is, prayer, praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for the people, that worship can again be central to the work of the temple.
Jesus’ actions of sweeping out the old will allow the people of John’s time to hear and see that the designation for recognizing God’s name in the world, is no longer the temple, a place, but that God’s name is to be located is in the person of Jesus himself. No longer will God be anchored in wood and stone, but God’s designation will be translocated to the mobile presence of Jesus himself for the sake of the world. God’s presence in the world will no longer be something to go to but to follow, and what it means to follow will be given to us in the examples of relationship that are to come.
In the Gospel of John, it is not the cleansing of the temple that is the cause for Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. Here the reason Jesus is crucified is that Jesus has demonstrated his divine authority by raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus has made the reality of resurrection real and possible for all people. Jesus has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that he is the light of the world; that he is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus is the light that the darkness cannot overcome, and in the darkness of the world, Jesus is the light that shines leading God’s people into that relationship of grace and peace that has no end.
One of the people I spoke with this week said that Jesus is no angrier here than a drover is when he drives cattle to market--it is simply a job that needs to be done. “So, let’s get to it. We’re burning daylight.”
So, again I ask, when Jesus enters the temple courtyard, why does he get upset?
I realize what I have shared with you today is more like a Bible study than a sermon, but I wanted to do so because my studies have really changed the way that I think about this text. I think that this change also changes the way we can think about the whole Gospel of John.
This story of temple cleansing helps us to understand that mission and ministry is not fixed but something that we do on the go. It helps us understand that God’s house is revealed in, with, and through our relationships with our neighbors whenever we share God’s love and caring.
If we are able to come to these texts being able to set aside our preconceived prejudices and ideas, willing to talk with one another, then that which makes the Living Word the Living Word can continue to grow, can continue to change us, how we think, how we approach living. As my conversation partners this week have changed the way I think about this text, so I hope it has been helpful for you as well.
Let us go out into the world with the One who promises to walk with us and lead us, with the One who is intensely invested in celebrating God’s work in the world. Let us go out into the world in the presence of our risen Christ.
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