John 2:13 When
it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found
people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging
money. 15 So he made a
whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle;
he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he
said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a
market!” 17 His
disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”18 The Jews then responded to
him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”19 Jesus answered
them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken
forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three
days?” 21 But the
temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled
what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had
spoken.
For the 3rd Sunday of Lent our attention
turns to a story that is at once both familiar and perplexing. It's familiar
because it occurs in all four of the Gospels. 'Study' bibles routinely call
this episode the "cleansing of the Temple." Yet as familiar as it is,
the story is also perplexing. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? As Keener and other
commentators point out, there can be little doubt that the day afterwards, the
money-changers and animals were back in their place, tables set back up, and it
was business as usual. In that sense, WHAT DID THIS ACCOMPLISH? As if these two
questions weren't enough, John complicates things further by placing the event at
the beginning of Jesus' ministry rather than at its end. In the Synpotics
(Matthew/Mark/Luke) the event happens at the end of Jesus' ministry and is a major contributing factor behind his
arrest. In John's Gospel the major contributing factor to his arrest is the
raising of Lazarus from the dead. Older commentators used to argue that there
were "two cleansings," one at the beginning of his ministry and one
at the end. While this may technically not be impossible, it seems highly
unlikely. Slavish devotion to absolute chronology does not seem to be a primary
concern of the Gospel writers (nor was there an expectation of such among
ancient readers of this sort of genre)--and as others have pointed out, a
desire to "harmonize" the four Gospels for the purpose of developing
an overarching 'metanarrative' always leads to more problems than it solves.
Rule #1 in Gospel studies is to let each Gospel tell its
own story and leave it at that. So, John's Gospel wants the cleansing of the
Temple at the beginning; fine. We can handle it. That still gets back to the
questions of what does it mean and what did it accomplish?
Part of the answer will have to take into account that
our English translation obscures something that is clearer in the Greek. The
above NIV version follows most English translations and has Jesus in the temple courts (Gk. temple = hieron) in vss 14 and 15,
but then in vs 19 Jesus says: “Destroy
this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The word in
the text, however, is not Gk. hieron; it's
Gk. naos (used of the temple at
Jerusalem, but only of the sacred edifice, or sanctuary itself, consisting of
the Holy place and the Holy of Holies). In other words, a better rendering of
vs 19 would be: Destroy this sanctuary,
and I will raise it again in three days. There's no getting around the fact
that the Jewish authorities still didn't get that he's talking about himself (at this point, how could they,
his crucifixion is still 3 years away).... but the original readers of John's
Gospel would get it. The temple/hieron itself was a lot of things, but the
sanctuary/naos was the point where heaven met earth; it was the Holy of
Holies where God accepted the blood of the sacrifice on behalf of his people,
declaring them to be in a right/covenant relationship with Him.
And so, while it is historically a likely conclusion that
the day after the event the tables were back in place and the money-changers
were back in business, it is theologically correct to say that the dramatic act Jesus engaged in that day
was to announce: "There's a NEW NAOS here; There's a NEW SANCTUARY in
town." The place of God's dwelling with his people is no longer the old
naos/sanctuary. That one is passing away. In contrast, in three short years you
will ATTEMPT to make this one also
pass away, but I will raise it again in
three days, and it will never more fall.
In other words... yes...
it is probably valid to say that Jesus was prophesying in c. 30AD that the
Temple/Sanctuary complex would be destroyed by the Romans another 40yrs hence,
but that's not the primary thing John
is trying to say. It may also be valid to conclude that the fact that Jesus
objected to the buying/selling of goods in such close proximity to the high
altar of public worship, may have moral/ethical implications for congregations
and the buying/selling of things in church... but that's also not John's primary focus. It may even be true that
the profiteering that likely took place during these transactions was somewhat
predatory in nature to those of the lowest economic strata, and Jesus was objecting
to a religious system that preyed on the poor, but that also was not John's primary purpose in relating this event.
The thing we're supposed to take from this is the prophetic action announcing
the passing of the old.... not in another 40yrs, BUT NOW. The NEW SANCTUARY is here; the new locale of God's
PRESENCE with his people is here. TODAY.
Will we sit up and take notice? That's primarily the
Lenten focus this passage is infused with. In our personal lives what/where is
our 'sanctuary?' What needs to be turned over and driven out so as to embrace
this NEW SANCTUARY? Such a question is baptismal in nature (do you reject sin?). But then again,
that shouldn't surprise us... as Lent is, after all, about baptism.
Cheers,
T.M.
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