Sermon 5 Epiphany: John 2:13-25
‘Jesus in the true Temple’
The story in today’s text is traditionally known as ‘Jesus cleansing the Temple’. A confirmation student some years ago suggested it should be known as ‘Jesus looses it.’ I doubt this title for the story would catch on, but is perhaps a more accurate description of what happens here than the image of cleansing the temple. It is the only time that Jesus is recorded as losing his temper. It is the only time that we see anything even approaching physical violence in Jesus. It seems to run counter to everything we expect Jesus do to. And yet this story of what occurred is so important that all four gospel writers include it in their accounts of Jesus’ life.
But before we can look at what this story means, we must consider another little problem. Matthew, Mark and Luke all place this story in the last week of Jesus’ life, just after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In this context the story takes on a certain significance. Jesus not only further enrages the Jewish authorities by this act, forcing them to finally show their hand, but he also disappoints the masses, who expected him to storm the Roman garrison and kick the Romans out of the city. And when he went instead to the temple after entering the city in great precession, they perhaps thought he was at least going to challenge the authority of the priesthood. Instead, he simply chased out a rabble of money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals. The disappointment would have been palpable. It plays a big role in helping to explain why the crowds were chanting ‘crucify him!’ only a few days after celebrating his entry into Jerusalem.
The story of the cleansing of the temple is difficult enough as it stands. John only adds to the difficulty when he places the story not in the last week of Jesus’ life, like the other gospels, but three years earlier, at the end of his very first week of ministry.
For the reader, let alone the reader who is also committed to preaching on such a text, this certainly throws a spanner in the works. But as we have seen with many other texts, when something confusing, out of place, or unexpected occurs, rather than ignore it or rush over it – this is precisely where we need to take a closer look to see what we are missing. It is often the case that it is precisely at such a point that we gain insight to the meaning of the text.
So let’s give it a go here.
Some have tried to resolve this problem by suggesting that Jesus must have cleansed the temple on two separate occasions. This is driven by the idea the gospel writers were thinking like modern historians. But they were not modern historians. They were more interested in the meaning of events than their sequence. And this is especially true of John. Almost all biblical scholars agree that the cleansing of the temple happened only once, and that it was almost certainly at the end of Jesus’ ministry. It is not likely that Jesus would have done the same thing twice, nor that the temple authorities would not have been ready for such an act a second time.
Others have suggested that as an old man John was confused about the chronology of events. But John does not seem confused about anything else. And John would have known the first three gospels very well from his own reading and from readings in Christian worship over the previous three decades. He would have known very well where this famous event was placed chronologically.
Others still have suggested that John felt the other three gospels had gotten the chronology of events wrong and he wanted to correct them. But there is nothing in this story that suggests he was trying to correct the three earlier evangelists. So if he was not relating an entirely different incident, was not confused, and was not trying to correct the other three gospels, this leaves only one option. John deliberately places this story out of sequence, knowing very well that his readers from the Christian community would immediately spot this change. So why would he do this?
In John’s gospel the story of the cleansing of the temple takes on a very different meaning than in the other gospels, precisely because of its placement.
After the wedding at Cana, in which Jesus made it clear to his mother that he wasn’t ready to publicly begin his ministry, he takes a few days off with his family and disciples in Capernaum, then heads straight to Jerusalem for the Passover.
What he finds in the temple angers him. The reasons for this are many. First, the obvious one that Jesus himself gives to the sellers of pigeons, is that they have turned God’s house, meant as a place of worship, into a marketplace. Not only this, but the business being conducted was taking advantage of ordinary people coming to Jerusalem for worship. Temple rules said pagan money could not be used for temple business, so, conveniently money changers were available to turn their Greek, Syrian, and Roman coins for Jewish ones, at a good rate for the moneychangers, of course, which was shared with the Temple authorities.
Then there was the matter of the animals sold for sacrifice. A poor person could buy a dove for sacrifice outside the temple for less than a quarter of the price. But only spotless animals were accepted for sacrifice, and the Temple authorities were in the habit of rejecting any animal or bird not purchased at exorbitant rates from the Temple itself. These practices, cheating ordinary people out of a great deal of money just to fulfil their religious obligations, would have also made Jesus angry.
A third point is that tradition has it that it was the Court of Gentiles where this business took place. Mark reflects this when he reports Jesus as saying the temple is ‘house of prayer for all the nations’ (11:17). It was the only place in the Temple where non-Jews were allowed to come and worship the true God. And the Temple authorities showed so little concern for the worship of God by those from other nations that they filled the area with money changers and livestock sellers, making it impossible for a non-Jew to worship at the Temple. This would have also made Jesus angry.
All of this anger was interpreted by Jesus’ disciples interpret as ‘zeal’ for the Temple, recalling Psalm 69:9. For them, this showed not only Jesus’ great piety and concern for right worship, but also that he was the messiah.
Significantly, John adds three bits of information not in the synoptic accounts. First, he reports that Jesus made a whip of cords (v. 15) to drive out the animals and the moneychangers. This tells us two things about what happened. First, this action of Jesus what not premeditated. He did not bring a whip with him to drive out the livestock but had to make one on the spot. And second, though Jesus showed anger he was not out of control. He did not charge after people and animals like a wild man, but took the time to make a whip to drive the lot out.
The second point unique to John’s account is that he reports the disciples immediately recalling Psalm 69:9, ‘It is zeal for you house that has consumed me.’
The audacity of what Jesus does is breath-taking. The authorities demand a sign to show that he is allowed to do this. And this is the third point that John includes in this account that the other gospels do not. The authorities want proof that Jesus speaks for God, for only God could challenge the operation of the sacred temple in Jerusalem. And the reader of John’s gospel will be very familiar with concept of a sign. John has just introduced it in the previous story, where Jesus does his first sign at the wedding of Cana. So we have Jesus performing sign reluctantly in an insignificant village in Galilee to a group of people of no particular social standing in Jewish society. But then a few days later he is asked for a sign by the Jewish leaders at the Temple itself, in front of great crowds present for Passover, and he refuses to give them one. Instead, he tells them that the only sign they will get is when the temple is torn down and he rebuilds it in three days. These words were not meant to be understood by the Jewish authorities. They were for the disciples to recall later, after his death and resurrection. But lest we think that Jesus was all out of miracles, we are told in v. 23 that he went out afterward and did many ‘signs’ that caused people to believe in him. It is John’s way of telling us that the sign at Cana was not a fluke. Jesus was quite able to perform visible signs, or miracles, but he chose not to at this point. He was not in the business of performing signs and miracles on command, especially not at the request of the authorities.
So what does this all mean?
Clearly, John wants to highlight the importance of the Temple. This is where God is to be found and worshiped. And John wants his readers to be very clear that Jesus is God. And the temple system of sacrifice is one that Jesus has come to end as the Lamb of God who will be the final sacrifice for sins. So bringing Jesus to the Temple at the very start of his ministry shows who Jesus is and what his relationship with the temple and it’s sacrificial system is. This story answers and a number of question and sets an important tone for Jesus’ ministry at the very outset.
Interestingly, early church tradition, based on a statement made by Polycrates, the bishop of Ephesus, where John lived and died a century earlier, states that John was both the beloved disciple who wrote this gospel, and also a Jewish priest known to wear the sacerdotal plate of his office. If John came from a priestly family, they could well have spent the majority of the year when they were not serving at the Temple fishing. If John was a priest, or from a priestly family, it would also explain the mystery of how an apparently simple fisherman from Galilee was ‘known to the high priest’ and was thus able to go into the high priest’s courtyard with Jesus for his trial (John 18:15,16). And it would also explain why the temple held such prominence in John’s thinking – so much so that he chose to place this story, though out of sequence, near the very beginning of his gospel.
As we have already seen, John loves spoilers. He begins his gospel by revealing that Jesus is God, and this is reinforced, as we saw last week, by Jesus’ first sign. Then John reveals that Jesus will be the sacrificial Lamb of God, who dies for the sins of the world.. And now he reveals that Jesus will be raised from the dead on the third day. John is two chapters into his gospel and he has basically given away the whole plot.
But John is not writing a dramatic account, like Mark, or a historical record, like Luke. John wants to tell us the things Jesus taught. He wants to show us who Jesus was by his words and deeds. He has stated his case for Jesus at the outset. And part of that it putting the story of the cleansing of the Temple in the at the end of the first week of his ministry instead of the beginning of the last. For a Jewish way of thinking and writing stories, it is a very symbolic and chiastic move.
Telling the story, in part, from back to front, with the deity of Christ, the death and resurrection, and the cleansing of the temple from the last week of his life all at the beginning, might strike us as odd. It is like a writer friend of mine who never reads a novel without reading the last chapter first. She wants to know from the beginning where she is going so that she doesn’t miss or misunderstand anything along the way. That is what John is doing for us here by beginning his account of Jesus’ life and ministry in this way. He has some important points to make about who Jesus is. And he doesn’t want anyone to miss them along the way.
So beginning his gospel like this, and putting the account of the cleansing of the temple near the start, John is now free to build his case for Jesus being not only the Messiah, but God in human flesh. The point John is making is that Jesus is the one who can rebuild the Temple, which is where we find God on earth. And he can do this because Jesus himself is the true temple. Jesus himself is God on earth.
Amen.
Pastor Mark Worthing.
Pastor Mark Worthing.