The Jerusalem Temple was Israel’s pride and joy. Every faithful Jew, even if they lived miles away, looked forward at some time to traveling to Jerusalem and worshipping in the temple. This included Jesus, the disciples and all of his first followers. The Gospel of Luke begins with Zechariah performing his priestly duties in the temple. The angel Gabriel comes and announces to him that he and his wife Elizabeth will have a son who will be the forerunner and prepare the way for the messiah. The Gospel ends with the disciples being blessed by the resurrected Jesus and then returning to Jerusalem and continually being in the Temple praising God. The temple was also where elderly Anna and Simeon gazed upon the infant Jesus and knew somehow that baby, held and protected in his mother’s arms, was directly connected to God’s promised salvation of the world.
Herod the Great had built the Temple of Jesus’ time, yet the spot had been held sacred ever since Solomon built the first Temple there nearly a thousand years earlier. By ancient tradition, more than any other place, God’s spirit seemed to rest there. It was where one expected to be brought closer to God. At the same time the Temple was a symbol of sharp paradox. Herod was hardly a pious person. He was a cruel and paranoid tyrant. He rebuilt the temple more to reflect his own power and glory than God’s. He expected the temple to serve his own selfish control purposes rather than as a center of enlightenment and vision.
I have no doubt that the Gospel writers knew full well of the paradox. That is one reason they all included Jesus’ overthrowing the moneychangers and confronting the Temple officials in their gospel accounts. The Gospels of Mark, Luke, and Matthew placed this incident at the beginning of Holy Week. It just confirms the reasons why the authorities wanted to do away with Jesus. Jesus stirred up the crowds too much and he exposed the motives of the Temple officials. John, on the other hand, was a most unusual disciple. He didn't record history in the commonly accepted manner. Rather he taught us to interpret and wrestle with signs, signs of connections within our lives, connections as Jesus reveals who he truly is among us.
John saw in many of Jesus' actions unmistakable signs of God’s grace being revealed in our world. The first sign was at a wedding in Cana. It took everybody by surprise. The wine was running out and the parents of the bride were frantic. Exactly what was said to Jesus was unclear, but the word soon was whispered around that Jesus changed the water in some large clay jars into the finest wine of the valley, as if it was a perfectly natural thing to happen.
It was a few days later, as the disciples talked about it, that they began to understand that God takes ordinary events and transforms them into something very meaningful. Jesus wasn't demonstrating an amazing magic trick, but how the Gospel has the potential to change the very tasteless and common makeup of our lives into sparking and invigorating new opportunities.
The scene at the Temple was even more of a shock. The money exchangers were there to exchange the currency of pious Jews who lived hundreds of miles away in another province of the empire and who had come to worship. The exchangers were seen as providing a service and most customers didn't complain. Yes, everyone knew that the money exchangers were not completely unselfish or altruistic. Of course they manipulated the rates a percent or two, but after spending all the money just to come to Jerusalem, it was small change and who cared. Yes, those who needed to purchase an animal to sacrifice would have found much fairer deals bargaining at the stalls along the crowed streets of Jerusalem, but who had the time or sought the trouble to do that? So what if you overpaid, what possible harm could that make?
Yet Jesus was furious over how the pilgrims, who had sacrificed so much to come to worship there, were cheated. Jesus saw no separation between the integrity of worship inside the temple and the integrity of dealing with people outside in the courtyard. God does not intend worship to be a cover for the justification of self-serving brigands. God is not fooled when we swindle people under the guise of piety, whether we are talking about poor people of first century Palestine or poor people in America today.
Moreover, it is Jesus himself who becomes the great sign of God’s presence. He is the one who helps us become closer to God. He is the one who leads us to greater visions and broader horizons of God’s new commonwealth. In Jesus, God’s Holy Spirit rests. Hence Jesus proclaims that he is, in effect, the new temple, a temple that will not be destroyed as all the others eventually were.
Ironically, the temple, of all places, should have been the place where Jesus would have been readily recognized and acclaimed. The incident from the temple contains both a message of promise and warning. Instead of being greeted as a teacher and a herald of great joy, Jesus was ultimately tossed out as a threat and nuisance.
All human organizations are in need of being regularly revitalized by God’s grace. We need rejuvenation as much as anyone else, even if we all resist it in some way or another. Sometimes exhaustion and spiritual emptiness can sneak up on us as undetectably and unknowingly as carbon monoxide poisoning. When we reject good questions potentially leading us to new insights, often our objections are really stubborn blockades put up against something we don’t want to know. Moreover, when we attempt to turn our customs into a guaranteeof God’s presence rather than understanding them as tools that help reveal the source of God’s presence, we will be challenged as sharply as Jesus challenged the moneychangers in Herod’s temple.
