READINGS

John 2:13-25
Exodus 20:5
Psalm 68:10
Ezekiel 45:18-24
Psalm 40

HOMILY

Last week you remember we looked at the transfiguration and how that was a sign of what was meant by Jesus is going to death and is rising again: the presence of Moses, Elijah and Abraham showing something of the density of what Jesus was going to accomplish.

Today we have a look at St John's version, whose order is slightly different, but every part is significant.

So let's have a look Jesus goes up to Jerusalem, because the Passover of the Jews was near.

Why the Passover of the Jews?

Reasonably, one might think: was there any other Passover?

Well, of course! That's one of the things that we get muddled by, because our word "Jew" refers to the ethnic reality of modern Jewish people.

At the time of the St John's Gospel was written, it referred to an ideological sub-party of the ethnic group known as the Hebrew people - it was something much closer to the british Whigs party, if you like.

And, it was especially in the case of the Temple, those who had taken charge of the whole project of what the Hebrew religion should be after the return from Babylon and who had inaugurated a new way of being Temple and People and Land under the prophet Nehemiah.

And this included quite specific relation to the Temple and the feasts of the Temple.

One of the things that this involved was a form of taxation for all those who were part of the Jews - this thing that was not entirely ethnic and a bit more than ideological, but not like our clear divisions.

Basically, if you paid the Temple tax, half a shekel a year, as set out in the book of Exodus, which had been (the law had been) altered at the time of Naaman to put that in, then you were contributing to the upkeep of the Temple.

You know, since you were paying for your place within the system of security, salvation and atonement, that the Temple was an expensive thing to build, an expensive thing to upkeep.

John references the Passover of the Jews, because we're about to see Jesus doing something that is not entirely part of that Passover.

In the Temple, he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their table.

So we have the cattle, which the Priests used the bulls as standard sacrificial atonement in the old understanding of Passover; and sheep, that was very much the Mosaic sacrifice substituting for the firstborn and God substituting himself via a lamb.

As for the doves, these were the poor people's sacrifice: the purifying sacrifice, the sacrifice of piety.

Now, making a whip out of cords, he drove them all out of the Temple.

This suggests that what he's doing here is two things:

Jesus is enacting the cleansing of the Temple, which was a different Passover (Ezekiel Passover; Malachi prophecies).

It was a Passover understood in the time of the prophet Ezekiel, as a right of cleansing the Temple.

It was different from the feast of the atonement. It was a springtime festival for the cleansing of the Temple.

One of the ways that the cleansing was done was that the High Priest would go through the Temple with whip-like movements sprinkling blood and cleansing.

Here, of course, Jesus is getting the bloody animals taken out, but engaging in the same whip-like movement.

In other words, he's beginning to enact the cleansing, but without the blood of animals.

It was thought that the Messiah would come in with a whip made of cords and that his cleansing of the people and cleansing especially of the priesthood would take the form of a goad and a whip.

So, for instance, in the Malachi prophecy, it says he will come with a sort of a refiner and will purify the sons of Levi.

So a couple of Messiah-related and Ezekiel-related symbols are being enacted at the same time here.

Ezekiel's prophecy

He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.

There were two sorts of money changing going on:

Buying sacrificial animals:

They needed to be able to buy them with Temple coinage, which shouldn't have any effigies of pagan rulers on them, thus having to be pure in their purchase.

So there would need to be money changes and the word for tables in Greek is the same as the word for bank.

The modern Greek bank is called a trápeza: it just means table - so these were the equivalent of the bankers of the time.

Membership tax:

Then there was the other tax which was a sort of membership tax: the half-shekel, the Temple tax, which had to be paid for in Temple currency. So this too involved money change.

In other words, this was quite a significant financial centre for the keeping alive of purity, membership, togetherness.

When he's doing this, he's doing this overturning, he's enacting the Ezekiel Passover, he's enacting the arrival of the Messiah.

Then he tells those who were selling the doves:

take these things out of here stop making my Father's house a marketplace

That's a paraphrase of the end of the prophet Zechariah, who announces that, on that day, there will be no more traders and marketeers in the Temple.

In other words, Jesus is enacting the end of the book of Zechariah, which indicates that, on that day, the day of the arrival of the Lord, the day of wrath, as it was understood, the day of the Lord's coming in, all the Temple commerce will cease.

So he's announcing that he's fulfilling that in the same way that he does in the synoptic Gospels.

His disciples remembered that it was written: Zeal for your house will consume me.

That's in one of the Psalms, and it talks about the zealousness of God for his own house and the zealousness of the prophet.

The famous prophet who was zealous was Elijah, who says "I have been very zealous with a zeal; I have been zealous of your law for your house," after he has fled from the aftermath of his challenge of the prophets of Baal, whose sacrifices didn't work.

So there's a suggestion of a different sacrifice that is being announced here.

And let's remember this is where our first reading today comes in it talks about how God is a jealous God.

Actually, in the Greek version, it says God is a zealous God.

That's the link between the Exodus passage, which we had as our first reading and today: the notion of the zealous God who punishes people who go against him and yet shows love for thousands of generations.

In other words, it's the zealousness of God that is going to be enacted here in Jesus doing what he's doing.

So the Jews - the Temple authorities -, those who were obviously part of the Nehemiah Babylonian package, the returned Judahites package, said to him:

what sign can you show us for doing this?

It's not saying:

Okay, you've done this; now, give us a sign.

It's saying:

what is the sign that you are showing us that you are doing these things?

They want him to interpret for them what he's been doing, what he's been doing is fairly obviously a bringing together of a series of messianic fulfilment prophecies.

Naturally they want to know how that goes. It's not a stupid question.

They don't react as it were in the Law and Order way saying: "Good God! He's throwing over our banks; won't do it all!"

That's not their first reaction. The first direction is:

"Hmm, we know what this means and wonder who he thinks he is... who's doing these things or what account he gives of what he's doing.˜

In other words, there is both wisdom and cynicism and suspicion and all of these things at once in their reaction.

And Jesus says to them:

destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.

Now again our translations mislead.

In the beginning of this Gospel, it says "he comes into the Temple and he found the people".

The word "Temple" refers to the Temple compound, the whole of the gated area that included the places of slaughter, the places for meeting, the Portico of Solomon and also the actual rather small Temple building with the Holy of Holies, where only the priests would go with the altar of thanksgiving outside.

So it was that's the whole of the Temple compound.

However, here, Jesus answers:

Destroy this Temple this naós - he's referring here only to the small bit, the nave, the sanctuary - and in three days I will raise it up.

Now, this perhaps gives us a hint of why when he was addressing the people earlier, he was particularly annoyed with those who were selling the doves.

If you remember, at his baptism, the Holy Spirit had come upon him like a dove, indicating that he was now the sanctuary, the place of piety, the real place where God's piety would be shown and worshipped.

That he had specifically rejected those who were selling the doves - the kind of piety that could be bought -, it refers to the kind of piety that was made available to the poor, giving them access to this sanctuary by exploiting them.

Of course, he cast out the sheep and the cattle as well - no like causing much more of a disturbance than merely releasing a few doves -, but it was the doves that really got him.

In other words, abusing the poor for the sanctuary of the Lord.

And, of course, what he is and who he is speaking of is the sanctuary of the Lord.

He's saying: destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will build it up.

Actually, he says raise it up: he uses the language of resurrection rather than actual physical building, unlike in the synoptic Gospels where it's the physical building that he uses.

So the Jewish authorities then say:

this Temple has been under construction for 46 years

This is rather a useful piece of information, which means that we can date what's happening here at 26 or 27 of our Era, because the Temple construction started in 20 or 19 before the Christian Era.

Then it says:

but he was speaking of the Temple the sanctuary of his body.

He's fulfilling what is said in Psalm 40.

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire - but my ears you have opened; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, “Here I am, I have come - it is written about me in the scroll.

After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this.

In other words, they didn't understand the sign any more than the Jewish authorities and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

What scripture? I put it to that the scripture is the one that his disciples remembered:

"zeal for your house will consume me".

in other words, they are realizing that what he is doing, the whole of his project has been the coming in of the zealous God who loves people for a thousand generations and that his coming in is actually going to consume him literally, in the sense in which a holocaust or a sacrifice was consumed.

That was how he was going to rebuild the house by becoming the Temple, the sacrifice, the altar, the victim, the priest and enabling all of us to share in that.