John 2:13-22
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the moneychangers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
This story is so familiar to us that it’s easy to miss a major element of how it figures in John’s Gospel in distinction to that of the other three. We’ve already noted that the primary theological claim John is making is that because Jesus, the Word made flesh and lamb of God, is on the scene, you no longer need to make sacrifice. Jesus, as John indicated in the prologue, goes beyond the law given by Moses and offers grace and truth, indeed, grace upon grace. For this reason, sacrifice is irrelevant.
But this isn’t the role this scene plays in the other gospels. In Mark, Luke, and Matthew, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple comes near the end of his ministry, not the beginning. And his rationale is different. In the other three, he protests that the moneychangers have made the Temple a “den of robbers” (Mk. 11:15-19, Lk. 19:45-46, Mt. 21:12-13). He accuses the moneychangers – and by implication those with authority over the Temple – of defrauding the poor. And his attack on the Temple, which had both religious and political implications because of the money generated from this trade, was one of the final straws the drove his opponents to seek his death.
Noting this difference, a few questions come to mind. Just how many times did Jesus drive moneychangers from the Temple? Once, twice, more? Is this the same scene and event, or are they two different scenes describing two different events? And if it is only once – after all, each gospel reports Jesus doing this once – then which account is “right”? And does this mean the Bible contradicts itself?
While all of these questions are both interesting and understandable, however, I think they are not the most helpful questions for us to ask because they tend to misunderstand the nature of purpose of the gospels themselves.
We tend, you see, to read the gospels the way we read the newspaper or a modern history book. But the first century authors we call evangelists were not writing a historical work governed by post-Enlightenment rules about factual accuracy. Rather, they were taking some of the stories and traditions about Jesus available to them and weaving an account that helped their respective communities make sense of their faith and their lives in light of their particular circumstances and struggles so that they would continue believing the truth of the faith they had been taught. Which means that the evangelists are as much artists as they historians and far more interested in inspiring their readers to renewed faith than they are in providing a dispassionate account of “just the facts.” They are, in short, theologians and preachers, rather than historians or journalists.
Which means that John, quite frankly, couldn’t care less if Matthew, Mark, and Luke put the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple at the end of their account or saw it as precipitating Jesus’ arrest. He is more interested in proclaiming the truth that God is interacting with God’s people in a new way, in a way that no longer requires sacrifice at the Temple because Jesus, the lamb of God, has come not only as the last sacrifice – a term we will need to unpack later – but also to mediate and make accessible God’s unimaginable and unexpected grace.
Those who want the gospels to be histories of the twenty-first century type, rather than messages of good news of the first century, look at this question differently, stressing the different details between John’s account and that of the other three and concluding that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice, once at the outset and once at the close of his public ministry. And this is entirely possible. But then, of course, you have an account of Jesus’ ministry that none of the gospels provide. I would rather recognize the distinct theological claims of each and rejoice in the poetic license they exercised in order to share with us the good news, good news that still changes lives.
Prayer: Dear God, let us hear in the gospels the good news of your love for us and all the world. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Amen!