When you think of Jesus, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Do you see him sitting with children or holding a lamb to his breast? You may imagine him standing by John in the Jordan, teaching on a mountainside, praying in the garden, or emerging from the tomb. 

 

These are the images that commonly appear on the cover of children’s Bibles, in paintings behind baptisteries, or in colorful stained-glass windows. 

 

How often have we seen pictures of Jesus with fire in his eyes and a flail in his fist, upsetting tables and chasing miscreants out of the temple courts? 

 

Today’s text paints a rarely seen portrait of Christ. Gentle Jesus had a temper, and he was not afraid to use it. 

 

 

 

The Fourth Gospel is not alone in describing what we often call “the cleansing of the temple,” but its version of the story is quite different from that of the synoptic gospels. [DD][DD]

 

In Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, and Luke 19:45-46, the event occurs near the end of Jesus’ ministry, following Jesus’ Palm Sunday ride into the city on the back of a donkey. In all three of the synoptic gospels, the event leads to further exhibitions of Jesus’ power, prompting the temple officials to question by what authority Jesus dared to act in such drastic fashion.

 

In contrast, John’s gospel places the event near the very beginning of Jesus’ active work, soon after he had called four disciples (Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathanael, 1:35-51) and performed the first miracle recorded by John, the turning of water into wine at a wedding in Cana (2:1-12). 

 

The story in John, as in the other gospels, is followed by a question about Jesus’ authority, but it is presented differently, as the temple leaders asked what “sign” Jesus could cite to justify his actions. 

 

Some readers have accounted for the difference in chronology by proposing that Jesus rousted temple merchants on two different occasions, but the event probably occurred just once, during the final week of Jesus’ ministry, as described in the other three gospels. The Fourth Evangelist, who had a special interest in Jesus’ “signs,” apparently transposed the shocking act to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in order to set the stage for Jesus’ unfolding work and help readers understand its significance. [DD]

 

The story begins by saying that Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover, an annual springtime [DD]celebration commemorating Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. That the author calls it “the Passover of the Jews” suggests a growing separation between Jews and Jesus followers: John wrote many decades after the resurrection, and for a primarily Gentile audience. 

 

Observant Jews were expected to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem when they could, and the Fourth Gospel speaks as if Jesus went up to Jerusalem at least three times for the Passover (2:13, 6:4, 11:55ff), possibly four if “the festival of the Jews” in 5:1 was also Passover. 

 

When Jesus entered the temple complex, according to the story, he found a bustling marketplace where moneychangers and livestock merchants were doing a booming business (v. 14). [DD] Jews were required to pay a half-shekel temple tax each year (Exod. 30:11-16), but doing so was not straightforward. The Romans forbade the Jews from minting their own coins, while the Jews refused to accept Roman coins for the temple tax. They considered the coins’ image of the emperor to be a violation of the commandment against graven images. 

 

To get around the problem, temple authorities required that taxes be paid in an alternate currency, such as coins minted in the nearby kingdom of Tyre. [DD] Most Jews would not have easy access to Tyrian coins, however. Currency exchanges could have been set up anywhere in the city, but the temple rulers had allowed vendors to locate their booths inside the temple complex. This would have allowed them to exercise control over exchange rates and presumably to share in the profits.

 

Similarly, worshipers were expected to offer sacrifices during Passover, but the law made provision for people who traveled long distances to bring money rather than driving their livestock, and to purchase the needed animals in Jerusalem. Again, while one might have expected livestock sales to be on the outskirts of the city, officials had apparently turned the law’s requirement to their own profit, allowing vendors to set up shop within the temple itself.

 

Imagine the scene: animals ranging from pigeons to lambs and goats might have been penned in stalls or tied to stakes, bringing a cacophony of noise, smells, urine and excrement—sharply diminishing any sort of worshipful atmosphere in the temple courts. 

 

Jesus reacted to the sacral violation with such anger, according to John, that he fashioned a whip out of cords and used it to chase both traders and animals from the temple compound while overturning the money-changer’s tables and scattering coins all about (v. 15). 

 

This was not a gentle Jesus. The word translated as “whip” is phragellion, a term that could describe a whip made from one or multiple strands, either with or without bits of metal tied to the ends to increase their force. Jesus would have been more interested in expediency than harm; a few small lengths of rope tied together would have been sufficient to clear out both merchants and cattle. [DD]

 

The version of the story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke says that Jesus quoted Isa. 56:7 (“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”) and Jer. 7:11 (“Has this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your sight?”). John does not cite those prophesies, but has Jesus shouting “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (v. 16). 

 

Note Jesus’ brashness in referring to the temple complex as “my Father’s house,” which is typical in the Fourth Gospel. The question about turning the temple into a market may be a reference to Zech. 14:21, where Zechariah predicted a coming age in which “there shall no longer be traders in the house of the LORD on that day.”  

 

If this is correct, then Jesus’ intent was not only to show offense at the desecrating presence of a market in the courts reserved for Gentile worship, but to announce that his arrival had inaugurated the last days, when merchants in the temple would no longer be tolerated. 

 

Expelling the merchants and their wares from the temple may also have foreshadowed the more serious work of Jesus’ suffering and death, in which a heavy whip and worse would be used against him. The eschatological act of Christ’s death would bring to an end the need for the temple as a place of sacrifice. 

 

Later, John says, the disciples remembered a quotation from Psalm 69:9: “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me” (v. 17). That psalm had come to be interpreted as a reference to a coming righteous sufferer, and Jesus quoted from Ps. 69:21 on the cross (Matt. 27:34, 48; Mark 15:36; Luke 23:36; John 19:28-29).

 

 

 

Jesus’ furious charge left the temple officials equally fired up. “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” they huffed (v. 18). In other words, “Who do you think you are?”

 

“Signs” are a central element in John’s gospel, where miracles are often labeled as signs designed to indicate Jesus’ power and authority, culminating with his crucifixion and resurrection as a final sign.

 

Jesus told them who he was, though cryptically: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (v. 19). Unaware that Jesus was speaking about himself, the officials scoffed at the notion that a massive temple still in its 46th year of renovation could be rebuilt in three days (v. 20). [DD]

 

The narrative is intended to work on two levels: in the present, it was a confusing claim about the temple, where the presence of God was thought to dwell. Only later would believers come to understand that Jesus was speaking of his body, in which the presence of God dwelt in human flesh (v. 21). Jesus’ body was subject to being killed, but he would rise again on the third day.

 

In the moment, Jesus’ disciples were just as confused as the temple officials. The author says it was only after the resurrection that they remembered what Jesus had said and made a connection between his death and resurrection and “the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken” (v. 22). 

 

This story may feel quite alien to us. Surely we have nothing in common with the merchants who had taken over the temple. Or do we? You may have known churches that forbade fund-raising sales as equivalent to money changers in the temple, but there are more important things to consider.

 

Have we ever seen church attendance primarily as an opportunity to gather with friends, to enhance our reputation, or to make business connections? Do we reserve worship as a sacred space and time for God alone, or think only in terms of what we get out of it?

 

If Jesus were to walk into our church today, would he need to clean house?