Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!

 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.  When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.  And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away!  Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!"  Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."

So the Jews answered and said to Him, "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?"  But He was speaking of the temple of His body.  Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.  Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man. 

- John 2:13-24

Yesterday, we read that on the third day after Jesus called His first disciples, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Now both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding.  And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine."  Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me?  My hour has not yet come."  His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."  Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece.  Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water."  And they filled them up to the brim.  And He said to them, "Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast."  And they took it.  When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom.  And he said to him, "Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior.  You have kept the good wine until now!"  This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.  After this He went down to Capernaum, He, His mother, His brothers, and His disciples; and they did not stay there many days.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In John's Gospel, Jesus' miracles will take place during the major Jewish feasts.  As my study bible puts it, this demonstrates that the Old Law is fulfilled in Jesus Himself.

And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.  When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.  And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away!  Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!"  Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."   My study bible tells us:  "By transferring this incident from Holy Week (where it is related in the synoptic Gospels) to the beginning of Jesus' ministry, John emphasizes that Jesus' ministry is not, like that of the prophets, merely to renew faith under the Old Covenant.  Rather, He is instituting a new kind of worship altogether.  Interestingly, St. John Chrysostom believes Jesus cleansed the temple twice, at the beginning and again at the end of His public ministry."  It also notes, "By this cleansing, Jesus vigorously protects the purity of worship against commercialism.  Likewise, He zealously desires His Church to be a holy, pure house of prayer."

So the Jews answered and said to Him, "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?"  But He was speaking of the temple of His body.  Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.   The leadership asks for a sign of Jesus' authority, because of His cleansing of the temple.  He answers in a hidden way, the meaning of which is revealed only to the disciples after Jesus' Resurrection.  As my study bible puts it, "The ultimate sign will be His death and Resurrection."  The leadership thinks He's speaking literally of the Temple rebuilt by Herod the Great, one of the wonders of the ancient world, a project begun in 20 B.C.E.

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.   In John's Gospel, Jesus will attend three different Passover feasts; this has given us the understanding that His ministry lasted three years.  My study bible says that scholars believe the three Passover feasts to be historically accurate.  It also says, "In His divine foreknowledge Jesus knew many were misreading His signs."

I think it's important that we understand that Jesus did not entrust Himself to all those who followed Him, apparently because of signs which He did.  It's important because one of the great points of the Gospels, and of Jesus' teaching, is that simply following the crowds isn't at all what Jesus teaches us about.  Just as earlier, we read that Nathanael (also known as Bartholomew) didn't just follow Jesus because others were praising Him, the Gospels never teach us to merely follow the crowds or here, even to be persuaded by signs.  Faith takes us deeper into something more potent, more connected, into the work of the Spirit and the relationships created by God.  It's this great mystery of relatedness, of love in Christ, that the Gospel points us toward -- a kind of mystical understanding that comprises real faith, in which so much more is promised to be revealed and understood.  In that light, the "new wine" in yesterday's reading is a sign to be interpreted as the power of revelation brought to light to those who already had the Old Testament, and also to those who did not.  My study bible interprets today's event in the same light:  it is a shaking up, a kind of startling disestablishment of institutions in place that will take us back to the original meaning and intent of Scripture, the Law, and the prophets -- and give us a new revelation upon which to build a new understanding.  It is, as my study bible has pointed out in yesterday's reading, a new dispensation that will take us into a totally different understanding of God and of worship.  This is truly "the light of the world" and not limited to one people.  That it is commercial materialism Jesus attacks here is essential for us to understand:  grace and truth don't come to us as gifts we can pay for or earn; God's gift cannot enter into such a category.  We must receive it, it is just that simple, and the sacrifice will be the Lamb of God, God's own sacrifice.  Jesus' act prepares us for a category of revelation, of thinking about God, that takes us completely out of the old bounds of ways of thinking about God and about worship.  It is truly a "fulfillment" of the Law, but one that will need new wineskins for expansion to contain the new.   Those who truly follow will have to be capable of this expansion, to follow where this new revelation takes them, out of an understanding of a quantifiable exchange between God and human beings, into an era of the fullness of grace and truth, something far beyond what we can earn in any sense of exchange.  We have revisited Jesus' remark that of all men born to women, there was none greater than John the Baptist, and that John is considered the greatest and last of all Old Testament prophets.  But Jesus added that "he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."  Our Gospel is already pointing us in that direction of something new, unquantifiable, whose work cannot be contained within our notions of currency and exchange, the fullness of the grace and truth of which is inexhaustible and unlimited, a gift.  Every day, let us ask ourselves what needs shaking up -- if we really listen to the voice of Christ, where does He lead us, how does He take us out of our own old ways of thinking into this place of unmerited grace.  God's house is not a "house of merchandise," not a treasure meant to be valued in measurable terms and parceled out and divided up, because what it contains is an unsurpassable grace from which we all may partake, if we truly receive it.