Worshipping in Jerusalem involved a fairly complex economic system put in place by the ruling class and religious leaders of the temple. The poor were exploited, collusion with Rome was manifest, and Jesus tossed up the whole thing.
Sometimes referred to as the “cleansing of the temple,” this Gospel story of social disruption is a pivotal one in the narrative arcs of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; the religious and political establishment in Jerusalem finally decides they’ve had enough of Jesus-the-troublemaker, and they begin to plot his demise.
But John, as usual, is different. John’s version of this drama at the temple appears in the second chapter, which is way too early for anything “pivotal” (John 2:13-22). Why would John put this story right up front?
Back up with me for a moment and recall one of the many significant differences between John and the other Gospel accounts: John has no Eucharistic narrative. This is rather shocking, actually, but true: John’s Jesus does share a final meal with his friends but he does not refer to the bread as his body or the wine as his blood at that meal.
Does this mean there is no Eucharist in John’s Gospel? No, not necessarily. Some commentators have supposed that all of the stories John tells were recounted week by week around the Eucharistic table in John’s community. In that sense, every chapter in John’s gospel is either about Eucharist and Easter or points to Eucharist and Easter. This, it seems to me, shines a wonderfully peculiar light on the cleansing of the temple.
The temple story comes right after another notable moment when Jesus goes to a wedding and turns water into wine. A wedding, a feasting table, wine—aha! It’s a story about Eucharist!
Moreover, John begins the second chapter by noting that Jesus goes to that wedding “on the third day.” Now that’s an odd detail to include, unless we recall that Jesus was raised from the dead on the “third day.” Easter!
All of this frames what comes next, when Jesus goes to the temple. Our attention falls quite naturally on the physical disruption Jesus causes there, but that’s not really where John seems to want our focus. Rather than the crash of overturned tables, the crescendo in this story is the invitation to see what the true temple of God’s presence really is and where it resides—it is not a building; it’s a body.
“Destroy this sanctuary,” Jesus says, “and I will raise it up in three days.”
There’s the third day again!
This story really is about Easter, and it’s also about Eucharist, about the bodily presence of God.
Remember, this is the same Gospel that begins by declaring that the Word of God became flesh. In this second chapter, John could not be more direct: when Jesus referred to the Temple, John writes, he was speaking “about the sanctuary of his body,” his flesh as the temple of God’s presence.
As John makes clear throughout the stories he tells, it’s not only the body of Jesus that manifests the presence of God but the bodies of many others, too, including the flesh of the doves, the sheep, and the oxen, all of whom Jesus liberates from their marketplace captivity in the temple.
The micro-economic system Jesus disrupts, in other words, reduced bodies to commercial goods; it turned the flesh into a commodity for buying and selling.
This is clearly not a problem that is neatly sequestered in first-century societies. Reflecting on this Gospel passage for today, I thought back to my years of living in California and the many things I learned there; some of them were deeply troubling. I’ll mention just three.
First, in the central valley, lined with farming communities, it’s not uncommon for a gay teenager to come home from school and discover the locks on his house have been changed and to find his belongings piled on the front lawn. With nowhere else to go, he will likely migrate to San Francisco and live on the streets as best he can.
I also learned that Interstate-5, running like a spine through the middle of the state, is a primary corridor for sex trafficking, for transporting young women, even girls as if they were livestock, from ports of call to brothels. California actually has the highest rates of sex trafficking in the whole country.
And third, the fresh produce I loved in California was of course picked mostly by Mexicans and others from Central America who are forced to keep picking even during wild fires and during this pandemic and always in the midst of toxic chemicals with no safety gear.
The bodies of gay teenagers tossed out of their own homes.
The bodies of young girls trafficked by sex traders.
The bodies of migrant farmworkers picking our fruit.
These are the temples of God’s presence, just as our own bodies are also sanctuaries. How often do we treat bodies as temples? Do we ever?
How would our lives be different, how would the world around us change, if we treated bodies reverently, with reverence? Not just some bodies, not only the bodies like ours, not only the bodies of our own species, but all bodies as living temples? What would that be like?
This story from John unites the sanctity of bodies with the critique of religious economics. And just as he does in all of John’s stories, Jesus presents his own body in that temple as the very presence of God. John then reminds us in that when that body is rejected, betrayed, humiliated, tortured, and killed, God raises it up.
This bodily reminder of Easter can shape the rest of our Lenten journey in some profound ways. I’m praying for the courage to let this story renew my commitment to treat every body with the reverence it deserves—as the temple of God’s presence.
Will you join me?
