Thursday After All
John 2:13-22 (NRSV)
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. 15Making 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 money-changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ 17His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After 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.
Mark 11:15-19 (NRSV)
15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
But you have made it a den of robbers.’
18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples* went out of the city.
But you have made it a den of robbers.’
18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples* went out of the city.
John 2:13-22, “Jesus cleansing the temple,” is our appointed Gospel for this coming Sunday, March 11, Lent 3. The Church is in Lectionary Year B, when most of our Gospel readings are from Mark; and if we have a reading from John when the same story is in Mark, one wonders why we are hearing from John instead of Mark: why the shift, and what’s the difference if any?
The story of Jesus driving out the moneychangers in the temple in Jerusalem is reported in all four canonical gospels -- the three synoptics Mark 11:15-19, Matthew 21:12-13, Luke 19:45-46; and finally John 2:13-22. In the synoptics, Jesus makes only one trip to Jerusalem, at the end of his ministry, and while there he drives out the moneychangers in the temple, determining his enemies to kill him (bad for business, he endangers their lucrative temple trade), thus setting the Passion in motion. In John though, Jesus goes to Jerusalem not once but several times and this “cleansing the temple” happens right at the very beginning of John’s gospel, not at the end as in the synoptics. What’s going on?
It would be naive to panic and rush frantically to protect both accounts by suggesting that well, maybe he did it two times, once at the beginning and again at the end. For one thing, such foolishness would create a fifth gospel with yet another, still different story. But looking at it from a literary point of view, we see that each gospel writer puts his story together, assembles his “traditions,” his “pericopes” in an order that suits his agenda, what he means to convey to his audience.
For some reason this Thursday morning, not unlikely because yesterday, Wednesday, was totally exhausting, my inner clock woke me up at five a.m. instead of my customary and preferred three a.m. And then instead of hunkering down in my lift-chair to be pseudo-intellectual, I’ve been stretched out here in bed for the past two hours sipping coffee and watching the light gradually brighten over St. Andrews Bay, and sure enough, there’s Shell Island, still there. And there’s My Laughing Place waiting to shelter me again when needed. And here am I in another day of +Time.
As for the gospels’ accounts of Jesus cleansing the temple -- maybe more tomorrow.
Maybe not.
TW+ in +Time