The Sign in the Temple

Lent 3, Year B 2024; John 2:13-22

The story of the “cleansing” of the Temple occurs in all four Gospels, which makes it unusual. In all cases, Jesus enters the Temple and drives out the merchants selling animals for sacrifice and those changing money to allow for proper (and non-idolatrous) offerings of coin.¹ Yet the Lectionary never offers the first three versions; John’s story is the only one we hear across the whole three-year cycle, and only on this one Sunday. This is part of how John is used to some greater or lesser extent in Lent in all three years of the lectionary, as well as during the Easter season.

John and Mark—from whose narrative we have jumped— have very different conceptions of how time works as part of the mission of Jesus. Mark and the other synoptic Gospels recount Jesus’ Temple action as part of the mounting tension of the last days in Jerusalem; Mark says explicitly that it is because of this event that the chief priests and scribes sought to destroy him (11:18). Yet John’s version is set at a completely different point of the story—“chapter 2” is a hint! In John, Jesus comes to (at least) three Passovers during the course of his ministry, and this is just the first; the Temple event is thus at the beginning of his ministry, not the end.

John’s distinctiveness has been recognized ever since it was written; Clement of Alexandria (c. 200) refers to a tradition that John is a “spiritual Gospel,” which Clement contrasts with the “corporeal” approach of the Synoptics. The simplest way to understand this may be that events and sayings connected with Jesus are interpreted—we might say revealed—in a more explicit way, less dependent on a historic narrative. In John, what is true is always true; Jesus’ identity is not hidden, and the message is at the beginning what it will be in the end. The communication of this truth takes place via fewer stories, longer discourses, and these together are often referred to as “signs.”

So chronological differences between John and Mark are not necessarily what they seem; this is not just a contradictory version of the story, but a version whose theological framework is given more scope to arrange the events (signs) remembered.

Like many scholars I assume John knows some version of the Synoptic tradition,² and often when things seem to be changed, John is acting freely as a theological editor who shows the meaning of events by their new arrangement, as well as by often giving Jesus far more scope to interpret the signs himself in lengthier discourses.

So the appearance of the Temple incident early in the narrative is not a chronological puzzle, but a theological statement—a sign. The conflict with the authorities, Jesus’ zeal for his Father’s house, and the paired notions of the Temple’s destruction and the fate of his own body (John 2:21) are all turned into the premise of Jesus’ whole ministry, rather than a late climactic event. Instead of shining through just in time for his Passion, Jesus’ purpose and destiny are clear from the beginning.

From Codex Purpureus Rossanensis; Jesus Cleansing the Temple

E. P. Sanders has pointed out that the traditional idea of “cleansing” the Temple is somewhat alien to the actual story, and has tended to make the event seem like an attack on meaningless ritual in the name of “pure,” spiritual religion.³ Yet all the versions of the story attribute to him a desire to witness or at least make a statement for the authentic work of the Temple as a “house of prayer” (Synoptics”) or “my Father’s house” (John 2:16). Something is wrong, but the Temple is still important.

The problem of commerce is obvious, but can also be misread. Jesus’ attack may imply corruption, yet he attacks services which are necessary to the functioning of the rites; without the sacrifices and offerings enabled by these sellers and changers, there is no Temple. Commerce itself was inevitable if the offerings were to be made. Yet the fact these particular processes, rather than, say, the priests’ own ritual activities, are the target means that economics is relevant. The control of the exchange processes by the ruling elite (partially but not only priestly), whose wealth was dependent on the way the Temple commerce worked, and with whom Jesus was in open conflict, was a problem more profound than some store-front operators in the Temple being crooked.

So like the contemporary Qumran sectarians, authors and librarians of the Dead Sea Scrolls who had left Jerusalem completely in disgust at the current regime, Jesus could both affirm the principle of the Temple as God’s dwelling, yet name its reality as corrupt to the point where something more than reform was needed.

John’s version of this story, as much or even more than the others, depicts not merely a symbolic action—although it is that, certainly, in the tradition of the prophets—but a chaotic disruption of the Temple’s activities, however brief. The unique reference to a “whip of cords” should be understood as part of a serious effort to drive out the sheep and cattle, underlining the complete disruption of the cult.

Yet the symbolic nature of the action, common to all the versions, is emphasized in a unique way by John. One result of placing the story so early in the narrative is its presentation as a “sign.” The episode immediately prior was the Wedding at Cana, the first of Jesus’ signs. In this story he is asked for a sign (and not for the last time). After this episode we are told that “many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did” (2:23). A few verses later Nicodemus will say “no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him” (3:2).

What is the sign? John’s version uniquely combines the Temple story and Jesus’ own commentary with what is, in the Synoptics, only an accusation. In Mark, the notion that Jesus would “destroy the Temple and in three days raise it up” appears only in the mouths of false witnesses at his trial, and then from mockers at the Crucifixion (14:58; 15:29). Here it is offered as the true interpretation of the sign, and/or an allusion to another sign, the resurrection.

However we understand at a “corporeal” level Jesus’ critique of the Temple he loved, John tells us that this sign of an ending was ultimately not (just) about the Temple, but about Jesus himself. He was speaking of the temple of his body. As in the desert God had dwelt of old among the people, the eternal Word had now “pitched his tent among us” (John 1:14).

1. Luke is admittedly less precise, or at least briefer, and could be read as depicting a narrower attack on some commercial activity; see Luke 19:45.

2. Barrett, C. K., The Gospel According to St. John; an Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (New York, Macmillan, 1956), 162-3.

3. Sanders, E. P. Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 1985, 61-63