John 2:12-24
Lesson Focus
When we come together in prayer, in sacrifice, and scripture, our belief is strengthened, and our witness in the world is emboldened.
Lesson Outcomes
Through this lesson, students should:
Understand the significance of Jesus' actions in the Temple and its implications for worship and community.
Recognize the role of scripture, particularly the Old Testament, in shaping the disciples' understanding of Jesus and their faith.
Appreciate the importance of communal interpretation and application of scripture in living out the Christian faith.
Catching up on the Story
We pick up John’s narrative right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and he’s already making waves. So far, we’ve seen John the Baptist; Jesus has called some of his disciples and attended a family friend's wedding, where he came to the rescue, turning water into wine. John tells us that part of the reason Jesus performs this miracle is to reveal his glory to his disciples.
After the wedding, Jesus goes down to Capernaum, where he will spend a few days with his mother, brothers, and disciples. Besides Jesus’ involvement in the wedding at Cana, he hasn’t drawn much attention to himself. After their time in Capernaum, Jesus and his followers made their way toward Jerusalem, presumably to celebrate the Passover. Jesus goes to the Temple, and all hell breaks loose.
Today’s passage comes to us in two parts. Part one depicts Jesus entering into the Temple during preparations for the Passover. Part two takes place because of Jesus’ zealous actions in part one.
Cleaning the Temple - Whips and Livestock
Jesus and his disciples have made their way to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. Of course, we remember what the Passover festival celebrates: God’s greatest work of salvation for Israel, the Exodus from Egypt, set in motion by the angel of the Lord passing over the Hebrew families in its midnight destruction of Egypt.
Passover doesn’t just celebrate that one night, but all the things that are set in motion on that night, the hasty departure from Egypt, the pursuit of the Egyptian army, the parting of the Red Sea, the tower of fire that guided them by night, and the cloud that guided them by day. If ever there was a defining moment in any nation, past or present, it was Israel’s exodus and the Passover.
Many families would have traveled from their homes to Jerusalem to celebrate this festival. Some of them would have come from a long way off, and bringing their sacrifices on the journey would have been cumbersome, if not impossible. So, naturally, there would have been places for pilgrims to buy what was needed for the proscribed sacrifices. If pilgrims had traveled a long way, they might only have currency from another land, which likely had the head of some ruler, past or present, stamped on it. Such money was not suited to purchase something from the Temple because it violated the commandment about not having any graven images or idols. The money needed to be exchanged for the proper coinage, suitable for going into the Temple treasury (Bruner, 143).
So why does Jesus lose his stuff over those selling cattle, sheep, and doves, as well as with the money changers? After all, they’re just doing what needed to be done. It seems a bit harsh to make a whip of cords and forcibly remove the vendors, going Bobby Knight on their tables.
Had the people of Israel and the Temple leaders made the worship of God a commercial endeavor? Probably, but I’m not so sure that’s why Jesus is angry. Jesus is likely angry because of where this business is being done. John tells us that where Jesus finds this makeshift marketplace was inside the Temple.
The Temple had several sections to it. There was an outer court where gentiles who had converted to the Jewish faith could worship. Then, there was another court for women to worship, followed by another for men. Finally, there would have been the innermost court holding the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could go and only once a year. The market was likely set up in the outer gentile court, which prevented converts from worshipping.
It’d be helpful to remember God’s words to Abram before he became Abraham. God promised that Abram’s offspring would bless the entire world. Israel was to be a witness to God’s faithfulness to creation as well as a conduit of God’s love and grace, and here they are, keeping those from “the entire world” from worshipping. It’s not just that, but Jesus knows that he’s precisely the mechanism through which the entire world will be blessed! If anyone has any reason to be upset, it’s Jesus.
The disciples stare as Jesus declares, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s House a marketplace!” After the episode is over, Jesus' disciples will remember where it is written in Psalm 69: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
This quotation makes a link between how Israel’s disregard and disrespect for the Temple is disrespect and disregard for Jesus. If we’ve learned anything from Matthew’s gospel, disregard for those Jesus loves is a further disregard for Jesus.
I Will Raise it Up!
A commotion like the one Jesus had just caused would have immediately come to everyone’s attention. That there isn’t any resistance from the cattle sellers, the money changers, or anyone in the crowd points to the fact that they likely agreed with what Jesus was doing.
But not everyone was willing to turn a blind eye. No sooner than the last table hit the ground, the Jewish religious leaders were on Jesus’ case, demanding an answer. “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
In the ancient world, a miraculous sign often validated religious authority. In part, people like Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha were all validated by the works that God did through them. So, it makes sense that the Jewish religious leadership would want something similar from Jesus.
However, the answer they get isn’t exactly what they’re expecting. Jesus replies, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.” Flabbergasted, the leaders wonder how Jesus, one man with a whip, will rebuild a structure under construction for forty-six years in just three days!
Of course, they’ve completely misunderstood what Jesus meant. Even Jesus’ disciples don’t grasp his full meaning until after the resurrection. Jesus was talking about his own body, the body that, in a few short years, would be crucified, dead, and buried.
This little vignette ends with John telling us, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the world that Jesus had spoken.”
John is doing something curious here. He’s helping us see how the disciples began to form an understanding of who Jesus was and what he was up to. A reading of any of the gospels, not just John’s, will show that the disciples are a bit slow in understanding Jesus’ whole mission.
So What...?
Of course, the disciples come around nicely, and God can use them to spread the good news all over the known world. But their faith and that’s really what this is about, didn’t come just from witnessing what Jesus did.
Marianne Meye Thompson points out three ways the disciples came to truly “believe.”
First, they believed the scriptures. Too often in the history of Christianity, the Old Testament has been ignored. Indeed, there were whole movements early on which sought to do away with the Old Testament, because they thought the God represented there was angry and violent (I have a lot to say about that, but at another time). But we must remember that Jesus and the disciples saw what they were doing as a continuation of what God has been doing in the world since the beginning of time. The early church relied on the Old Testament to help them understand who Jesus was and what he was doing. My Old Testament professor in college would say, “I study the Old Testament so that I can understand the New.”
This leads to the second thing: the disciples read the scriptures with a certain sense of hindsight. In a way, they read the Old Testament in the light of or through the lens of Jesus’ resurrection. They concluded that Jesus is the fullest and best revelation of the nature and character of God. As important as the cross is, what we’re making our way toward during Lent, the cross loses its power without the resurrection, for in the resurrection, God vindicates and legitimates everything Jesus said and did.
Finally, not only did they begin to understand that Jesus’ mission in the world is a continuation of what God has always been doing, but they also worked out how to read the Old Testament in light of the resurrection as a community committed to following the Spirit’s leading. In other words, as much as they might have studied the scriptures alone and privately, they always came together and worked through what they read, saw, and heard about Jesus as a community.
Then, as they went about their daily lives, they allowed their contextual reading of the scriptures and their testimony about Jesus to shape how they lived and acted in the world. When they needed help understanding how to be Christian in a pagan world where persecution was rampant, they never decided alone, but always in community.
The short of it is that our belief and our ability to be Christian in the world are never individual things. If we are truly to believe, we need scripture, all of it. We need to read it in the light of the cross and resurrection, and we need to slog through it together, in community, helping each other know how we should act in the world in which we live.
These reasons are a good bit of why we do something like Lent. When we come together in prayer, in sacrifice, and in scripture, our belief is strengthened, and our witness in the world is emboldened.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
How does Jesus' cleansing of the Temple challenge our understanding of sacred spaces and worship practices today?
What parallels can we draw between the commercialization of worship in Jesus' time and modern-day challenges to the integrity of religious practices?
In what ways did the disciples' comprehension of Jesus' mission evolve over time, and how does this process relate to our journey of faith?
How might reading the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus' resurrection influence our interpretation of scripture and understanding of God's character?
Why is communal engagement with scripture important for Christians, and how does it enhance our individual and collective faith journeys?
Reflecting on the disciples' slow understanding of Jesus' mission, how can we navigate periods of doubt or uncertainty in our faith journeys?
What role does the Lenten season play in strengthening our belief and deepening our commitment to living out our faith in the world?
How can we balance personal reflection and communal discussion in our approach to scripture study and application?
Discuss the significance of Jesus' statement about rebuilding the Temple in three days and its eventual understanding in light of his resurrection.
In what ways can we actively participate in shaping and enriching our faith communities to reflect the values and teachings of Jesus?