“Cleansing the Temple”
COMMENTARY ON JOHN 2:13–17
BY BISHOP ROBERT BARRON
“Cleansing the Temple”
COMMENTARY ON
JOHN 2:13–17
BY BISHOP ROBERT BARRON
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making 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. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” —John 2:13–17
Jesus is prophetic to the depth of his being, and his prophetic vocation will manifest itself in all of his speech, gestures, and actions. This entails that his confrontation with fallen powers and dysfunctional traditions will be highly focused, intense, and disruptive.
An episode recorded in all four Gospels is Jesus’ paradigmatically prophetic act of cleansing the temple. Standing at the heart of the holy city of Jerusalem, the temple was the political, economic, cultural, and religious center of the nation. Turning over the tables of the money-changers and driving out the merchants, shouting in high dudgeon, and upsetting the order of that place was to strike at the most sacred institution of the culture, the unassailable embodiment of the tradition. It was to show oneself as critic in the most radical and surprising sense possible. That this act of Jesus the warrior flowed from the depth of his prophetic identity is witnessed to by the author of John’s Gospel: “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’”
Many of the historical critics of the New Testament hold that this event—shocking, unprecedented, perverse—is what finally persuaded the leaders that Jesus merited execution.
This commentary is taken from The Word on Fire Bible, which includes commentaries from Bishop Robert Barron and leading Catholics from across the centuries. The Word on Fire Bible makes one of the hardest books to read more beautiful and accessible. Designed as a “cathedral in print,” it is meant to open up Sacred Scripture in a new and deeper way to any reader. If you want more content like this article, experience the Bible like never before, wrapped in 2,000 years of insight, art, and tradition with The Word on Fire Bible!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Scott Hahn
Dr. Scott Hahn is the Fr. Michael Scanlan Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he has taught for over thirty years. Author or editor of over forty books, Dr. Hahn is also Founder and President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (www.stpaulcenter.com).
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Learn about the Catholic sensibility of Bishop Barron.
In this issue of Evangelization & Culture, you will see the Catholic faith through the unique lens of Bishop Barron. Explore some of Bishop Barron’s theological writings, as well as the saints, spiritual masters, and mentors who played a key role in his own spiritual and intellectual formation. Dr. Eleonore Stump unpacks the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas. Dr. Matthew Nelson reflects on the pivotal influence of Robert Sokolowski. Dr. Scott Hahn examines the inner logic of Sacred Scripture through Barron’s biblical hermeneutic. Finally, Bishop Barron shares his lecture given at Oxford University on St. John Henry Newman and the New Evangelization.
“I detest ‘dumbed-down Catholicism’ and ‘beige Catholicism.’”
BISHOP ROBERT BARRON