John’s Gospel is filled with a wide range of stories that are full of theological overlay and were written some years after the other Gospels.
The writer of the Gospel of John takes us in our text today on a visit of Jesus to the temple, usually and rightfully thought of as a place of worship.
We often think of Jesus as a gentle, kind, and even-tempered man who had messages that somehow disturb us, but we seldom see an angry Jesus. Often we can imagine that he was sick in his soul about the wrongdoing and thinking in the world especially among the religious of his day.
The cleansing of the temple is for John not really a matter of getting rid of the marketplace and the moneychangers. It is rather a matter of replacing the whole temple structure as such and not just attacking the marketplace and the moneychangers. For it is now the resurrected Jesus who is the place where God and human beings are now joined.
It is only after Jesus was resurrected that the disciples came to understand what the real meaning of the temple action was. This is what John often does with his stories, combine the present with what is to come.
Margaret and Dan Via
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