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Week Thirty, Day One

John 2:13-25

This is one of the places where the Gospel of John is most different from the synoptic Gospels. The three of them place the cleansing of the temple at the end of the life of Jesus. John puts it here in the second chapter, right after the miracle at the wedding feast. In the other Gospels, this was one of the actions that got Jesus crucified. For John, it is a sign that, right from the start, Jesus confronted the Jewish religious leadership.

This is probably as good a place as any to address the fact that John’s Gospel is regarded by many scholars as an anti-Semitic version of the life of Jesus. The three earlier gospels were written in a time when Christianity was a movement primarily within Judaism when people saw themselves as followers of “the way” of a Jewish Rabbi named Jesus. In Mark, the first Gospel written, we hear Jesus saying, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God.” By the time we get to John’s Gospel Jesus is the Divine Logos of God and “the Jews” are faulted for their rejection of him.

Hence, right from the start, John presents Jesus as being in confrontation with Judaism. The cleansing of the temple is not a closing act of one confronting the abuse of the poor, but a political act by which Jesus declares himself as One with authority over even the temple.

The same event is presented decades later to serve two very different purposes. You and I are left to decide which we accept as correct, or if there is a third understanding that perhaps even John and the Synoptics missed. To me, it is fascinating that in this Gospel, which presents the most exalted view of Jesus, one that evolved years after his life, Jesus’ humanity still comes shining through.

The second chapter begins with Jesus celebrating a wedding at a great feast; it ends with an expression of Jesus’ fury at religion’s exclusion and abuse of the poor. Far from being a God dressed up like a human, Jesus is a human with the full range of human emotion. Here he helps people who are celebrating to continue to do so with the best wine, and he also rages at religious leaders who exclude and exploit the poor. The real Jesus of the Bible is anything but passive and uninvolved with life. Jesus is a human with great passion for life and living.

Blessings,

Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice

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