We are His Building

Send us Fan MailWe Are His BuildingJohn 2:13-2213 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’ 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’[a]18 The Jews then responded to him, ‘What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’19 Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’20 They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. What Jesus did this day in the Temple area must have made quite an impression. All four gospel writers recall it.  John tells us that at the time, they did not really know what Jesus was doing. It is only after the resurrection that they recalled that the Scriptures say that ‘zeal for the Lord’s house’ would consume the Messiah and that the temple Jesus was speaking of on this day was not the temple they were standing in but the new temple of his own body.  John tells it differently to the others too. He does not share it as being a trigger for the final lead up to the crucifixion at the end of Jesus ministry like the others. John remembers it being at the very beginning – right after the wine at the wedding in Cana. John is saying something different to the others about this.  When Jesus enters the temple area, nothing is unusual. The whole sacrificial system of animals, birds, grain and exchange of currencies have to be done somewhere. The Jerusalem temple is a huge open market space in the centre of the city.  Why is Jesus zealous enough to personally make a whip-chord, turn over tables of foreign exchange merchants and rattle the cages of those doves!? He does not call the place a ‘den of robbers’ as Matthew, Mark and Luke tell it. This does not seem to be a protest about malpractice or corruption. It seems to be bigger… deeper.  For John, Jesus seems to signalling the dismantling of the whole thing – building, system, practices…..  This temple, this building with all of its associated roles, stories, symbols of religious identity and even national pride is no longer necessary. Jesus is not talking ‘reform’, he is talking complete revolutionary shift. It is being demolished to be replaced by something bigger and better. That is BIG!  Everyone knows that this is God’s building. What could possibly be better?  This building was originally established at the Lord’s direct command - first via Tent of Meeting in the Exodus wilderness, then by Solomon, then rebuilt to part of its former glory by retuned exiles under Nehemiah and Ezra and then finally made great again by Herod for his own political purposes and personal ego. We hear that it has taken Herod 46 years to build so far. Like security people at the footy, when Jesus disrupts the whole show, the keepers of the Temple are on the job straight away.  <