Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple occurs in some variation in each Gospel giving it increased significance. In this liturgical cycle the reading from the Gospel of John lands on the Third Sunday of Lent, right in the middle of the season, as an apex that anchors the readings that come before and after it.
In this Gospel reading, Jesus appears angry. His actions to remove those who made his father’s house a marketplace, loomed alarmingly close to violence. He overturns tables spilling their coins, “He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out.” (Jn 2:15) We see Jesus depicted in a way that is unfamiliar and even disturbing. The scene is powerful because it presents to us a human Jesus with emotions, frustrated by the larger forces of injustice at play in his social and historical context.
As a first century Palestinian Jew living under Roman occupation, the temple held immense cultural and spiritual significance for the Jewish community and Jesus, but simultaneously, the political, economic and social implications cannot be missed. Why was Jesus upset? Jewish religious leaders collaborating with Roman authority created a lucrative banking and tax collection business in the Temple. In order for poor people to make the necessary offerings to God, they had to not only buy the animals and pay a temple tax, but had to exchange their currency, all at a cost.
In order to delve into a theology that takes seriously Jesus’ words and actions regarding the institutions and power structures of his time and their social political implications, it is helpful to draw on the insights of Peruvian theologian and proponent of liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez. 1
For Gutierrez, a key insight that emerges from liberation theology is not only the account of things as they are, the social analysis of varied forms of injustice in the world, but an inquiry into their causes. Gutierrez writes in the introduction to the revised edition of A Theology of Liberation, “Structural analysis has thus played an important part in building up the picture of the world to which liberation theology addresses itself.”1 He also notes, the correlative of this structural analysis is a condemnation of the institutions and practices which benefit specific groups, classes, and individuals. It is at this juncture that a conflict arises.
Those who benefit from these structures resist efforts to undermine them. These are the forces with which Jesus clashed in the temple, they are the same forces with which the prophets clashed in the Old Testament, and they are the same forces that we confront today, as missionary disciples, when we protest against oppression in all its forms.
The money changers and merchants represent an institutional barrier between the poor and the God who entered into history and became poor to come near to them. Jesus’ actions offer a witness to the centrality of the poor for his mission. The Gospel proposes “...a radical option for the poor; one’s attitude towards them determines the validity of all religious behavior.”2
The religious structures and practices surrounding the temple worship were one facet of a larger network of institutions that Jesus criticizes throughout the gospels. Gutierrez observes that, “The Pharisees rejected Roman domination, but they had structured a complex world of religious precepts and norms of behavior which allowed them to live on the margin of that domination. They certainly accepted coexistence… When Jesus struck against the very foundation of their machinations, he unmasked the falsity of their position and appeared in the eyes of the Pharisees as a dangerous traitor.”3 Jesus was seen as a threat to the status quo under which a privileged few Jewish leaders could coexist with their oppressors.
The actions of Jesus in the temple are inspiring because they represent a denunciation of incrementalism regarding unjust systems. He doesn’t dispassionately debate the practices, he acts decisively and boldly. Many people today have lost patience with institutions that are too comfortable with or profit from injustice. We see this through the popular movements that spring up spontaneously of antiracism, decolonization, economic justice and labor organizing, anti-war and demilitarization, environmental justice, and many others. Gutierrez recognizes that many “...have gradually abandoned a simple reformist attitude regarding the existing social order, for by its very shallowness this reformism perpetuates the existing system… To support the social revolution means to abolish the present status quo and to attempt to replace it with a qualitatively different one…”4
But what is the relationship between Jesus overturning the tables in the temple and our own actions before the structures and institutions that perpetuate injustice? Because the institutional Church resides in and near the halls of power in this country, the challenge Jesus makes to the Pharisees must be turned inward on us as Christians. Gutierrez turns this lens inward and recognizes that “theology has a necessary and permanent role in liberation from every form of religious alienation-which is often fostered by the ecclesiastical institution itself …”5
What tables would Jesus overturn today? What institution would he confront with frustration because they suffocate the poor or treat those on the cultural margins unjustly?
Jesus offers a sign of hope to give meaning and purpose to this revolutionary act. He says to those present, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19) The temple where God’s presence resides is Jesus himself. This sign tells us that God intervenes in the drama of history. If we have the courage to destroy the false temples that oppress, and trust in the places where God is most present, such as with the poor at the margins, God will raise up new life. The incarnation demonstrates God’s intention to save us, not only in a world to come but in this one. Liberation theology recognizes this dynamism of the Spirit at play in historical processes. It is, “... a theology of the liberating transformation of the history of humankind… This is a theology which does not stop with reflecting on the world, but rather tries to be part of the process through which the world is transformed…”6 As missionary disciples we are agents of the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom when we participate in that mission of liberation.
________________
1 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, (Orbis Books Maryknoll, NY 1988), xxiii.
2 A Theology of Liberation, 132
3 A Theology of Liberation, 132
4 A Theology of Liberation, 32.
5 A Theology of Liberation, 11.
6 A Theology of Liberation, 12.