Last updated on January 25, 2013
After reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, I’m feeling a resolve to read through the Gospels again – except with fresh eyes. Chesterton remarks upon the utter craziness and just plain impossible nature of the Christian story. In fact, it’s so weird and wonderful that one’s bound to think the story a fake – at least from our perspective. Yet, thinking of it from the position of ancient mythology, we see there’s a difference in its idealism and its tangibility. Nobody was asking Zeus for help with their problems, let alone for salvation. The gods of Greece and Rome were too busy cavorting and killing each other to help. The universe was a wondrous place, sure, but the divine beings remained far away; they did not manifest in the perfunctory lives of man.
And yet, Jesus breaks through like an irruption into the life of humanity and says: God was here (good metaphor: like carving a message on a tree trunk or something). I think we all tend to just re-read the whole narrative while taking the facts at face value. Imagine encountering this text for the first time, though! “In the beginning was the Word…” I can’t even imagine the bizarre confusion you face with that kind of preface thrown right into your face. We now have tradition, doctrine, and all other sorts of tools to condense the message from the source documents, but that wasn’t true of the first century AD necessarily. The leaders of the early Jesus Movement really had a task on their hands, especially with the Gospel of John.
In reading it again, I find little parts that make me stop and go “huh?” It didn’t take long until a part of John 2 stumped me. Specifically, the narrative of the money-changers/sacrifice sellers in the Temple struck me as a little odd.
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.”
The first part isn’t too bad. You find that in the other Gospels too, except this takes place earlier rather than later. Most scholars seem to believe this has significance, but I don’t think it much matters apart from the theological point said book tries to espouse. If John comes from a predominantly Greek perspective, then it’s natural to assume he emphasizes the God-like nature of Jesus rather than his humanity. Different strokes for different folks. A portion, though, never caught my eye until now:
18 The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body. 22 So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.
Nor have I ever heard this portion mentioned in a sermon, or in any book about theology – let me tell you, I’ve read alot, so that’s saying something. It’s the “temple” part that gets me. Assuming that we’re supposed to take the story on face value and whatever it tells us, can we take this allegorically? Does Jesus neccessarily equate himself to the “temple” spoken here? Maybe some Biblical commentaries will help me here? Come on, Calvin, help me out here!
This temple. Though he uses the word temple in accommodation to the present occurrence, yet the body of Christ is justly and appropriately called a temple. The body of each of us is called a tabernacle, (2 Corinthians 5:4; 2 Peter 1:13,) because the soul dwells in it; but the body of Christ was the abode of his Divinity. For we know that the Son of God clothed himself with our nature in such a manner that the eternal majesty of God dwelt in the flesh which he assumed, as in his sanctuary.
I don’t know why certain passages find themselves typecast on face value, and others do not. This one, apparently, get the wholehearted approval in the same vein as Calvin, wherein Jesus equates temple=body. That makes sense, surely, until you think to yourself “well, that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the text, is it? Would a reader of that time period even get the reference?” Or, to put it another way: John should probably give you the interpretation, right? He does everywhere else; he explains the “zeal” passage but doesn’t even bother to comment. Is that because everyone understood it immediately? Perhaps I’m thinking too much about this? Matthew Henry goes in a slightly different direction:
He chose to express this by destroying and re-edifying the temple, First, Because he was now to justify himself in purging the temple, which they had profaned; as if he had said, “You that defile one temple will destroy another; and I will prove my authority to purge what you have defiled by raising what you will destroy.” The profaning of the temple is the destroying of it, and its reformation itsresurrection. Secondly, Because the death of Christ was indeed the destruction of the Jewish temple, the procuring cause of it; and his resurrection was the raising up of another temple, the gospel church, Zech. vi. 12. The ruins of their place and nation (ch. xi. 48) were the riches of the world. See Amos ix. 11; Acts xv. 16.
It’s interesting, then, that the Synoptic Gospels do not have this. There’s something to the idea that the death of Jesus also hearkens the end of the Temple – that is, the building and the wall that separates mankind and God. That would also tie in with Paul’s musings about the Law versus grace. Given John’s later date (it’s nearly the last book written in the New Testament), this appears a likely solution to my wandering mind.
All of them have the “messianic secret” (i.e., Jesus tells the disciples not to tell people who He is) to some degree, but John takes a hardliner stance. It doesn’t bother to make anything mysterious at all, but from the beginning it merely blurts out “Jesus is God, He died for your sins, and by golly this book will show you all the things He did.” It doesn’t pull punches, but it does show that Jesus isn’t willing to tell people the answers outright. Rather, he wants to let the actions in themselves show what will occur; only in retrospect does anyone get it.
But still, it’s a little insane to suppose that anyone could even get what John says here, or wants Jesus to say, apart from the narrative. Imagine it as a circularity, an allusion to future events in a narrative, and I think you’ll see just how cool it is. In literature, you’d call that “foreshadowing”. John tells you what happened in the beginning, but doesn’t quite tell you how. In that sense, the early readers must have been utterly astounded to find out the guy who says the Temple will fall is actually right in two or three different ways.
Cool beans!
That’s a part of seeing something anew: you need to look upon something with fresh eyes, not willing to rely upon what you’ve been told. Of course, God remains the authority, but take a new approach every once and a while; you’ll be surprised what you find in the Bible that you didn’t see or didn’t bother to examine. I know I am.
