– Brought to you by Fr. Bernardino Andrade
(bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)
From today’s Gospel: «In the temple, Jesus found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple…», Jo. 2, 14-15)
THE ABUSES THAT INFURIATED JESUS
1) The merchants selling animals and the money changers had converted the Court of the Gentiles into a noisy market making it impossible for the Gentiles to worship Yahweh.
2) The merchants sold the animals and birds for sacrifice at unjust and exorbitant prices (18 to 20 times the regular price outside the Temple).
3) The animal-inspectors, bribed by the merchants, disqualified even the healthy animals brought by poor shepherds and farmers for sacrifice. This was an unjust extortion at the expense of poor and humble pilgrims, who were practically blackmailed into buying animals and birds from the Temple booths. Jesus considered this a glaring social injustice aggravated by the fact that it was perpetrated in the name of religion.
4) The Temple authorities, by sharing the profit made by merchants and money-changers, converted it into a “hideout of thieves” (Mark & Luke).
5) Roman coins, bearing the images of pagan gods and the emperor, were forbidden as offering in the Temple. The money-changers, who exchanged the Temple coin (Galilean shekel) with Roman coins, demanded 1/6 of the value of the coin as their commission, even from the poor people who had to pay one and a half days of their daily wage as their annual Temple tax.
6) What especially enraged Jesus was not that a fee was being charged, but that the amount being charged to the poor was exorbitant and, hence, unjust. What was happening was a great social injustice done in the name of religion. In fact, the money-changers were street-level representatives of a corrupt Temple banking system which had become an instrument of injustice, fleecing the poor to benefit the powerful.
By chasing the money-changers and merchants from the Temple, Jesus was questioning the validity of the entire sacrificial system itself — of Israel’s ability to atone for its sins, be forgiven and stand in right relationship with God.
“Jesus’ symbolic attack on the Temple would (in His culture) have had a meaning not unlike that of the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Centre – symbolically attacking a building that was widely seen as the “nerve center” of an entire network of political, economic and religious power. In addition to its key religious functions, the Temple had also taken on political and economic roles in Judaea. Apparently, its Treasury was used by many wealthy Jewish people as the “central bank of Jerusalem,” where they stored their wealth, considering it safe from theft or pillaging.” (Dr. Murray Watson).
Love and Peace
Fr. Bernardino Andrade