Reflection on the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Today’s readings are a wonderful collection of literary styles from Ezekiel’s visionary magical realism to the poetry of Psalm 46, the metaphor from Paul, and finally, a dramatic narrative about Jesus.  

In the first reading, Ezekiel says he is shown a vision of a temple with a river flowing out from the door. Along the banks of the river are fruit trees and other living plants. I love the idea of leaving church carried along in a river of faith with beauty and abundance surrounding us. 

Psalm 46 says a river brings joy to the sacred home of God, and the river nourishes the City of God. The temple needs the river as well as being a source of the river. Water is a big image in the Bible, written in a very desert environment. But even here in Kentucky, I love the vision of finding comfort in a flowing river in what is way too often the inhospitable desert of our current times.   

Paul says we are each God’s building and reminds us that Jesus must be our foundation for the building to last.  

And finally we come to Jesus entering the temple for Passover and overturning the tables of the money changers and merchants selling sacrificial animals. Many of you have read the writings coming out of “The Jesus Seminar.” John Dominic Crossan and others took on the task of trying to determine what in the Gospels is factual and what is more metaphorical or visionary or built on mythology. “The Jesus Seminar” says one sign a story in the Gospels is probably factual is when it appears in more than one Gospel. The story of Jesus and the money changers appears in all four Gospels. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the story that precedes it is Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, which we commemorate as Palm Sunday. In the Gospel of John, the one we read today, the story that precedes it is the wedding at Cana — Jesus’ first miracle and the beginning of his ministry. 

Whoever wrote the Gospel of John (and their name could have been John) focused on strengthening people’s faith. This book was written about 110 years after Jesus was crucified. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were in circulation and the writer of the Gospel of John did not want to repeat a chronological account of Jesus’ life but rather to present a more theological view. So what do we learn when we read this story as factual? Jesus enters the outer courtyard of the temple, makes a whip out of ropes and disrupts the buying and selling that was going on there. If Matthew, Mark and Luke are right about timing, this event may have been the final straw that enraged both the Jewish establishment and the Romans so much that they agreed Jesus had to be executed. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus is crucified the following week. 

John says this happened very early on, but remember John is writing to help us understand Jesus and his philosophy. Three versions of the story say that Jesus particularly focused his wrath on the merchants selling doves. “Get these things out of here. Stop turning God’s house into a marketplace!”  Jewish pilgrims came from all over the world for Passover. They would buy sacrificial animals. Doves were the cheapest ones and were bought by the very poor. The mark up on doves was far higher than on sheep and cattle. Further, some scholars say the dove sellers ran a loan business on the side. Maybe you can’t afford a dove today but you need it today. The dove seller will lend you the money, give you the dove and you can pay him back with interest later.   The dove sellers were the modern-day equivalent of payday lenders. 

Why does John place this story so early in Jesus’ ministry? To let us know that from the beginning, Jesus took the side of the poor in dramatic fashion. The preferential option for the poor is baked into this story. Jesus doesn’t yell at the buyers to stop buying, to make better choices, to save up for Passover or even to boycott the sellers. He yells at the sellers, at the greedy capitalists of his time. The message is clear: To address poverty we must confront the “sellers.” 

To do that it helps to know the rivers of God do not run dry and in fact support abundant life. Remember Jesus says, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” In addition, because each of us is a temple of God, we must drive greed out of ourselves, out of our temple. Greed is often a cover for a feeling of fear and scarcity. I don’t have enough so I must get more. Remember the dove sellers were not doing anything illegal, simply immoral. Scarcity says there is not enough. Not enough money, not enough time. Scarcity says the river of God is not wide enough or deep enough. Jesus always believed there was enough — it was just unevenly distributed. We are called to believe that, too.  

A final lesson is that we do not act alone. Although Jesus is the leader in this story, his disciples were there with him. Leaders have followers — that would be us. Psalm 46 names the rewards of followers: “God causes wars to end, breaks the bow and snaps the spear.” These are hard things to believe in this time, and so we rest in the most common phrase in the entire Bible, a version of which is in Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and our strength and so we will not be afraid.”