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Going Deeper: cleansing or replacing the Temple?
During the journey of Lent and Easter we find the Church using the Gospel of John to speak to us about some of the deep realities of our faith journey. Today we have Jesus’ first public action in the Gospel of John. Some call it the cleansing of the Temple. Other scripture commentators suggest something even more radical is taking place. Jesus is fulfilling and replacing the Temple. The Temple and its place as the vehicle for forgiveness with sacrificial offering of animals to be made so that each person can be ‘at-onement’ with God is over. Jesus is establishing something completely new.
As we go deeper we realise Jesus’ public ministry lasted 3 years. On each of the celebrations of the Passover – the most important Jewish celebration – Jesus does something incredibly significant. He replaces the Passover celebration with his ‘Body’. (see also John 6 and the Last Supper scene connected with the cross where Jesus’ body on the cross is the Lamb of God (the passover sacrifice) taking away the sins of the world John 19:14,31).
All sacrifices are over now. The covenant relationship and cultic practice, reduced frequently to a legalistic sacrificial ritual that the prophets spoke often against as being empty (Amos 5,21-24), is now replaced with a once and for intimate self gift of the Father and the Son – the Sacrifice of the Cross gifting to us an intimate presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. How unfortunate and personally challenging if this new covenant gift becomes an empty ritual. Lent is a time for us to heed Jesus’ anger and desire for true, not empty, worship. What does it mean for us to be people who offer worship as Jesus asked ‘in spirit and in truth’?
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