Passionate Love

Why did Jesus get so angry in the Sunday’s Gospel?

His anger does not seem justified. Weren’t the merchants just helping people? The crowd had come from far away for the Passover feast. They had many different forms of coinage and fno animals for sacrifice. Money-changers were needed (think of the ones in international airports), and there had to be a source of pigeons or sheep or whatever they were to offer.

So, his action is strange, especially in the gospel of John (which we are reading this Sunday for the special feast), in which Jesus is portrayed as reconciler, God in human form, the one whose love overflows. And now he turning tables over? Why?

One easy answer is that the merchants and money changers had gotten selfish and conniving. Maybe they were cheating the people, acting like the proverbial butcher with his thumb on the scale. Some of us get angry today when we see the greed of huge corporations, of consumer culture, of war-lords in war-torn countries, of those who exploit the poor throughout the world. Maybe Jesus’ righteous anger is quite in order.

This is a good enough answer and there is a lot of truth in it.

But doesn’t God forgive sinners instead of whipping them with cords and hurling tables onto the floor (what a mess) and heaving the many carefully sorted coins all over the place? Was this an act of love?

How could it be?

Let us spend some time looking at the Jesus who got so upset.

First, he was raised in a culture in which temple sacrifices were a normal way for people to reach for a loving relationship with God. They were giving up the very best things they had, as the theory went, to give a gift to their Lord: the first fruit of the harvest, the best lamb from the herd.

Second, therefore, when Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover, no doubt he expected to find people tendering gifts to the transcendent God.

What did he find?

A most noisy market place, loud-mouthing its way into the very temple itself, where it did not belong. The “bottom line,” money, motivated it, skipping all interaction with God. Sellers and buyers both were distracted from the real God for whom the temple was built.

The temple scene must have broken Jesus’ heart.

You see, Jesus was passionate, not pasty-faced. His temper was directed at the wrongs being done. NO, he said. Your SOUL has to be the bottom line, not GREED. Self-indulgence is WRECKING the covenant of love. STOP IT.

Third, Jesus had issued forth from the very heart of the Trinitarian God, where loving is total. His heart knew that the Father had at last given his own very best gift, his own finest lamb, to be the sacrifice that the human race would offer. This lamb, Jesus, was to seal the Old Covenant afresh, open whatever doors had been closed between God’s transcendence and the grubby, earthy world of flesh.

Maybe now we can see that his anger was a loving claim of a truth. Buying and selling are fine, but they cannot replace the gifts that come from God, nor the gratitude that should be our good and tender response.

John Foley S. J.

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