Reading I: Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12

Ezekiel, who prophesied during the Babylonian Exile, had probably served as a priest before the Exile. The latter part of his book (Ez 40-48) consists of visions of the temple as it will be restored after the return from exile.

In point of fact, the visions serve as a kind of idealized blueprint for the later rebuilding of the temple. Out of it will flow a river of water (the mythical river of God or sacred river), which will have miraculous effects on the land.

From the east will issue a stream that will flow down into the Dead Sea, making its waters sweet and healthy like the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea will then swarm with fish, and trees yielding fruit all year round will grow on its banks. Their leaves will have healing properties (an image taken up later in the Book of Revelation).

Responsorial Psalm: 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9

This is one of the royal psalms, celebrating the marriage of the king with a foreign princess. Usually it is thought to have been composed for an actual royal wedding, though the identity of the king in question is in dispute. Some, however, take it to be an ode used in the ritual of the sacred marriage that they think took place every year in early Israel.

In later times this psalm acquired a messianic connotation in Judaism. It was interpreted Christologically in the Christian Church, the bride being the people of God in each case. The first two stanzas praise the king for his beauty, while the third stanza introduces the figure of the queen for the first time.

Reading II: 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17

Paul uses the image of building for the Church—building a temple, a house, or both. He describes his apostolic labors in terms of building. As an apostle, he lays the foundation, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The superstructure is built by others, that is, by the local ministry.

Two points need to be made here. One is that the term “edify” is connected, not with “edification” in a pietistic sense, but with building up (edificare) the Church as a corporate entity. The other point is that the temple imagery in this context signifies primarily the place of the indwelling Spirit of God, not a place of worship. Richard Meux Benson, the nineteenth-century founder of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican religious order, used to protest that an overemphasis on the presence of Christ in the reserved sacrament tended to obscure the more important scriptural truth of the presence of Christ through the Spirit in his body, the Church.

Here the foundation, laid by the Apostle, is Jesus Christ himself. The foundation marks out the shape of the building to be erected. It is the task of the successors of the apostles to see to it that the Church keeps the shape of its original foundation as the superstructure is erected upon it. Those whose work it is to build the superstructure will be under judgment at the last day and will have to give an account of how they have built.

Gospel: John 2:13-22

The Fourth Gospel has a version of the cleansing of the temple that is parallel to, but independent of, the synoptic version. John’s tradition combines two elements found separately in the Synoptists: (1) the cleansing of the temple (Mk 11:11 par.); (2) the prediction of the temple’s destruction (Mk 14:58 par.).

There are other features not paralleled in the Synoptists:

(1) the whips: a greater degree of force used by Jesus (a feature that has been taken up in recent theologies of revolution);

(2) the citation of Ps 69:9: this was a psalm traditionally used in the early Church’s passion apologetics;

(3) the interesting statement that the incident took place when the temple had been forty-six years in building-pointing to the date A.D. 28.

We take it that these features were already present in the Johannine tradition.

The evangelist himself seems to be responsible for the following features:

(1) the shift of the cleansing of the temple from Holy Week to the beginning of the ministry.

(2) the statement that Jesus was referring to his body in the saying about the destruction of the temple.

We will concentrate on the meaning of these two redactional features.

(1) The reason for the shift of the incident to the beginning of the ministry will be a programmatic one. John wants to make Jesus lay out all his cards on the table right at the outset. The destruction of the temple, that is, the end of the Jewish dispensation and its worship, is the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ whole ministry.

(2) Closely connected with this is the second redactional feature. This expresses the positive side of Jesus’ program, just as the destruction of the temple expresses its negative aspect. The old order of worship is to be replaced by a new one—an order focused no longer on the old temple but on the body of Christ.

In what sense is “body of Christ” used here? Does it mean the ecclesial body in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline sense? Or is it the glorified humanity of Christ? The second sense seems closer to Johannine theology elsewhere (see Jn 1:14), but we cannot altogether rule out overtones of the Pauline meaning.

Reginald H. Fuller