March 3, 2024
III Sunday of Lent B
John 2:13-25
Last Sundayو we went up to Mount Tabor, where Jesus revealed His face as the beloved Son (Mark 9:2-10). We saw that the disciples Peter, James, and John were with him, as well as Moses, and Elijah, who appeared before them. Those two prophets who, during their lives, also participated in an epiphany, a transfiguration: they went up a mountain, where God made himself present, but without ever seeing him face to face, but rather only from behind, after the Lord had passed over.
However, on Mount Tabor, God reveals his face, and he does so in Jesus. In His story, and especially in His Passover, God makes himself known.
Today this process of the unveiling of this revelation takes a further step.
We are at the beginning of John's Gospel (John 2:13-25), where we find an episode that the Synoptics put immediately after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem instead of at the end of their narrative.
The episode is the so-called cleansing of the temple.
Jesus enters the temple and sees everything that revolves around the temple's wealth: people selling the animals needed for the sacrifices, the animals themselves, and the money changers.
And, in the face of this scene, Jesus makes a prophetic gesture: he sends everyone out, spills the money on the ground, overturns the moneychangers' stalls, and forcefully tells them not to make his Father's house a marketplace (Jn. 2:15-16).
To enter into the understanding of this passage, let us start with one word, which is found in verse 15. Here we read that Jesus throws the money on the ground and overturns the stalls.
Jesus overthrows; Reverses; Overturns.
He overturns the money-changers counters, but first of all, he overturns an image of God and a way of believing.
Each Gospel tells of this overturning. The four evangelists place at the beginning of their narration a gesture or a word, which displays it.
In Matthew, it is seen in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12).
Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who wait for justice, the persecuted...: the logic of the world is precisely reversed, because God looks at reality from another perspective. Life is not measured by success and possessions but by the benevolence of God the Father, and His great compassion for anyone who awaits His salvation and relies on Him.
Mark places this turnaround in the first words spoken by Jesus (Mark 1:15), where he announces that the Kingdom of God is at hand and the time for repentance has come for all.
He does not say that one must first be converted for the Lord to draw near, but the opposite: First, the free work of Salvation is offered by God, who saves, and from here comes all the possibility of a new life. Not an effort, or a toil, but a possibility, for all.
In Luke, this is even more explicit, and it is evident in Mary. Not only because of how God makes himself present in her life: not in a temple, but in a house; not in Jerusalem, but in Nazareth..But also because she herself speaks of it, explicitly, in her Magnificat: "...he has overthrown the mighty from their thrones, he has lifted the lowly" (Lk. 1:52). Mary is the woman of overthrowing.
By putting the episode of Jesus in the temple at the beginning of his gospel, John wants to tell us this:
He wants to tell us that the time has come for a new relationship with the Father, which he speaks about with the woman of Samaria a few chapters later (Jn. 4): no longer only in Jerusalem, no longer through sacrifices, but with humble readiness to accept God's gift, his Spirit, his mercy.
The relationship with God has been overturned: it is no longer man who needs to make sacrifices to obtain God's benevolence, but it is the contrary. It is God himself who offers himself for us, who sheds his blood, who gives his life out of love for every man.
And just like last Sunday, the three disciples had been told not to tell anyone about what they had seen on the mountain (Lk 9:9). Today this element returns: the disciples do not understand the words with which Jesus explains the gesture he performed. But they will remember them later, after the resurrection, when it will be evident that the Body of the Risen One will have become, for all, the place of encounter with the Father and with his salvation.
+Pierbattista
