CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE

This Christian stained glass window is centered on the cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem by Jesus. All four of the Gospels report this event taking place. In St. John’s Gospel (2: 13 – 17) we read the event as follows: Now the Jewish feast of Passover was near, 113 so Jesus went up114 to Jerusalem. He found in the temple courts people selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers sitting at tables. So he made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen. He scattered the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. To those who sold the doves he said, “Take these things away from here! Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Passion for your house will devour me.” At this the Jews answered and said to him “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered and said to them “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” … But He was speaking of the Temple of his body.

This physical purification of the temple reminds of the type of symbolic deeds acted out by the prophets; and, indeed, Jesus approach to the temple on this occasion resembles that of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7”). The action is a double sign. The Temple soon to be destroyed (70 A.D.) stood in need of purification. Its function would be replaced by the risen body of Christ.