Sermon for Third Sunday of Lent – 4th April 2021: John 2, 13-22
Nelly Paraskevopoulou – St Paul’s Athens
May God be on my lips and in all our hearts
The story from the Gospel of John about Jesus clearing the Temple is one of my favorite moments in the Bible, describing the life of Jesus Christ. The image we are given about Jesus is very different from other events. Jesus is angry. He is very angry and rightfully so. Many people feel they can identify with this very human expression of emotion and this might make them feel closer to the Son of God but also Son of Man. It is easier to identify with this emotional Jesus, than with Jesus performing miracles, Jesus teaching and even more Jesus on the cross. By identifying with the person of Jesus Christ, maybe the rest of His life can become easier to understand and hopefully follow, as much as our limited human condition permits.
But why is Jesus so angry? Jesus is angry because the temple of Jerusalem, His Father’s house, is being misused. Instead of being a house of prayer it had become a market place. The priests had found a way to make money from their fellow Jews, by selling animals to be sacrificed.
As readers of the Bible have noted, events in the New Testament often have their counterparts in the Old Testament. In Psalm 2 the Son’s wrath is warned against, predicting in a sense the event of Jesus’s divine wrath.