We often read today’s Gospel and are surprised at how angry Jesus is; what has happened to our gentle Jesus? Just prior He had produced wine from water at the wedding at Cana; just after this He will converse with Nicodemus, and we will read that “…God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…” (John 3:16), yet in our Gospel Jesus gives many in the Temple a literal whipping. This is because the Temple was being profaned, and the worst part about it is that no one was doing anything about it. The Temple was meant to be an image of Heaven on Earth, and as the Book of Revelation reads, “…nothing unclean will enter it…” (Revelation 21:27). So Jesus cleanses the Temple, and then speaks of its destruction, not only prophesying what would happen under the Romans in 70AD but what would happen to His own Body: He, too, would be whipped and scourged, not to drive out sin and guilt—for even Pilate found Him innocent and scourged Him only to please the rabid crowd—but He was whipped that we might be purified. As Isaiah writes “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed,” (Isaiah 53:5).
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price,” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Indeed; for within the Temple of Christ’s Body was the great exchange made to purchase you, with our High Priest saying, “…the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many,” (Matthew 20:28). He purifies the Temple to testify to His own purity, and to show what He has come to do in order to purify each one of us. Let us examine ourselves this Lent, and come to Jesus in Confession. He will not bring the scourge but rather mercy; He will drive out your sins and purify the Temple of His Spirit not with cries of fury but promises of love.