Second Sunday after the Epiphany (Year 4, NL)

The psalms of ascent press hard against the norms of our bootstrap culture.

Churches often live in an uneasy relationship with their property.

Whatever Jesus is attacking, it isn’t the practices of the people coming to the temple to worship.

“Each of the typical approaches has problems. The best solution would be to change the lectionary.”

Who are the other enraged voices crying out from the temple with Christ? 

As Jesus overturns the tables, I imagine John in the corner, watching and taking it all down.

The biblical foundation for a holy practice

It’s time to stop the biggest lenders to the fossil fuel industry.

Was the familiar God I knew as a preacher's kid the same one who inspired such greatness?

Jesus isn't just reforming temple practices.

Black people can eat at most lunch counters and travel across state lines without being consigned to the back of the bus. But the fundamental right to life continues to be haunted by white supremacy.

It’s hard to deny these little echoes of the synoptics which John reshapes for his own dramatic purposes. It seems narratively wrong for Jesus to cleanse the temple at the beginning of his ministry rather than at the climactic end. It makes more sense if one hears Luke in the background ever so slightly—Jesus’ claiming of the temple as his father’s house and his identity as the Son. Here in John, he has just performed a miracle at his mother’s behest, bringing spirit into the most fleshly event of human life. Now he goes to what is supposedly a spiritual place and finds only flesh. No wonder he is annoyed.

When the disciples try to explain Jesus’ wrath, they quote Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for your house has consumed me.” John neglects to include the verse just before it, however.

In the synoptic accounts of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus is being provocative. In John, he is provoked.