Jesus and the Temple

Jesus scandalised the Pharisees by eating with tax collectors and sinners, writes Cathal Barry

Like the prophets before him, Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the Temple in Jerusalem. It was in the Temple that Joseph and Mary presented him 40 days after his birth. At the age of 12, he decided to remain in the Temple to remind his parents that he must be about his Father’s business.

He went there each year during his hidden life at least for Passover. His public ministry itself was patterned by his pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts.

Jesus went up to the Temple as the privileged place of encounter with God. For him, the Temple was the dwelling of his Father, a house of prayer, and he was angered that its outer court had become a place of commerce. He drove merchants out of it because of jealous love for his Father. After his Resurrection his apostles retained their reverence for the Temple.

On the threshold of his Passion, Jesus announced the coming destruction of the building, of which there would not remain “one stone upon another” (Mark 13:2). By doing so, the Church holds that he announced a sign of the last days, which were to begin with his own Passover. But this prophecy would be distorted in its telling by false witnesses during his interrogation at the high priest’s house, and would be thrown back at him as an insult when he was nailed to the cross (Mk 14:57-58).

Temple

Far from having been hostile to the Temple, where he gave the essential part of his teaching, Jesus was willing to pay the Temple tax, associating with him Peter who he had just made the foundation of his future Church. He even identified himself with the Temple by presenting himself as God’s definitive dwelling-place among men.Therefore his being put to bodily death signified the destruction of the Temple, which would manifest the dawning of a new age in the history of salvation: “The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (Jn 4:21).

The Church teaches that if the Law and the Jerusalem Temple could be occasions of opposition to Jesus by Israel’s religious authorities, his role in the redemption of sins, the divine work par excellence, was the true stumbling-block for them.

Jesus scandalised the Pharisees by eating with tax collectors and sinners. Against those among them “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others”, Jesus affirmed: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). He went further by proclaiming before the Pharisees that, since sin is universal, those who pretend not to need salvation are blind to themselves.

Jesus gave scandal above all when he identified his merciful conduct toward sinners with God’s own attitude toward them. The Catechism notes he went so far as to hint that by sharing the table of sinners he was admitting them to the messianic banquet.