In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus gets his message across not with a parable or a sermon, but with a whip of cords. He overturns tables, releases animals intended for sacrifice, and disrupts the sacrificial system of the temple. It’s bizarre behavior from someone who loved his enemies and went on to forgive his murderers.

Many have debated the meaning of this Gospel narrative. It has inspired countless artists and is the subject for some of the most vivid Renaissance paintings. It draws attention not just with its drama, but because its political, religious, and spiritual elements speak to the needs of every era. In spite of its complexity, this Gospel reading has one meaning clear on every level: Drive away the distractions that keep you from God!

Many have wondered what exactly was the problem that so incensed Jesus. Some commentators have speculated that money changers and merchants engaged in some kind of corruption, but this seems unlikely. None of the four Gospels mention corruption in their accounts of this episode. In fact, the evangelists are unanimous: the problem was the buying and selling. In this Sunday’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus commands quite clearly: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 

Many modern scholars point out—as, one suspects, did many in Jesus’ day—that the buying and selling of animals was necessary to fulfill the terms of the Covenant. God had commanded the Israelites to make regular animal sacrifices. For example, in Luke 2:22-24, the Blessed Mother offered a sacrifice of doves for her purification after Jesus’ birth, in fulfillment of the commandment in Leviticus 12:1-4. Mary likely purchased the doves from exactly the kind of vendor whose trade her son had now disrupted.

Nowhere in all the details of Israel’s Law, however, is the buying and selling of animals an expected part of divine worship. In fact, the books of the Law seem to expect that every Israelite family has its own flocks and herds from which the sacrificial animals will come. A sacrificial animal was born on the family farm, grazed in the family’s pastures, was tended by one’s own children and grandchildren, and journeyed with the family on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As an offering, the animal symbolized wealth, land, labor, and family. 

By Jesus’ day, however, this was only rarely the case. In his century, most Israelites lived as day laborers on estates owned by absentee Roman landowners or they lived in cities and worked trades and mercantile occupations. Almost everyone, including those engaged in agriculture, received cash wages for their labor. Nonetheless, the laws of sacrifice had not changed; fulfilling the requirements of the law thus required the purchase of animals at the temple gates. Roman coins, with their dedication to the goddess Roma a declaration of Caesar’s divinity, were blasphemous objects that could not be brought into the Jerusalem Temple. Thus, any offering in the temple required one first to purchase special temple coins outside the gate before entering and then purchasing an animal for sacrifice.

It was not the corruption of the moneychangers and merchants, but the need for them at all that irritated Jesus. He found it grotesque that so many could profit from the religious obligations of others. Instead of composing one’s heart for prayer, entrance to the temple involved shouting and bargaining. Instead of offering an animal that represented the whole self, one offered the result of a marketplace transaction.

This reality did not long survive Jesus. Around 40 years after his death and resurrection, the Romans permanently destroyed the Jerusalem temple. The genius of the early Church was to see in this reading something larger than the economics and politics of Jesus’ day. Like their Israelite forebears, Christians trying to worship righteously can fall prey to schemes of exploitation and generate their own distractions that alienate them from God.

If a challenge lies in this Sunday’s readings it is to take Jesus’ command, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace,” and apply it to our lives. The Father’s house is anywhere a Christian calls on the Trinity in prayer. In every such place, Christians can find ways to ignore the God they claim to worship or distort their attention to the divine presence. As we continue our journey through Lent, we need to let Jesus cleanse the temple of our hearts, with a whip of cords, if necessary. In a few weeks we will then approach the risen Christ with a heart ready to love.