Dr. Augustine Sokolovski
In the Orthodox tradition, Bright Week—that is, the days from Monday through Saturday following Easter—symbolically represents a single day. During the Liturgy, a special Gospel reading is prescribed for each day; except on Tuesday, this is always the Gospel of John, the content of which—whether an event or a saying of the Lord Jesus—is celebrated by the Church.
On Good Friday, during the Liturgy, the seventh pericope from the Gospel of John, chapter 2, verses 12–22, is read; it recounts Jesus’ expulsion of the merchants from the Temple in Jerusalem. “Making a whip of cords, Jesus drove them all out of the temple, along with the sheep and the oxen; and he scattered the money of the money-changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15).
Viewed from the ordinary perspective of the Lord’s earthly life, the expulsion of the merchants from the Temple is one of the most challenging passages in the Gospel to interpret. It raises many questions, both among believers and among those far removed from Christianity, regarding whether it is permissible at all, by analogy with the Temple in Jerusalem, to sell anything in churches, to set prices for religious services and other details, to the point of bewilderment regarding how the Lord was angry with the merchants; and if He truly did get angry, how can we imitate Him, and can human anger ever be blameless and sinless? This is an edifying perspective. The ancient ascetic Fathers reflected with astonishing psychological depth on the possibility of dispassionate anger directed against one’s own passions and demons.
During the Paschal season, from Easter to Pentecost, and especially during Bright Week, the Church completely transforms this perspective. Instead of being linear, sequential, and chronological, it becomes asymmetrical, paradoxical, and diachronic, taking on the characteristics of messianic time. The deeds and words of Jesus, performed during his earthly life, are reinterpreted by believers as definitive and unquestionable testimony to the Risen One. This is the Paschal perspective. The episode of the expulsion of the merchants from the Temple is particularly suited to such a reading.
“I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple,” is how the Book of Revelation describes the Heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21:22). The Lord who drives the merchants out of the Temple is the Risen Lord and the Lord of the Apocalypse. He is the Judge and King, coming in glory. He will demand an account of all earthly affairs from His Church, as the Community of Believers, in the glory of the Second Coming. The account of the expulsion of the merchants is a prophetic reading. Christ is risen!