Archpriest Viacheslav Reznikov's reflection on John 2:12–22. Christ is Risen! When everything was accomplished and the Lord was resurrected, the disciples remembered and understood many things that they did not understand before. They also remembered the words that the Lord once said: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They remembered and understood that it was “He [who] was speaking of the temple of His body.” Let us also remember on what occasion these words were spoken.
One day the Lord came to the temple on a feastday “found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.” Then He “made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables.” It is unbearable to see how the house of the Heavenly Father turns into a den of robbers. But still, man is also called to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and here he is driven out with a whip, like cattle. And although we cannot doubt that there is always truth in the works of Jesus, how should we ourselves act in such cases? Some say: “we, too, must take up the whip.” But let’s take a closer look at this event, let’s see what happened before and what happened after it. Just approaching Jerusalem, the Lord saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44). Then, when the Lord had already cleansed the temple, the scribes approached and asked: “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?” The Lord answered: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And so, if the Heavenly Teacher considered it His duty to explain himself, then the student who wants to imitate His zeal should also be ready to answer. Behold, you have taken up the scourge to punish the wicked. But did you cry, like the Lord, about the terrible disasters that they had prepared for themselves both in this and in the future life? And secondly, are you, like the Lord, ready to hand over the temple of your body to desecration and destruction for them? I am afraid that even before these questions we will all find ourselves in the position of those Jews whom the Lord asked, pointing to a caught sinner: “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first” (John 8:7). And we, too, will have to, throwing the whips, go “out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last” that is, those who are smarter, and until “the last” (John 8:9). And the third question will finally crush our pride into dust: can you, like the Lord, re-erect the destroyed temple of your body? No, the scourge is not for our hands, but for our sinful backs. It is clear. But why does the Church remind us of this precisely now, during Easter week, when the time of joy and consolation has come? But in what we read today there is the greatest consolation for us: because the Church does not actually remind us of the scourge - why remind us of it when this scourge, that is, suffering and sorrow, is always either on us or before our eyes. The Church consoles us by showing in whose hand this scourge is. In the hand of the One who not only wept for our sins, not only gave Himself for us, but also miraculously rose from the dead. This is He who stands above everything, and in whose hand is everything and everyone. And how can anything evil, anything imperfect, anything unreasonable come from this hand? And how often in our lives have we thought: trouble has come, a misfortune has happened, but it was the Lord Himself, with His mighty loving hand, who pushed us away from the edge of the hellish abyss. And so, glorifying the Resurrection of Christ, today we say with special feeling the words of the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.” Glorifying the Resurrection of Christ, we with special joy accept and glorify this His saving power over us. “Glory to Thy Resurrection, O Christ, glory to Thy Kingdom, glory to Thy vision, O One Lover of Mankind!” Christ is Risen! Source: |
