Is Selling Wares in the Church Sinful?

Gospel
15 March 2009
Third Sunday of Lent
Jn 2:13-25

Since the Passover of the Jews was near,
Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
as well as the money changers seated there.
He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money changers
and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
“Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
“What sign can you show us for doing this?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews said,
“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.

While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,
many began to believe in his name
when they saw the signs he was doing.
But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
He himself understood it well.

***

Reflection by Lester C. Yee

This violent outrage of Jesus inside the Temple might strike some sampaguita vendors and others who earn an honest living by selling food and religious items in the vicinity of the Church. This may strike some people as Jesus preferring a life of poverty here on Earth to look forward to a life in heaven. Some clarification is needed prior to a meaningful reflection.

The question one would first pose is what these money changers were doing in the Temple. These money-changers who Jesus was particularly angry with have colluded with the Pharisees and the other vendors, making a business of changing the unclean money of the poor people to clean money which can be used to buy sacrifices needed for the offerings. These vendors however will not accept unchanged and therefore, “unclean” money. Moreover, people were not allowed to bring their own sacrifices. Rather, they had to buy from the Temple. The Temple authorities earn from these vendors through bribes in the form of donations or protection money.

So, imagine if you are a poor couple needing to offer a sacrifice because of accidental contact with a dead pet which makes you unclean in Jewish law. So let’s say you have to offer a sacrifice of a turtledove so make you clean again. A turtledove outside the Temple just costs 25 pesos but you well know that the Temple authorities have branded animals coming from outside the Temple are unclean and thus. Not worthy of being offered to God. So you go to the Temple and you find out that the turtledove there costs 60 pesos. You are about to pay the vendor when he tells you to have your money changed first. You go to the money changer and find out that one peso of clean Temple money costs 5 pesos. So the turtledove you need to offer costs 300 pesos all in all. So you go away cleansed and hungry for the rest of the week or you feel unclean because you can’t afford the sacrifice.

This is the type of social injustice that Jesus aimed to dismantle. These are oppressive towards the least of society, dealing death in spirit and life towards those who have none. The essence of business here becomes profit and no longer service. Thus, there is sin, oppression and death.