Friends, when reading today’s Gospel passage, we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus, at the climax of his life, comes into the temple and makes a ruckus. He was not just being a rabble-rouser. He was rectifying the temple so as to rectify the people Israel.
When pressed for a sign, he says that he will tear the temple down and rebuild it in three days. He was talking, as John tells us, of the temple of his body. He was saying that this old temple, which had served its purpose relatively well, would now give way to a new and definitive temple. His own body, his own person, would be the place where divinity and humanity meet, and hence the place of right praise.