No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Nobody knew violence better than Jesus--including when to use it.

VIOLENCE never solves anything. I don't know where I heard this first-from my mother, tired of untangling her daughters from brawls over toys, or from church or from Mr. Cleaver on TV--but I know it was said early and often enough to make an impression. The kind of playground violence I was used to--not today's horrors of kids with guns but the usual pounding of a defenseless child by some young tough--always filled me with wide-eyed fear and disbelief. Paralyzed by the sight, I would wish for a savior, some one bigger and stronger than me to come and help. An adult would do. Someone who knew better, who understood that violence was not a solution.

But then, of course, we come to adulthood--and discover that adults don't know any better. Our daily papers report the headlines. Our weekly newsmagazines show us the color photos in grisly frankness. Violence may not solve anything, but more and more, it seems, our world finds in its execution the answer it is looking for.

I remember an angry acquaintance justifying his outburst with scripture: "Jesus tore up the temple once!" Indeed, the cleansing of the temple, as we so softly refer to it, is not a gentle act. Our usual nice-guy, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly Jesus is stepping out of character, it would seem, in a remarkable way. The story is told in all four gospels, which is true of only a handful of events, so we know it was a significant recollection in the minds of first generation Christians.

What did it mean to the community that preserved its telling so deliberately? Is it saying that violence can be justified under certain circumstances, if the end is just (or if you're Jesus)? Does it mean that, sometimes, violence does provide a solution?

Because it's the only recorded incident of the Prince of Peace doing a violent thing, it is worth some reflection. Whatever happened to "turning the other cheek" and "answering evil with good?" It's true, Jesus never billed himself as a pacifist--or passive about anything. He is also on record as saying he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword, and that families would be divided on his account. Although the epistle writers will later refer to Christ as our peace, not to mention the reconciliation between heaven and earth, such a mending of the cosmic fabric never promised to bring peace at the mention of his name right now. Although at the name of Jesus "every knee should bend in the heavens and under the heavens," as the famous hymn in Philippians tells us, we know that there are a lot of knees out there not complying.

Still, it is difficult to square our most familiar images of Jesus--good shepherd, compassionate healer, storyteller, lover of sinners, and suffering servant on the cross--with the man who takes a whip of cords into a holy place and beats on men and animals alike until they flee the scene. Would Saint Francis follow this guy? Although the whip does not appear in the three gospels whose stories usually agree (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), they all mention vaguely that Jesus drove out the sellers and animals in some convincing way. Most of the accounts admit that Jesus overturned tables, no doubt causing a bit of destruction to private property. Mark even goes so far as to say that Jesus secured the entire area afterwards, not letting anyone cross through who was "carrying anything," most likely attempting to do business as usual. Even scholars admit that for one man to secure such a large area would have required an astonishing display of energy.

Often we look at the mess Jesus made at the temple and put it down to an attack of piety: Doesn't he say, "My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves?" In most accounts, he does. In these same gospels, the action in the temple occurs late in the game, after an extended ministry that has come to its fulfillment with the triumphant entry into Jerusalem. After taking the city by popular demand, Jesus proceeds to "take" the temple. In this light, the action in the temple looks less like piety and more like an assertion of authority.

After all, it's "my house" he's taking, his own possession he's claiming. Jesus isn't destroying public property but throwing squatters off his land. And because the temple is generally recognized as the dwelling place of God, Jesus is saying that he is one with that Presence. By taking the temple, Jesus is claiming an authority that will surely lead to his death. It is no wonder that his relationship to the temple is one of the issues raised at his trial.

BUT I MENTIONED THAT NOT ALL OF THE GOSPEL ACCOUNTS agree on the placement of this story. In John's Gospel, Jesus does not enter the temple at the end of his ministry but, incredibly, performs this action in Chapter 2. Right after the wedding feast at Cana, where he balks at Mary's suggestion that he begin his mission at once, he makes a beeline for Jerusalem and enters the temple, fashioning that singular whip of cords and creating mayhem with his zeal for God's house. In John's Gospel alone, he is immediately challenged for his actions. "What sign can you show us for doing this?" His audience wants to know, quite frankly, what gives him the right to the authority he is assuming by taking the temple.

Remember, this being Chapter 2 of John, Jesus hasn't done anything yet. He hasn't healed a soul, preached a sermon, told one parable, or performed one miracle except to save a party in Cana that is so far away, news of it could not have preceded him to the city. Unlike the other three versions of this story, in which Jesus the longtime prophet (or troublemaker, depending on your point of view) ascends to Jerusalem at last, John presents a scenario in which an unknown man from the backwoods of Galilee comes to the big city and violently seizes the authority of the temple. If he's not the Christ, at the very least, he has some explaining to do.

His audience demands a sign, and Jesus presents himself. Right here, at the start of his ministry, Jesus claims to be the very sign people are looking for. This upsets the secrecy angle of Mark's whole gospel, in which Jesus comes in as the stealth Messiah, saying "Shhhh!" every time someone guesses who he might be. The way John tells it, Jesus never left any doubt that he was exactly who he came to be.

JESUS, ACCORDING TO JOHN, IS THAT BIG PERSON I ALWAYS wished would show up on the playground and stop evil dead in its tracks. Jesus knew that violence doesn't solve anything, but he wasn't trying to solve anything that day at the temple, like the problem of irreverent activity on holy ground. (It would be illegitimate, for example, to use this gospel to make a point about why we shouldn't have bingo downstairs.) Jesus takes the temple because it's his, and he is demonstrating a clear sign to anyone with eyes to see that God has come to claim what surely doesn't belong to Caesar.

In a way, we've returned to the idea that violence of this sort is never justified unless you're Jesus. That was the question people put to him, and that was the answer he gave. Because he is the Christ--because he was saying so in this action-he had a right to move the whole sad show out to the sidewalk and take his place as the Presence of God in the temple. And because he is the Christ, he also took his other place on the cross and suffered the full extent of human violence in his own person. Nobody knew violence better than Jesus. Nobody had more right to decide when it was appropriate and necessary.

John presents Jesus from the first moment of his story as the cosmic Christ, the Word of God living with God from the beginning, and--make no mistake--"the Word was God." Jesus is the bigger, stronger Someone who comes and saves, from the first verse forward, spelling it out in the most definite and public act any person of his time and culture could perform. You're either with him or against him, from there on out. You can't pick and choose, liking his teachings maybe but not his style.

Author C. S. Lewis once said, "A man who were merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. You can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

ALICE CAMILLE, writer and adjunct faculty at the Franciscan School of Theology at Berkeley, California. She is the author of Seven Last Words (ACTA, 1999) and a collaborator on the homily series, "This Sunday's Scripture," available through Twenty-Third Publications.