Our peacemaking needs to include other creatures.

In his painting “Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple” (1626), Rembrandt depicted an angry, scowling Jesus with a raised whip. The whip winds into the background, becoming fuzzy from rapid movement as Jesus prepares to strike. In the foreground, an old woman scampers out of his way while some “money changers” try to protect their faces from Jesus’ lash. “Zeal” consumed Jesus, and zeal translates into uncontrolled violence. Rembrandt’s painting illustrates the dominant way this incident from Jesus’ life has been used in Christian history.

From just war to the Crusades to executing heretics, the story of Jesus’ action in the temple has fueled violence and killing. Fear, intimidation and the threat of bodily harm are acceptable for Christians so long as it serves a righteous cause.

Yet portrayals of Jesus raging through the temple haven’t always held sway. For example, in the late fourth century, bishops debated about the passage during a synod at Constantinople. A bishop named Rabbula had to answer for hitting priests. In his own defense, Rabbula said that Jesus had hit people in the temple.

In response, Theodore of Mopsuestia denied that Jesus hit any person according to the text in John 2, stating, “Our Lord did not do that; he only spoke words to the people, saying, ‘Take that from here,’ and overturned the tables. But he drove out the bulls and sheep with the blows of his whip” (Cause de la fondation des ecoles in Patrologia Orientalis 4, 1908, my translation from the French). For Theodore, and many other early Christians, Jesus clearly taught peace, and the temple incident did not undercut his nonviolence.

Modern pacifist readings of John 2 follow Theodore’s general outline: Jesus uses his weapon on the sheep and cattle not on the human beings. For instance, this is how John Howard Yoder argued in his famous book The Politics of Jesus. Moreover, Yoder and other modern scholars add, Jesus did not engage in a fit of temple road rage but a nonviolent protest.

Therefore, hitting other people at that kind of demonstration was off limits. Indeed the Greek syntax undeniably states that Jesus used the whip to drive out both the sheep and the oxen and rules out that he used his whip on any human. Modern translations like the New Revised Standard Version correctly translate the passage: “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle” (John 2:15).

However, this clarification is cold comfort to the nonhuman animals in this scene, especially if we imagine Jesus’ whip to have been a weapon designed to harm others, as Rembrandt’s painting suggests.

Instead of a tool fashioned to inflict suffering, the narrative suggests that Jesus made a makeshift instrument for moving the animals. The materials he had available would have been the reeds on which the animals lay and the cords with which they were tied.
This implies that his whip was more like a broom than a slaughterhouse cattle prod.

Additionally, many scholars have noted that Jesus’ action was one of liberation, not violence, as he literally spares the sheep and oxen, at least temporarily, from their gruesome fate. Jesuit peacemaker John Dear states that “with such spectacular nonviolence, one cannot imagine Jesus even striking the poor animals.

Indeed, he was liberating them from their impending execution” (“Didn’t Jesus Overturn Tables and Chase People Out of the Temple?” in A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Nonviolence, edited by Tripp York and Justin Barringer, Cascade Books, 2012).

Ultimately, Jesus’ own death later in the story ends animal sacrifice. If there is one creature Jesus stands for in the Gospel narratives it is the nonhuman animals that would have been put to death during ritual sacrifice. So if Jesus’ action was a nonviolent protest against the sacrificial system and economic abuses, those to whom he first gives respite are nonhuman animals.

The strongest challenge to the idea that Jesus threw an unrestrained tantrum, however, is how he treats the doves. The Gospel of John says that after fashioning his broom to get the animals moving out the door, Jesus began turning over tables and pouring out the vendor’s money purses. But suddenly Jesus stopped and told the dove-sellers to take their caged birds out of the temple.

A person who was blind with rage and who did not much care for nonhuman creatures would have knocked the caged birds over like the tables and money jars. If the birds didn’t matter any more than metal coins or wooden tables, then Jesus would have overturned their cages, sending them fluttering in panic while banging against a falling cage. Here Jesus takes deliberate care not to overturn the bird cages. He does not put them through further distress but protects them. He pauses in the middle of his nonviolent demonstration to act graciously toward these little creatures.

What lessons can we modern readers draw from this temple story if we pay attention to the way Jesus treated the nonhuman animals? First, Christian pacifists need to expand our view of what nonviolence means. The most influential pacifist commentators on the passage, such as Yoder, have drawn numerous lessons against war, policing and other forms of human-on-human violence. That we don’ need to stop injustice with a greater force of arms seems to be the general pacifist consensus based on the passage. But Jesus’ action had implications for the other creatures in the story as well.

War, for instance, kills humans and other animals alike. War is an ecological disaster, a threat to all life, including humans. The U.S. military kills and tortures hundreds of thousands of primates, dogs, cats, goats, pigs and other animals each year in weapons tests. Armies across the globe often hunker down in dense forests and jungles, threatening endangered species like the mountain gorillas in the Congo.

The merchants in this story bred and raised the nonhuman creatures for their monetary value. The animals were mere commodities. They were meat. They were sacrificial victims. They were not God’s good creatures with whom we have a covenantal relationship and obligation to serve and help flourish.

What would happen if we started naming other creatures in ways that does not see them as merchandise but as God’s beloved creations? How would our relationship to them change if we saw them as fellow creatures, kinfolk and friends on this journey of life, rather than instruments for our disposal?

What if our nonviolent actions took into account other creatures? In the past century, nonviolent direct action has caused empires to crumble, unjust regimes to change course and given new meaning to Christian discipleship.

Across the denominational divides, peacemaking has taken hold as a respectable and essential activity for Christians. Yet rarely have we noticed that some of the most influential nonviolent activists have held a different relationship to nonhuman animals from the dominant culture. Catholic farm worker activist Cesar Chavez, for example, expanded his nonviolence to include all animals and refused to eat them.

Chavez’s descendants, Christine Chavez and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, continue their grandfather’s work organizing migrant workers and also see animal activism as an essential part of nonviolence. Likewise, Martin Luther King Jr.’s son, Dexter Scott King, who is president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, said that becoming vegan is the logical extension of his father’s nonviolent view.

Coretta Scott King agreed, becoming vegan for the final decade of her life. Father John Dear has also done work on behalf of other animals, not only becoming vegetarian but writing on their behalf as well.

Jesus deliberately went into the temple to stage a symbolic action of protest against the institutional forces that not only exploited people’s religious sensibilities and economic status but killed thousands of creatures every year.

He saved their lives and made sure he did not harm them in the process of working for peace and justice.

When Mennonites think of imitating Jesus, we might think about how we can pause as well and consider the creatures that too often go unnoticed.