March 8, 2015: The Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 20:1-17 : In those days, God delivered all these commandments. “I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other god’s besides me.”
Psalm 19: Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
1 Corinthians 1:22-25: The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
John 2:13-25: Jesus made a whip of cords and [the moneychangers 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.”
Note: There are optional readings from Year A for use with the RCIA: Exodus 17:3-7 (the water from the rock at Horeb); Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; and John 4:5-42 (the Samaritan woman who asks about Jesus’ “living water.”
March is the Month of St. Joseph.
Diane’s Reflection for March 8, 2015
Spring Cleaning in the Temple
He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out to the temple area, all the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned the tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
“My temple should be house of prayer,” Jesus raged in Jerusalem, wielding a homemade whip like a lightning bolt, kicking over the money changers’ tables and sending the frightened doves flapping and flying. “But you have made it a den of thieves!” You can imagine the chaos that erupted on that day: All the coins scattering across the tables, rolling, bouncing, into the corners (where I’m sure some sharp-eyed people picked them up); all the livestock stomping and squawking and bellowing, and a bunch of very angry merchants bellowing, too, hollering at Jesus: Who the heck does this guy think he is? Call security! The disciples – and I picture them standing in the middle of this riot with their mouths hanging open in disbelief, looking as wide-eyed and foolish as fish, dodging the meaty fists of the merchants, ducking behind other people and underneath tables, and in fact doing everything they can to avoid getting too close to that burning, furious, righteous holy flame that their Rabbi had become. Because when God is on fire, he burns. This is not the little LED light on your keychain that we’re talking about. This is the Burning Bush that Moses saw. This is Krakatoa erupting. This is Jesus kicking out all the jams, because this is Jesus angry.
We tend to be a lot more comfortable with a tamer God, the sort of “gentle Jesus meek and mild,” with the soft blue eyes and pale skin and neatly curled brown hair, the guy who doesn’t look as if he’d swat a mosquito, much less a corporate power. Did you think it would be easy to follow Jesus? Today is very good reminder that it isn’t. As the Gospel tells us, “His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ “ As it most certainly did.
The word “consuming” has various meanings, and we see two of them on display in this story. Jesus is consumed by zeal for his Father. But an awful lot of people in the Temple are consumers, in the sense that we are consumers today – so engaged in the business of buying and selling that they’ve lost track of almost everything else.
I’m not sure that very much has changed in the 2,000 years that have followed that day. Sometimes it seems that buying-and-selling is the only thing we humans know how to do. We are always putting price tags on things – even on things that can’t be bought or sold. We want to own as many things as we can. We feel deprived, if we are not able to buy everything that we want. We want what we want, and want it now, and we really want it to get it as cheap as possible. That includes our own salvation. But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, there is no such thing as cheap grace. This is serious stuff we’re talking about, this Christianity. As Bonhoeffer also said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” And he would know, if anyone would.
It’s not that it’s wrong in itself, to buy or to sell. It’s that it is always wrong to commit idolatry. And human beings are dreadfully prone to this sin – especially, in our culture, to the worship of money and things. It’s interesting that so many lawmakers make a fuss about posting the Ten Commandments in schools and public places. They must assume that the more obvious an object is, the less likely people will pay much attention to it. Because the truth is: If we really started following the Ten Commandments, our current economy would collapse into a little whimpering quivering heap of nothing. Our culture is entirely based on coveting. If you don’t believe me, turn on your computer, or watch some TV. Open a magazine. Visit a big-box store or a mall. Advertising is almost a kind of pornography: All of it is designed to make us want what we don’t have, and what we probably can’t afford and don’t really need. And it works, too. If we suddenly, unexpectedly, decided that we were content with what we already have, the giant global money machine would come to a grinding halt.
After he leaves the Temple, new folks start following Jesus, but not necessarily because they believe in who he is or what he says: They follow because he’s performing signs, he’s in the news, he is the next big exciting thing – because, as we would say today, he’s become a celebrity. Nowadays, we would say that he’s gone “viral.” Everyone would want a selfie taken with him, so they could post it on Facebook. “This is us with that interesting, kinda weird guy we met in Jerusalem …” Jesus, however, has a clear idea of the value of celebrity. Jesus would not trust himself to them, John says, because he knew them all. And John adds, with the kind of wry twinkle that makes you think he must have been personal friends with Jesus: He did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well.
Oh, indeed he did. Indeed he does. He understands us better than we understand ourselves. No one else has seen us human beings as clearly as our savior and brother Jesus did. He saw us then, and he sees us still, as real and naked, weak and hurting -- greedy and grasping but also capable of great love and sacrifice and faithfulness. He says us without our careful masks and disguises. He knows the very hollows of our hurting, hopeful hearts -- he has seen us utterly stripped of all our glittering, foolish, prideful dreams and delusions. Jesus knows us at our worst – and at our best. And because he knows us at our best -- because he knows we can be better people than we are -- he will never be content to let us stay here, at our worst. He knows we can do better, we can be better. And like the Hound of Heaven, he will not give up the chase.
For a long time, I had no idea why religions make such a fuss about idolatry. YOU SHALL NOT HAVE OTHER GODS BEFORE ME, as Yahweh thundered from the mountaintop. Now that I realize how often I’ve been distracted by my own little idols, I think I have a better idea of what the fuss is about. It’s not that the objects we admire or covet are always bad things in themselves. It’s that they tend to get in the way – right between us and God, until we can’t see past their glitter. Golden Calves tend to be bright and shiny, and they also dazzle the eyes and distract the senses. We have to make a conscious effort to find our way around them.
Jesus is right: We have to clean out the temples of our hearts. We have to throw out the moneychangers, and melt down the golden calves. Otherwise, idolatrous coveting will destroy our lives -- and our world. In Jesus’ name. – Diane Sylvain
Lord, take my heart, for I cannot give it to You.
And when You have it, keep it, for I would not take it from You.
And save me in spite of myself, for Christ’s sake.
– Francois Fenelon
Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:
THE FIRST READING: Today’s readings continue the reflections begun last Sunday. Exodus spells out the covenant law which Moses received on Mount Sinai, this episode explaining some of the reasons and significance of Moses’ appearance with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. The covenant law sets out the road we are to follow across life’s desert as we seek to grow into the holiness into which we are baptized in Christ, the new covenant.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 19 provides a glorious affirmation of the gift of the law of the Lord. It is a love song that cherishes the law of the Lord. The “law of the LORD is perfect,” trustworthy, right, clear, pure and true. It enlightens the people and is the source of wisdom. It is more precious than gold. It is the law that forms God’s people and draws them near. It is the law that defines this newly established covenant.
SECOND READING: We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to many, but to those who are called, the wisdom of God. In Luke’s account of the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah converse with Jesus about his “exodus,” the passage through death to life we are preparing to celebrate and live through the Easter sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. To celebrate, never mind participate in, a death, and such a cruel death, seems utterly senseless to anyone who has not known Christ and the power of his Cross. We walk in the light of a wisdom that would be folly without hope in the Resurrection, our ultimate goal.
THE GOSPEL: On the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples caught a glimpse of the fire that burns in the depth of the mystery of Christ. From Moses’ first encounter with God in the bush that burned in Horeb, God accompanied his people through the desert in a fiery cloud that eventually filled the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple. Jesus, in whom the fire still burns, claims to be the new Temple, no longer susceptible to destruction by enemies, even on the Cross, but still and forever present with God’s people.
--Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends (2015 edition.)
Someone has said that what we are is God’s gift to us, and that what we become is our gift to God. It is true that God gives you and me the lumber of our lives, and offers to help us build from it a cathedral of love and praise.
- John Powell, SJ
To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. – Richard Foster
If you want a life of prayer, the way to get it is by praying. – Thomas Merton
The Cleansing of the Temple
This is one of the few incidents described in a similar way in all four gospels. It is full of resonance from the Old Testament. "See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple" (Malachi 3:1), and, the passage quoted by Jesus on the occasion, "Zeal for your house has consumed me" (Psalm 69:9). This act of cleansing the Temple signalled the new age, the time of the Messiah, when God would be worshipped "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23), because God is spirit.
In the subsequent argument with the Jews he changes the focus to another Temple - not the stone Temple from which he had just routed the moneychangers, but instead (as John said), "he was speaking of the temple of his body." The stone Temple would now be obsolete, and in fact it was destroyed in 70 AD. But the new temple, too, would be destroyed: he himself would soon be put to death. Soon there would be no temple of any kind. Worship of the Father would not be limited to any location.
But he had said, "Destroy this temple (my body) and in three days I will raise it up." The Risen Christ is henceforth the only Temple. All prayer and worship is "in Christ Jesus." Christians have no holy city, no temple but the Risen Christ. The early Christians were sometimes accused of being pagans. Churches are not places where God is enclosed. Once Christians began to be supported rather than persecuted by the Roman Empire, they built places of worship on the plan of a pagan 'basilica' (basilicas were used for law courts or for commerce). A church is not a temple; it encloses us, not God. The Irish for a church is teach an phobail, "the people's house".
We are members of Christ's body (1 Corinthians 12:27), and as such we ourselves are the place of prayer and worship. We have no other temple, and so, everywhere we are is our temple. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you" (1 Corinthians 6:19).
This temple - our body, our soul, our being - is in constant need of cleansing, as Jesus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem., "This temple," said Meister Eckhart, "is the human soul, which God has made exactly like Himself, just as we read that the Lord said: 'Let us make humankind in our image and likeness' (Genesis 1:26)…. So like Himself has God made the human soul that nothing else in heaven or on earth, of all the splendid creatures that God has so joyously created, resembles God so much as the human soul." Everything unworthy of God has to be cast out. This is for all times, but it has a special resonance in the season of Lent.
–Donagh O’Shea, from Today’s Good News, the website of the Irish Dominicans
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OUR GOD IS NOT A “TAME” GOD
I've spent the last forty years reading and writing about Jesus. Studying Jesus. Worshipping Jesus. Following Jesus. Or at least trying to, as best I can.
One consequence of all my earnest effort, though, is that I've become a bit too familiar with my subject matter. So familiar that I sometimes put Jesus into a nice-n-neat little box. From there, it isn't hard to fall into Donald McCullough calls "the dangerous illusion of a manageable deity."
John's story about Jesus cleansing the temple warns me about domesticating the deity.
Some people say that if we could just get behind the "Christ of faith" and discover the "Jesus of history," we'd understand him more. I think the historian Garry Wills is right on this point — if we discovered the historical Jesus, he'd actually seem more rather than less mysterious to us. He'd look more like the epistle for this week: "to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks a laughing stock."
We're all inclined to create Jesus in our own image. Thomas Jefferson's scissored-down Jesus was a mild-mannered moralizer guaranteed not to offend Enlightenment rationalism. Warner Sallman's portrait of Jesus — a gentle fellow with flowing blond hair and saccharine blue eyes — looks like he wouldn't hurt a flea.
The "cleansing" of the temple is a delicate euphemism for the only violent act of Jesus that's recorded in the gospels (were there others left unrecorded?). The story was important enough to the early church that all four gospel writers included it. It echoes those other scriptural sound bites in the gospel where people were afraid after seeing Jesus heal someone, where his detractors were afraid to ask him any more questions, and where some disciples were so offended by Jesus that they quit following him. The cleansing of the temple reminds me that there's no "business as usual" with Jesus….
What was Jesus thinking as he wreaked such havoc in the temple that day? …
Whatever the case, Jesus didn't stop there. Things got even stranger. Jesus followed his violent act with an enigmatic saying. When asked to justify himself, Jesus refused; instead of any justification or explanation, he said, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." Long after the event, his disciples interpreted this dark saying as a prediction of his death and resurrection. …
The next day the religious leaders confronted Jesus in those same temple courts: "By what authority are you doing these things?" It's an honest question. We shouldn't be too hard on the religious bureaucrats. … But just as he had the previous day, Jesus answered their question with his own question: was John's baptism truly divine or merely human? This trapped the temple teachers. If they said it was merely human, they feared reprisals from the adoring crowds. And if they admitted that John's baptism was from God, then they had no excuse for not accepting it and repenting. They were caught between fear and disobedience.
Because they didn't answer Jesus' question, he didn't answer theirs, either: "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."
And neither does Jesus answer all of my questions today, many of which are good and honest questions. Why did my mother suffer twenty years of clinical depression? Why do religious zealots burn people alive in cages? Why do millions of children die from drinking dirty water? …
The cleansing of the temple is a stark warning against every false sense of security — against every nice-n-neat box I try to stick Jesus into for my own comfort. Jesus comes to challenge rather than to reinforce my prejudices and illusions. He comes to defamiliarize what religion makes safe and cozy. He never once says, "understand me." He says something far more radical. "Follow me." – Dan Clendenin, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20150302JJ.shtml
FOR LIFTING UNFETTERED PRAYER
(John 2: 13-22)
In a building that is not a building
but the dusty halls of my spirit,
in a heart that is not just a heart
but an intended-to-be-holy temple,
there are sheep and there are cattle
that are not sheep and cattle
but the worries and concerns
and the sorrows of life,
and there are dulled coins and doves
that are not coins and doves
but the tarnished hopes and dreams
of an aging mind,
and they clutter and crowd the courtyard,
cloud the air with their smells and voices,
their noises of stress and hunger:
overpowering the words of prayer.
Saviour, come into the spaces
of this yearning-to-be-holy temple,
come and cleanse this heart of distractions,
help me clear the clutter, the noises,
make it more of a place of listening
open to the mystery of your presence,
a space of restfulness, a quiet center
for lifting unfettered prayer.
Andrew King, -- Andrew King, A Poetic Kind of Place, https://earth2earth.wordpress.com/
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