Sunday the 3rd of March 2024 - The Third Sunday of Lent

Exodus 20:1-17/ Psalm 18(19)/1 Corinthians 1:22-25/John 2:13-25

The gospel today is the dramatic account of Jesus cleansing the temple. It had become practice for traders to sell the animals used as offerings to God within the precincts of the temple. Joining them were the money changers who collected the church taxes and possibly acted as bankers for the traders and customers. It is tempting to think that Jesus lost his temper and displayed anger and violence towards the traders. This would be a very uncharacteristic way for Jesus to behave and not what we would expect from a loving, forgiving God. What Jesus is doing in the temple is what he is doing throughout his earthly life, he is fulfilling the scriptures and giving signs that indicate clearly his true being. The cleansing or purification of the temple was predicted in scripture as a sign of the age of the Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah and has authority to clear the temple of the commercialism that had invaded it. As predicted Jesus shows that his zeal, his passion, for the house of God, devoured him.

What Jesus provoked from his deliberate and controlled behaviour in the temple is a demand for a sign to justify his actions. This led directly to him claiming himself to be the temple, a temple that the people will destroy, and he will raise up again in three days. Jesus superseded the physical temple building with his own body which became the new temple at the resurrection. The people could not see this at the time and even after Jesus rose from the dead it was not clear to those who could not see past the death of Jesus on the cross. As pointed out in the second reading, to the Jews, who demanded the signs of miracles, the cross was an obstacle they could not get over and to the Greeks, who searched for wisdom, it appeared to be madness.

In Jesus we have a new temple and a new law. Jesus is the new temple, not tied to a place and time but a person who can be found anytime anywhere. In the first reading we are presented with the Ten Commandments, a set of laws set down by God for the people he had liberated and claimed as his own. They are a set of precepts that direct people in their behaviour towards God and towards each other and themselves. Jesus, during his sermon on the mount, went further than the limitations of the Ten Commandments. He did not alter or abolish any of them but gave a clear set of guidelines on how to live a Christian life.

The Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus provide humanity with a solid set of ethical guidelines that would, if followed, lead to a loving, tolerant and forgiving world, a world of peace and harmony. Where we encounter evil, conflict, or injustice one or more of these basic principals of good living will have been abandoned. The first of the Ten Commandments refer to the relationship between us and God. Everything stems from this relationship and without it the meaning and purpose of the commandments gets lost and confused. The modern world today is increasingly trying to drive God out of its realm. God is substituted for other things, including power, wealth, celebrity, selfishness and so on. In driving God out of life, the ethical and moral principles that flow from the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus lose their anchor and begin to drift. Respect for God is diminished along with respect for his creation. Humans become the new gods claiming sovereignty over creation and thereby gradually losing respect for it along with the respect for human life itself. Money and power take on a new and powerful perspective even to the point that we are all counted by our financial value to society. If deemed an inconvenience or too expensive we can be disposed of.

Paul points out that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and his weakness is stronger than human strength. Of course, God has no foolishness or weakness which brings our foolishness and weakness even more into focus. Jesus is the model for our Christian life, he displays the power demanded by the Jews and the wisdom searched for by the Greeks. The Christian, through the Holy Spirit, can see past the foolishness of the Cross to the triumph of the resurrection. We do not need a building to find God, we find him in the resurrected Jesus who is the new temple destroyed and rebuilt in three days. Yes, we have our church buildings to give us shelter when we gather as a community to worship God and to provide a place for the Blessed Sacrament to be reposed, but our church is to be found in our community, every second of every day of every week, year, and century.

In our time, since the resurrection, we have a new way of living with a new set of values. Jesus is the divine presence of God amongst us, not tied to a physical location and certain limited times. In Jesus, God is our temple in which he is present to us throughout our lives not confined to mere buildings. In this time of Lent, we can focus on the cross, on how our sins have been paid for, and how the resurrected Jesus is the new temple. We need to find ways of making Jesus present outside of the confines of our buildings. To open up the community of faith, which is the church, the body of Christ, to all those who are in such need of God’s presence in their lives.

God Bless Brendan.