John 2:13-22 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Reflection It was this time last year, as the Passover of the Jews was near and Christians were fast approaching Holy Week that the coronavirus erupted in the United States and across the globe. Much like Jesus’ whip of cords wrecking havoc with the commerce and routines of temple life, Covid-19 burst onto the scene overturning the tables of our personal, social, political and religious lives.
Here we are, one year later, standing in the ruins of the way things used to be with rampant disease, raging hunger, homelessness, helplessness, dislocation and virulent fear masking itself at every corner. Even if we have managed to carve out a comfortable cave for ourself in the midst of all of this turmoil, the unimpeded commerce of our lives has been curbed.
This, I believe, adds substantial weight to Jesus’ words. “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace!” The truth is, much like our ancestors we strive to stamp certainty onto our fragile lives by identifying with external expressions of piety and fashioning false gods that we can see and hold onto. But woe to us who try to secure our lives with paper decrees, hallowed halls and hollow deities. Woe to us who set our selves up to be scammed and seduced. Woe to us who put our faith and fealty in institutions and possessions that tempt and pervert us. Still, there is a way beyond this.
This being Lent, the season of self examination, it is time for us to stop, look into candor’s mirror and admit we look much like the Israelites who when tired of waiting for Moses to return from his meeting with God on Mount Sinai, forged their infamous golden calf and worshipped it. It behooves us to ask ourselves, what are our gods? jewelry? juicy 401K? multiple homes? comfortable retirement? youth? vacations? cars? career? collections of everything from old vinyls to books, boots or art? It is time to blow the smoke off of our mirrors and be honest with our selves.
This is a fundamental message of our year living with Covid. The zeal that we have shown for the houses built, portfolios secured, positions attained, privileges gained, traditions maintained, our zeal for our social, political and religious institutions has imprisoned us. Sequestered within the walls of our own construction we are separated from the trustworthiness of God.
Our passion, our ardor, our zeal is meant to be for the One, Holy and Living God. God of our ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Joseph. God of Moses that is forged in the mystery of our hearts and can never be captured in anything fashioned by our hands. If only we would order our lives according to the wisdom that must have informed Jesus heart. Please hear in the words of Deuteronomy, the Second Law of the Hebrew Testament, words that tradition tells us were spoken by Moses to Israel, words that anchor Jesus’ life and ministry in God.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. “ Deut 6.4-6
How easily our mouths move to make these words, words spoken six hundred years before the current era and drawn from sources centuries older than that, ageless words straining to explain the meaning of the frequent disasters met upon humanity. Yes, we can say these words but when it comes to acting on them we tend to be weak willed and easily seduced by specious promises of stability. Three thousand years later we still wrestle with waiting at the edge of uncertainty and strain to recover the familiar. We do not notice our hardening hearts until Jesus’ words shatter us. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” We protest. “What? Destroy this temple? this institution? this lifestyle? this comfortable rut? It has taken forever to construct and it is all that we know.”
Perhaps today Jesus would elaborate. “Your hearts desire will never be sated by the bricks and mortar of your establishments. Your passion, your ardor, your zeal is misplaced.” And there we have it.
The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Our zeal for the things of this life is misplaced (which is not to say we cannot appreciate and care for them). But the passion, the ardor, the zeal of our hearts is meant to be directed toward and absorbed in God and God alone. Our thoughts, feelings, attentions and affections; all that we say and all that we do are meant to begin, continue and end in the One, Holy and Living God.
It is not easy to watch the tables of our personal, social, political and religious lives turned upside down but until we let what is impermanent die we will not rise in the trustworthiness of the Lord, our God, the only One.
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