Gospel text for 3rd Sunday of Lent 7 March 2021

 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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Gospel text for Sunday 4 March 2018

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     What a great example of market economy in action. The elite Judean religious and political officials are selling access to God and it is very profitable. The way this works is simple. The political and religious authorities conspire to keep something that is very desirable to the people (access to God)  scarce, and as a result the price the people are willing to pay for it goes up. The rich get richer. The powerful gain power. The masses of people sacrifice and fall behind as long as they agree to participate in the exchange. 

For as long as the masses believe the only way to experience the presence of God is to make a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem, the only way to escape the torment of being separate from God is paying a temple tax, the only way to insure access to a happily ever after life is to sacrifice a pair of doves and an unblemished lamb, they will continue to turn their wallets over to the money changers in exchange for their heavenly insurance policies. Until someone like Jesus comes along and shouts, “Stop!” 

God is not in-prisoned in the temple of Jerusalem. God does not require you pay tax. The religious and political elites are not the only ones with access to God. God is with you, each and every one of you, in spirit and in truth. Quit your deal making. You do not have to sacrifice a pair of javelina, fresh fish or pay a temple tax. You do not have to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. All you have to do is stop, be still and know that God is with you right here, right now, in spirit and in truth. The true temple of God is not made of stones and mortar. As it is with Jesus so it is with us. The true temple of God is our bodies.

The question is, how do we inhabit our bodies as the true temples of God? I believe we must dismantle the bricks and mortar of our market economy lives that depend on differentiating those who have from those who have not. We must divest our greed and narcissistic striving. We must dismember the chains of our market driven guardianship. All of this ideology we must allow to crumble like Jesus’ proverbial temple walls so that we too will rise up into new, reasonable, holy lives, being humane, restrained and sane; humble, faithful and moral; awake, alert and alive, so that we embody in spirit and in truth the ubiquitous Presence of God. 

To delve into the way of embodying the presence of God in ordinary life, please listen to the audio book "Practicing the Presence of God" with Brother Lawrence by clicking on image above and to the right.  

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Gospel text for Sunday 8 March 2015

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        Because of the required pilgrimages to the Temple,  Jerusalem was rather like a tourist destination site. Boatloads of enterprising money changers and merchants competing for the pilgrims’ coins. One fee bought a ritual bath to be purified. For a few more coins you could exchange your foreign currency for the shekel tribute required by the Temple. For the right price you could buy a perfect lamb, goat or a pigeon. The fact is, Jerusalem’s economy depended upon the Temple’s thriving market exchange.

No wonder Jesus was ill-tempered when he stepped into the Temple. Instead of finding a house of worship, Jesus walked into the equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange crossed with a farmer’s market! 

Can you almost hear Jesus thinking, “What is going on here? Is God the supreme butcher of a slaughterhouse? Is God the chief executive of a livestock exchange? Do you really think you can trade a couple of goats for security and redemption? Can God’s grace be bought for a pair of doves? Don’t you know that you should bow down before the Lord, not beg and barter to be blessed in exchange for pigeon blood?” 

What could Jesus do but bellow, “No. No. No. You have no idea what you are doing. You  have no idea who God is. Don’t you see, God does not demand your bloody sacrifices. God does not demand you pay a temple tax. God does not even demand you walk halfway across the Judean countryside three times each year in order to prove your devotion to God.”

God is not locked inside temple walls nor constrained by our goodness or ability to sit still and pray or travel to holy places. God is always and everywhere present. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “Destroy this bricks and mortar Temple; it is not where you meet God. All who believe this will know God present in the meat and potatoes of humanity.” 

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