3rd Sunday of Lent March 7-8, 2015

Have you ever had such a bad day that you have reached your limit and take no more? Someone or something has thrown you off your game and you are stewing to yourself.

Jesus had such a day – one day in Jerusalem. He reached his limit and blew. He threw the money changers out of the temple. He made a whip out of cords and drove them out of the temple area and overturned their tables and said: “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house, a marketplace.

Today’s Scriptures invite us to consider the anger that comes from an all-loving God. We are not used to seeing this side of Jesus. It would seem that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, had lost his cool and is acting out of anger. But His behavior does not come from a rush of blood to the head, but from zeal for His Father’s house.

This gospel passage raises questions about anger. Most of us were taught that anger is a negative emotion and therefore wrong. At our best, we are to count to ten and hope the anger in us subsides a bit.

Jesus is raising the question of justifiable anger. When is it ok to say enough is enough, and we need to stand up for what is right.

Does our smiling and compassionate Pope Francis give us an example and challenge with considerable passion to share what we have with those in need. With some anger he speaks about the inequality of income between the rich and the poor.
What do we do with our own anger? Is it part of our spirituality or is the result of a lack of spirituality? The saying: he is an angry young man. This usually the person is a bit off-center.

Now mind you many times our anger throws us off center and there is nothing virtuous about that, but on the other hand there is appropriate and justifiable anger that should not be swept under the rug.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus literally upsets the temple customs of his day and then invites the people around Him to change their idea of where God’s true dwelling is soon to be found. Rather than a holy place of prayerful encounter with God, the temple precincts had begun to resemble a marketplace, and Jesus’ actions registered loudly and clearly as a prophetic protest against the exploitation of the temple and the people of Israel. Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple. Jesus is clear about “His Father’s house” being a place of prayer and covenant, a place where God dwells.

As this Gospel is proclaimed in our hearing, we are prompted to wonder what the returning Jesus may find needs cleansing or replacing in our personal spirituality and in our celebration of Sunday Eucharist. What attitudes, preoccupations, or desires do you bring to your prayer and life that Christ would “drive out” if you would let him?

In other words, what needs to be driven out of your inner temple for you to have zeal for God? From what do you need to repent in this Lenten season? As we pray over the Gospel, can we listen to the echo of the confrontation of Jesus that addresses the temples of our present day lives? Who or what are the moneychangers in your Temple? Is it greed, an excessive preoccupation with our possessions, is it the way we deal with the setbacks in our life, can we let go of an anger we feel toward a particular person, is it our inability to focus on what is really important in our life?

Jesus purified the Temple. During Lent He invites us to purify the temples of our hearts.

What kind of cleansing does Jesus wish in do in the celebration of our Sunday Eucharist?
Perhaps Jesus would suggest there is room for improvement in having more lector training, would he suggest that the homilists are a bit long winded at times, or the choir music could be reviewed and improved?

Or would Jesus be convicted that there are bigger fish to fry in evaluating of our liturgies?

Would he point out the discrepancies between the prayers we say and the way we live our life? Do we walk our talk in witnessing to the love of the compassionate Jesus? He might ask if we come together to be entertained or to be edified. “Father I don’t get anything out of Mass.” Should our focus be on our desire to give praise and thanks to our God? Would he see a direct connection between God’s predilection for the poor and our own? Would he see us translating this concern for the poor into generous giving and authentic service toward God’s least ones? This needs to be the defining characteristic of ourselves as a Eucharistic community.

But the dramatic action of Jesus – driving out the merchants and moneychangers – is not the most shocking feature of this Sunday’s Gospel. Not only does Jesus cleanse the Temple, he declares that he himself replaces it. The place of God’s presence among His people is not a building but ‘the temple of his body.’ In Jesus we encounter the living God. The real priority of our lives is our covenant relationship with God. Our relationship with God is measured by how well we pattern our lives after Jesus in dying to ourselves for the good of others so that we might rise with him. As believers and followers of Jesus our own bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit. God dwells not primarily in this building, but rather in us who are the living Temples of the Spirit of Jesus. May we always reverence the presence of Christ that we experience in our sharing with one another.