From today’s First Scripture reading from the prophet Jeremiah we read: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will place my law within then and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” What makes this covenant new is not its content because God still speaks of my law, but the newness of the covenant refers to the place where it can be found. The old covenant was associated with commandments written in stone. Instead of giving them rules to follow, God wants to infuse their hearts with the fire of divine love. When the covenant is scripted in their hearts, they will share the very passion of God. They will experience the presence and the forgiveness of God written in their hearts. They would be a people no longer commanded by external standards, but God’s love and God’s law is to found with them. By faithfulness to God’s covenant that is within, we become our best selves, the people we are called to be. This Letter to the Hebrews points to the mystery of Jesus within us and also the shocking truth that “Jesus learned obedience through suffering.” Jesus had to struggle to live his vocation. As a man Jesus become conscious of fulfilling his Father’s will through suffering, the cross, and the crucifixion. Jesus revealed God’s merciful love for us and became the source of eternal salvation to all who believing in Him. Jesus shocks us with the paradox he is about to embrace: death on a cross. Jesus reveals God as the One who empties his heart into the world even as it rejects the divine offer of reconciliation. God’s unconditional love transforms enemies into friends, cleanses the heart of selfishness and restores the center of balance to a world disjointed and disoriented by human self-centeredness.
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. But His behavior does not come from a rush of blood to the head, but from zeal for His Father’s house. 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? esus is clear about “His Father’s house” being a place of prayer and covenant, a place where God dwells. 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? Do we walk our talk in witnessing to the love of the compassionate Jesus? 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.