Third Sunday in Lent, March 7, 2021

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Jesus’ righteous anger at the desecration in his Father’s house, our anger at the same

John 2:13–25

Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me.

At this the Jews answered and said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.

While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well.

Music Meditations

Opening Prayer

Excerpted from a Jewish prayer in A Lent Sourcebook from LTP Publications

Master of life and Lord of Lords, we do not rely on our own good deeds, but on your great mercy as we lay our need before you. Lord, hear! Lord, pardon! Lord, listen and act! What are we? What is our life? What is our love? What is our justice? What is our success? What is our endurance? What is our power? To you, most of our actions are pointless and daily life is shallow. Even our superiority over the beasts nothing… for everything is trivial except the pure soul which must one day give its account and reckoning before the judgement of your glory. Lord, hear! Lord, pardon!

Companions for the Journey

From “First Impressions” 2015, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:

The first three gospels place the “cleansing of the Temple” at the end of Jesus’ ministry. But John has it at the beginning. Obviously these writers weren’t interested in chronology, but theology, the meaning of the narrative for us. In today’s passage John shows Jesus fulfilling the prophetic hopes of the prophets. Malachi (3:14) and Zechariah (14:1–21) who had anticipated the messianic age when God would come “suddenly” into the Temple to “purify and cleanse it.” John is setting up the rest of his narrative. Jesus’ ministry will overturn the religious laws and drive out greed, hypocrisy and legalism in religious practice. He was going to establish a new and holy temple—the temple of his body—where God and humanity would enter into a new relationship. The scene takes place in the outer courts of the Gentiles. That’s where a variety of animals were sold for the Passover feast to pilgrims who had traveled a distance. The moneychangers would exchange foreign coins for the acceptable Temple ones. They were known to defraud people in the exchange. In a subtle touch by John, Jesus shows a milder attitude towards the sellers of doves which were the offerings of the poor. Perhaps he remembered his own parents only being able to afford doves when they went to the temple to offer sacrifice.

Prophets like Jeremiah and Zachariah had warned against corrupting the Temple. They envisioned a purified, ideal Temple, where there would be no commerce. This purified Temple would have open access to all peoples. Just previous to this passage Jesus replaced water with wine at Cana. Now he is replacing the Temple with himself. Where will people go for a full and welcome reception by God? To Jesus, whose resurrected body will be that new temple.

Jesus has not eliminated cult and worship. We are a sacramental church, but we need him to cleanse our worship. Later in the gospel Jesus will again be asked for a sign and he will offer himself as living bread, the meal through which we share in his resurrection (6:30ff). When we eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord we are aware of our need for forgiveness and the cleansing Jesus’ resurrected body brings to us. The risen Lord enters our lives, forgives our sins, cleansing us so that we can give fitting worship to our God. We become a cleansed temple. Through Jesus, the “temple raised up” in three days, we have been given forgiveness and freedom. We don’t receive them because we have followed detailed and perfect rituals, but through the gift we have received in Christ.

Jesus doesn’t just drive out the merchants and cleanse the temple. John tells us that it was preparation time for Passover. Another, more perfect Passover sacrifice is being prepared and Jesus’ death will replace the former sacrifices offered in God’s house.

Jesus’ angry actions might make some of us uncomfortable. Someone described the Jesus depicted in today’s story as “the muscular Jesus.” Sometimes the gentle images of Jesus risk making him seem too soft. But today’s depiction shows us how the wild and convicted Jesus could ruffle the religious niceties of the Temple staff and cause the Romans to begin to wonder about this brash prophet from up north. The Jesus we heard about a few weeks ago who reached out and touched the leper, is the same one who wrestled with Satan in the desert and won. This is also the Jesus who will accept and bear his cross with the same zeal for God he shows us in today’s gospel. Perhaps we do meet today “the muscular Jesus.” What was it, besides the merchants’ dishonest practices, that stirred Jesus’ anger? Perhaps it meant that the Temple wasn’t open equally to all people. What was wrong with the coinage of foreigners? Why couldn’t foreigners and their money also praise God in the same way the local Jewish population did? Doesn’t that challenge the openness and hospitality of our places of worship? Maybe we lack “zeal” for our own temple, our parish church, and attend worship merely to receive. Do we consider how we might serve and promote the gospel through our service as ministers at the altar and as representatives of our “temple” to the community? According to our gifts, our goal should be to make our “house of prayer” a welcome place for all peoples, as the zealous Jesus desires.

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Zeal for your house will consume me

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

  • Does the thought of an angry Jesus make me uncomfortable?
  • There were two issues that might have angered Jesus as he saw what was going on in the temple precincts that day. First, people were using a holy, sacred place for commerce, desecrating it for profit; in addition, the prices charged for the sacrificial animals and the exchange rate to purchase coins acceptable in the temple were excessive, and very burdensome for the poor. Which do you think angered Jesus more?
  • It takes time to make a whip of cords. What does that say about Jesus’ reaction to the goings-on in the temple precincts?
  • Are people measured by what angers them?
  • What makes me angry? Was my anger appropriate? When does anger become sinful?
    What disgusts me? Can disgust be sinful?
  • How often is my anger the result of someone violating my air space, my rights?
    How often is my anger the result of mistreatment of others, such as the poor or the homeless?
  • What things anger me because I think they anger God?
    What things SHOULD anger me because I think they anger God?
    What things anger me that do not, upon reflection, necessarily anger God?
  • What is righteous indignation?
    In what instances do I express righteous indignation?
    How do I do so?
    Are these instances personal affronts or insults to me and mine, or are they caused by persons or situations endemic to our culture?
  • What is the connection between anger and violence?
    Am I bothered by Jesus’ violent reaction in the temple?
  • How hard is it to deal with anger appropriately?
  • Have we ever known of churches or other entities that made a profit on people’s piety?
    What about the commercial aspects of many of our sacraments and Catholic funerals?
  • Should personal/corporate profit and religion mix?
  • When I see people exploiting others, does it make me angry?
    Can I think of any men or women who called out religious or civil authorities for the ways in which they gouged the poor?
    What sort of price did they pay?
  • What is a Temple of God?
    How was Jesus referring to himself when he spoke of the Temple of God?
  • In what ways am I a Temple of God?
    What do I need to cleanse from the temple that is my body so that it can house God?
  • What do I think was Jesus’ purpose in coming into the world?
    What is mine?
  • What do I understand “zeal for the Lord’s house” to mean?
    What can I do to cultivate same?
    Does this “zeal” impel me to action?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

Adapted from a homily by Fr. William Bausch:

Time to turn the tables and set up new ones! Here are five suggestions:

  1. Love only what is worth loving. What in my life is worth my love? What is not?
  2. Put first things first. What in my life do I prioritize?
  3. Cultivate spiritual insight. What are the ultimate spiritual truths for me? Be honest. (Write them down and look at them all week)
  4. Strive for integrity of conscience. What compromises my integrity? What rationalizations and excuses do I feed myself?
  5. Enlist in a cause that benefits the community or the world, not just my family and friends. Pick a cause (suggestions: CRS, Catholic Worker House, Redwood City, Bread for the World. Your local PTA, Meals on Wheels, to name a few) How wil I support that cause, starting NOW?
A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:

Read the following excerpts from Psalm 139, expressing that we are also a temple of God. Then write your own psalm, asking Jesus to tell you things about yourself that will help you grow in Him. Ask Him to still your mind and heart so that you can hear His words:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

Poetic Reflection:

Often people use the story of Jesus’ cleansing the temple as an excuse for their intemperate responses to what others do. Mary, Queen of Scots, had a different prayer:

Keep us, O God, from all pettiness.
Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding and leave off all self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense and meet each other face-to-face,
Without self pity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment, always generous.
Let us take time for all things, and make us grow calm, serene, and gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses, to be straight-forward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize that it is the little things of life that create differences,
That in the big things of life we are one.
And, Lord, God, let us not forget to be Kind.

Where do I need to be patient with others who are ruining their lives or the lives of others?

Poetic Reflection:

This is a slightly different take on how Jesus feels about the behavior of humans:

Slowly, slowly
Comes Christ through the garden
Speaking to the sacred trees
Their branches bear his light
Without harm

Slowly, slowly
Comes Christ through the ruins
Seeking the lost disciple
A timid one
Too literate
To believe words
So he hides
Christ rises on the cornfields
It is only the harvest moon
The disciple
Turns over in his sleep
And murmurs:
“My regret!”

The disciple will awaken
When he knows history
But slowly, slowly
The Lord of History weeps into the fire

—Thomas Merton “Cables to the Ace” (stanza 80)

Closing Prayer

Keep me, above all things, from sin.
Stanch me in the rank wound of covetousness
And the hungers that exhaust my nature with their bleeding.
Stamp out the serpent envy that stings love with poison
And kills all joy.
Untie my hand and deliver my heart from sloth.

Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised
as activity
when activity is not required of me,
and the cowardice that does what is not demanded,
in order to escape sacrifice.

And then to wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion
Of all things.

—Kyrie by Thomas Merton in Book of Hours