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Exploring the word

04 Mar 2018 - Third Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

Travel to the bottom line of your life, for a moment. What’s there? What is your life about—what are you about? Are all your energies directed toward getting by? Getting your way? Being successful? Being invisible? Obeying orders? Doing what’s right? Following your heart? Following your appetites? When we spend time at the bottom line, we have to be very honest. We look at what drives our activities and intentions. We consider who speaks with authority to us and who gets the last word. What source informs our conscience and shapes our values: our parents, living or deceased? Religion? Government? Media? Our own comfort? Our fear? Many of us spend a good part of each day on autopilot, not making conscious choices, being led from one event to the next by circumstance. We may wonder if there is a bottom line to our lives, or if we simply respond to what shows up in front of us or around the next bend. Even reactive living has a foundation in choices we may have made long ago to drift with the current, or to oppose it. Somewhere at the bottom of how we live and move and have our being is a power we might call “sovereign.” It’s the thing in our lives that’s large and in charge. It’s what motivates us to do what we do and to be the person we are on our way to becoming. Or as we say in theology, “Who is your God?” You shall have no other besides me The God of Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets was a take-no-prisoners, accept-no-substitutes kind of deity. Most of the commandments in the Decalogue are short and sweet, but the first three (the ones about the honor due to God) have clauses and caveats to spare. The law doesn’t say outright there is only one God. It says, to those who choose to follow this God: You better not bow to any other. For you, there is one power, one sovereign, one authority to consider. Do not hold any value or goal in contradiction to the pure service of this Lord. But of course, people did. Folks like you and me still do. Many of us who travel to the bottom line of what motivates us find a pie chart where the “one God” is supposed to be. Fifty percent of my service may go toward my own comfort and security. Another portion goes to what other people think, to worldly success, to caring for those I love, and later down the list is the caring for those I don’t love, the avoidance of final damnation, and doing the right thing no matter what the cost. Maybe we spend more time focusing on the moral demands of the rest of the commandments—not stealing, not committing adultery—because those are much easier to fulfill than dedicating our lives to the one God. Many of us, if we are honest, will admit that we have dedicated our lives to everything but. Cleaning out the temple One day Jesus went up to Jerusalem and cleaned out the temple area with a will, not to mention a whip. He drove out the entrepreneurs who had gathered like barnacles around the business end of religion. But he didn’t just empty out the temple area; he also filled it with his person. He claimed that holy place for his Father and for the “business” of his Father that always occupied him more than any other concern. All four gospels speak of this event, so it obviously held great significance in the first generation of the church. In Mark’s account, Jesus cleansed the temple and then barred anyone from using it as a thoroughfare. Matthew tells us that after Jesus cleared the area, the blind and lame came to him and he cured them. Luke indicates that Jesus drove out the sellers and then set up his teaching ministry in their place. John describes the scene with particular violence. After the area has been emptied, Jesus compares it to his body that will be destroyed and then raised up again. In each case, we see that Jesus claims the space for God and the things of God. In the Synoptic gospels, of course, Jesus performs this action at the end of his ministry, when he arrives at last in Jerusalem. After three long years of building up a following and allowing his reputation to precede him, he challenges the religious authorities with this aggressive action. What makes John’s version most original is that Jesus clears out the temple in Chapter 2. Before he has cured one fever, taught one lesson, and just after his first sign in Cana, Jesus rushes directly to the center of religious power and takes charge at once! There can be no doubt about the meaning of this deliberate shift in John’s order. Jesus demonstrates from the start that his authority trumps and replaces the institution of the temple with its cult of law and ritual. The gauntlet has been slapped down. Related scripture links Gospel parallels: Mark 11:15-19; Matt. 21:12–17; Luke 19:45-48 My temple a house of prayer: Isa. 56:7 In your eyes, a den of thieves: Jer. 7:11 Jesus in his Father’s house: Luke 2:49 Jesus the highest authority in the heavens: Phil. 2:9-11; Col. 1:16 Built into living stones: 1 Pet. 2:4-5 Catechism links Monotheism: CCC 200202 Idolatry: CCC 1852; 211214 Jesus and temple authority: CCC 576; 583586; 651; 653

Authors Alice Camille

bottom line Commandments cleansing of the temple jesus and the moneychangers

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Homily stories

04 Mar 2018 - Third Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

If they had to sit through one more employee meeting with the accounting supervisor insisting that what the company needed was a little more love, they were going to jump out of their skins. Jesus made whips out of cords to cleanse his temple; no doubt the pulls on the blinds would do for them. No one had anything against love, but the small company was in deep financial straits—in large part because people like the accounting supervisor thought of the place as a charity operation rather than a business. No one was ever held accountable for their work—you’d have to kill someone to be fired—and promotions were based on the hang-around-long-enough-and-they’ll-give-you-a-title principle. Rightful authority and appropriate relationships and behaviors is what today’s gospel is all about. Jesus had nothing against commerce. The temple just wasn’t the proper place for changing money and selling doves. Business is the same way. The message of today’s gospel applied to work is to be respectful of your workplace, take pride in the work that you do, and focus on the task at hand. And, yes, we could all use a little more love, too.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

Love cleansing of the temple

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Homily stories

04 Mar 2018 - Third Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

One day I was walking in downtown Chicago, passing sights so familiar to me that they hardly registered. My progress was interrupted by a group of tourists from a foreign country who had stopped in their tracks and stood pointing and staring at the front of a building across the street from us. Their obvious amazement caused those of us around them to stop and look. The focus of their gaze was an enormous crucifix—about five stories tall—carved into the front of St. Peter’s Church and staring down on the traffic flowing by on Madison Street. It dawned on me that this group of travelers may not be Christian. And I wondered what they thought of this display—a larger-than-life man, stripped nearly naked with spikes pounded through his arms and legs to hold him to a cross. What did they make of this glorification of a public execution? It dawned on me how tame, how robbed of its power the crucifix had become to me. These visitors helped open my eyes to what had become so obvious as to not sink in with me. Religion can get too cozy for us, as Jesus showed when he overturned the tables in the temple. Sometimes we need to have our preconceived notions shaken up. That’s the purpose of Lent. Remember, it’s never too late to have a good Lent. Start today by remembering that our faith is a life-and-death issue.

Authors Tom McGrath

Crucifix cleansing of the temple

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In other words

04 Mar 2018 - Third Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength. Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.” They were indignant: “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to rebuild it in three days?” But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said. During the time he was in Jerusalem, those days of the Passover Feast, many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn’t entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn’t need any help in seeing right through them (from John 2). From A New Message 4 Next Week (actapublications.com) based on The Message: Catholic/Ecumenical Edition by Eugene Peterson (ACTA Publications, 2013).

cleansing of the temple jesus and the moneychangers

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