1
SYNOPSIS: LENT III (March 4) HOMILY ON JOHN 2:13-25 (L/18)
Introduction: Today’s readings from Holy Scripture teach us that Lent is the ideal time for cleaning out the Temple of our own hearts and to offer to God proper Divine worship by obeying the Ten Commandments. They also teach us that our New Covenant with God demands that we should keep our parish Church holy and our Divine worship vibrant by our active participation in the liturgy with hearts cleansed by repentance, and holy by allowing the Holy Spirit to control our hearts and lives.
Scripture lessons: Today’s first reading teaches us that the Ten Commandments are the basis of our religious and spiritual life. Instead of restricting our freedom the Commandments really help us to love and respect our God and our neighbors. The Responsorial Psalm (Ps 19) depicts the Mosaic Law’s life-enhancing attributes: it refreshes the soul and rejoices the heart; it is pure and true, more precious than gold. The second reading reminds us that we must appreciate the Divine “foolishness” of the crucified Christ and obey His commandment of love as expression of our Divine worship. Today’s Gospel gives us the dramatic account of Jesus' cleansing the Temple of its merchants and money-changers, followed by a prediction of his death and Resurrection. The synoptic Gospels place the "cleansing of the Temple" immediately after Jesus' triumphant arrival in Jerusalem on the back of a colt on Palm Sunday, while John places it at the beginning of his Gospel. Jesus cleansed the Temple which King Herod began to renovate in 20 BC. The abuses which kindled the prophetic indignation of Jesus were the conversion of God’s Temple into a “noisy market place” by the animal merchants and into a “hideout of thieves” by the money-changers with their grossly unjust business practices – sacrilege in God’s Holy Place. Jesus' reaction to this commercialized Faith wasfierce. Since no weapons were allowed inside the Temple, Jesus had to construct his own weapon, a whip of cords to drive out the merchants and money-changers from the Court of the Gentiles.
Life messages: 1) We need to avoid a calculating mentality in Divine worship: Our relationship with God must be that of a child to his parent, one of mutual love, respect and a desire for the family’s good, with no thought of personal loss or gain. We are not supposed to think of God as a vending machine into which we put our sacrifices and good deeds to get back His blessings.
2) Let us remember that we are the temples of the Holy Spirit: St. Paul reminds us that we are God’s temples because the Spirit of God dwells in us. Hence, we have no right to desecrate God’s temple by impurity, injustice, pride, hatred or jealousy. Let us be cleansed by asking God’s forgiveness through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 3) Let us love our parish Church and use it: Let us make our Church a holier place by adding our prayers and songs to our parish worship and offering our time and talents in the various ministries.
For the Vatican version of the homily visit:
LENT III [B] (March 4, 2018) Ex 20:1-17; I Cor 1:22-25; Jn 2:13-25
Anecdote# 1:Righteous anger, good anger, healthy anger: Abraham Lincoln, angry at slavery. Martin Luther King, Jr., angry at racial discrimination, Mahatma Gandhi angry at the racial discrimination against the “untouchables” by the “high castes” in India … righteous anger. Nelson Mandela, angry at apartheid in South Africa. That was righteous anger. When we see a bully beating up on a young kid, when we see a thief stealing an old woman’s purse, when we see a group of girls being catty and mean to another girl at recess, when a husband beats up his wife -- the list goes on and on. The Lord God has wired us in such a way that most healthy human beings are angry inside when we see evil and injustice being done to someone. “Anyone can be angry. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, with the right purpose … that is not easy.” (Aristotle) (Pastor Edward F. Markquart; online)
#2: “Never argue with him when he's drunk!" A man was driving without his seatbelt when he spotted a patrol car right behind him. He grabbed for the belt and put it on. But it was too late, and the red lights began to flash.
"You weren't wearing your seatbelt," said the officer. "Yes, I was," said the man, "and if you don't believe me, ask my wife." "So how ABOUT it, ma'am?" asked the cop. "Officer," she said, "I've been married to this man for forty years, and there's one thing I've learned: Never argue with him when he's drunk! Just give him a ticket for not wearing the seat belt.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t bother to argue with the unjust merchants and money-changers who have converted the Temple of Jerusalem into a noisy “market place” and a “hideout of thieves.” Instead, he frightens them with his angry order and chases them away, holding a whip in his hands.
# 3:Nitroglycerine and salad bar: Someone has compared anger to nitroglycerine. Nitroglycerine is an unstable liquid which, in paste form, constitutes dynamite. However, nitroglycerine in very small amounts is what is given to heart patients to keep their hearts beating. The little molecule that dilates blood vessels wherever they are in the body is nitric oxide. It is the active ingredient in nitroglycerine, which is a widely used little pill for the treatment of heart pain (angina). When the heart arteries are constricted, the heart becomes starved for blood and a crushing chest pain results. Put a nitro pill under the tongue and “ah, relief” as the nitric oxide relaxes the arteries and allows the blood to flow again. Anger, of itself, is not sinful. The sin is in getting angry over the wrong things. We get angry when someone cuts us off in traffic, or when someone takes credit for something we've done at the office. We get angry at the kids when they're too noisy and at our spouses when they don't meet our expectations. Sometimes we get angry when we're simply tired and cranky. We don't even need anything to set us off. The media reported sometime back on a fight that broke out in a nursing home. The Spring Haven Retirement Community in Florida found their peace disrupted over a nasty incident at the salad bar. Mealtime turned ugly when an 86-year-old man complained to another gentleman about picking through the lettuce. Name-calling soon gave way to punching and the police was summoned. Those in the way paid a price. One resident was bitten in his attempt to stop the fight, another knocked down. While no one was seriously injured, one of the men was expelled from the home.( You and I get angry over all kinds of things, some of them exceedingly silly.Sinful human beings exploit religion just as they exploit everything else and for the same reasons--wealth, power, prestige. Jesus got angry when he saw people exploiting religion for their own gain. That's a little different from getting miffed over a salad bar.
Introduction:The central theme of today’s readings is the challenge to keep our Covenant agreement with Jesus Christ, just as the Israelites tried to keep the agreements of the Old Testament Covenant with Yahweh by promising to obey the Ten Commandments. We becomepeople of the New Covenant byloving others as Jesus did, bykeeping our parish Church holy and fully dedicated to Divine worship and by keeping our heartscleansed, just, holy and pure temples of the Holy Spirit. Today’s first reading teaches us that the Ten Commandments are the basis of our religious and spiritual life, just as theyformed a rule of life for the Israelites because of their Covenant with Yahweh at Mount Sinai. The Responsorial Psalm (Ps 19) depicts the Mosaic Law’s life-enhancing attributes: it refreshes the soul and rejoices the heart; it is pure and true, more precious than gold. The second reading reminds us that we must preach the Divine “folly” of the crucified Christ and the spirit of the cross, especially during the Lenten season. The message of the cross is God’s wisdom and power and, “foolish” as it may seem, that message is greater than the Law, greater than the Temple, greater than worldly wisdom or human strength. Today’s Gospel gives the dramatic account of Jesus' cleansing the Temple of its merchants and money-changers, followed by a prediction of his death and Resurrection.
First reading, Exodus 20:1-17: On the first Sunday of Lent, we reflected on the Covenant that God made with theworld through Noah after destroying all living things on the land with the flood. Last Sunday our meditation was on the Covenant promises God made to Abraham and his descendants. On this third Sunday of Lent we consider the third Covenant God made with His chosen people through Moses at Mount Sinai. In that Covenant, God Who had liberated His people from slavery in Egypt promised to make the Jews His own people, to lead them to the Promised Land and to protect them from their enemies. The people, in return, agreed to obey the Ten Commandments and other laws given by Yahweh through Moses. The Ten Commandments form a list of directives or instructions for living out our Covenant relationship. In other words, it is the Constitutionof the people of God because the Ten Commandments were part of a Covenant which God entered into with a specific group of people: the Israelites. The Covenant offered these people a society genuinely free, secure, mutually respectful and trustworthy,superior to neighboring societies, and more humane than anything the earth had yet seen. The Ten Commandments are based on two basic principles, namely, the principle of reverence and the principle of respect. The first four commandments demand from us reverence forGod, reverence for His holy name,reverence for His holy day (Sabbath) and reverencefor our father and mother. The remaining commandments ask us to respect life, to respect the bodies of other persons, to respect the good name of people, to respect our own words ina court of law and to respect our neighbor’s wife and his property. Jesus summarizedall the commandments into two:love of God and love of neighbor and later clarified the latter further: “Love others as I have loved you.”
Second Reading, 1 Corinthians 1:22-25:Since today's Gospel portrays Jesus as causing a scandal by his prophetic cleansing of the Temple, Paul says that Jesus’ cross is a scandal, or “stumbling block,” to the Jews and “foolishness” to Gentiles. A crucified Christ did not fit into the Jewish concept of a triumphant political Messiah. In the same manner, the idea of a suffering God who was crucified but rose again did not appeal to the intelligentsia of Corinth who considered it an affront to their dualistic tendency to write off the body as valueless!Hence, the Apostle simply remindsthe Corinthian community of something they already know: “The ‘foolishness’ of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the ‘weakness’ of God is stronger than human strength.” Though Jesus expected His disciples to adhere to the Ten Commandments, it quickly became evident to them that such adherence was simply "entry-level" Faith. After His death and Resurrection, they discovered it was essential to followJesus himself rather than a series oflaws.The only way tolive a fulfilled life was to imitate Jesus' dying and rising, whether it scandalized others or not. Hence, this second reading reminds us that we must appreciate the Divine “foolishness” of the crucified Christ and obey His commandment of love as expression of our Divine worship.
Exegesis:1) Time of the incident: Passover was a major Jewish festival when pilgrims from all over Palestine and beyond would come to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast and to pay their annual Temple tax. Matthew, Mark and Luke (Mt 21:12-17; Mk 11:15-19; Lk 19:45-48), report that Jesus participated in the Passover feast only once in his public life and that was just before his arrest, emphasizing the time when Jesus cleansed the Temple. The synoptic Gospels place the "cleansing of the Temple" immediately after Jesus' triumphant arrival in Jerusalem on the back of the colt of an ass. For Matthew, Mark, and Luke the powerful scene in the Temple demonstrates Jesus at the height of his power and popularity. His conflict with the religious establishment in Jerusalem, the religious capital, provided fuel for the fires of indignation and alarm set among the Sadducees and Pharisees. John, however, put the incident at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry because John was not interested in telling us when Jesus cleansed the Temple, but rather in showing that this cleansing was an act prophesied of the Messiah. John considered the raising of Lazarus, and not the Temple-cleansing, as the precipitating event for Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion (John 11-12).
2) The Temple Jesus cleansed: The Temple in Jerusalem was the symbol of Jewish religion and the only center of Israel’s common worship and sacrifices. Weekly Sabbath prayers and the teaching of the Law were conducted in local synagogues. King Solomon built the first Temple in 966 BC, and I Kings, chapter5, gives a detailed description of its solemn blessing. The Temple area covered some 35 acres. After 379 years, the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it in 587 BC and took all the healthy Jews as slaves. On their return, after 70 years of Babylonian exile, the Jews rebuilt the Temple in 515 BC under the leadership of Zerubbabel (who was of the House of David). It was desecrated and stripped by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 168 B.C. and cleansed and restored by Judas Maccabaeus in 165 B.C. King Herod the Great began to renovate it in 20 BC, and Jesus did his controversial cleansingof this Temple, in the outer courtyard (called the Court of the Gentiles, since Gentiles were allowed to enter it).
3) The abuses which infuriated Jesus: a) Themerchants selling animals and the money changers had converted the Court of the Gentiles into a noisy market making it impossible for the Gentiles to worship Yahweh. i) The merchants sold the animals and birds for sacrifice at unjust andexorbitant prices (18 to 20 times the regular price outside the Temple). ii) The animal-inspectors, bribed by the merchants, disqualified even the healthy animals brought by poor shepherds and farmers for sacrifice. This was an unjust extortion at the expense of poor and humble pilgrims, who were practically blackmailed into buying animals and birds from the Temple booths. Jesus consideredthis a glaring social injustice aggravated by the fact that it was perpetrated in the name of religion. b) The Temple authorities, by sharing the profit made by merchants and money-changers, converted it into a “hideout of thieves” (Mark & Luke). Roman coins, bearing the images of pagan gods and the emperor, were forbidden as offering in the Temple. The money-changers, who exchanged the Temple coin (Galilean shekel) with Roman coins, demanded 1/6 of the value of the coin as their commission, even from the poor people who had to pay one and a half days of their daily wage as their annual Temple tax. What especially enraged Jesus was not that a fee was being charged, but that the amount being charged to the poor was exorbitant and, hence, unjust. What was happening was a great social injustice done in the name of religion. In fact, the money-changers were street-level representatives of a corrupt Temple banking system which had become an instrument of injustice, fleecing the poor to benefit the powerful.By chasingthe money-changers and merchants from the Temple,Jesus was questioning the validity of the entire sacrificial system itself -- of Israel's ability to atone for its sins, be forgiven and stand in right relationship with God. “Jesus’ symbolic attack on the Temple would (in His culture) have had a meaning not unlike that of the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Centre—symbolically attacking a building that was widely seen as the “nerve center” of an entire network of political, economic and religious power.In addition to its key religious functions, the Temple had also taken on political and economic roles in Judaea. Apparently, its Treasury was used by many wealthy Jewish people as the “central bank of Jerusalem,” where they stored their wealth, considering it safe from theft or pillaging.” (Dr. Murray Watson).
Jesus got whip-cracking mad: Jesus' reaction to this commercialized Faith wasfierce. Since no weapons were allowed inside the Temple, Jesus had to construct his own: a whip of cords. He then wrought havoc on those who were committing abuses. Hepushedpeople and animals out of the way, overturning tables, and spilling the money-changers' coins. With over a hundred thousand pilgrims in the city to make their sacrifices at the Temple, it seems likely that there would have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sheep and cattle. Considering the crowd and the damage, it is one of the unsung miracles of Jesus' ministry that he was not set upon and killed by a mob of outraged businessmen and Temple police! Because of his righteous zeal,Jesus inspired people with respect for his actions. His words bit into the consciences of those who were taking advantage of the system. John adds an additional note that Jesus’ disciples remembered Psalm 69:9 (“Zeal for Your houseconsumes me”), as a justification for Jesus' rage. Filled with zeal for the house of God, that special place where humans and God meet, Jesus challenged religious practice that was simply external. Jesus, answering the call of a higher Authority, obeyed, regardless of the consequences.