| Readings for March 11, 2012
If folks of any age ever pictured Jesus as a weak, passive, uncourageous wimp, hearing today's Gospel would cut that image to shreds. All four Gospels record Jesus' passionate cleansing of the Temple. The Synoptics place this event after Jesus' entry into Jerusalem amid the waving of palms before his Passion. Indeed, during the Passion, the religious leaders mocked Jesus with the words he spoke that day, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." However, John, whose Gospel we hear today, places this cleansing at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, right after the Wedding at Cana.
I wonder why? And we must wonder why this incident was remembered by the communities of all four Gospel writers.
The Jewish people reverenced and loved their Temple, which housed the symbols of their unique covenant with God. As a child and an adult, Jesus went up to the hills of Jerusalem and to the Temple often, especially to celebrate Passover. Since the Exodus, when the Tablets of Stone containing the Ten Commandments (delivered anew to us today in the first Reading) were carried in the Ark of the Covenant, and later placed in the inner room of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Jews regarded that Ark of the Covenant tent, and subsequently the Temple, as the holiest place on earth, the place where God's "glory" and presence were most alive. When Jesus' zeal for his Father's house of prayer compels him to make a whip and drive out sellers and buyers of sacrificial animals and overturn money changers' tables, he says (with rightful, controlled, quiet anger?), "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace." The Jews demand of him a sign showing how he dare say and do such things. Jesus answers with the quote above. No one had a clue what he meant, until he was raised up three days after he was tortured and killed as a criminal.
Jesus was claiming to be the new Temple, the place where his Father's presence was most alive. Indeed, his risen Body is the new Temple where all the world can encounter God. What?! Are we, as members of that Body (or preparing to become members through Baptism at the Easter Vigil), being challenged during this Lent to be purged and purified of all attitudes and habits which cloud and impede the presence of God from shining in us, and outward to our families, work places, politics, actions in the broader world? When people interact with Ascension parish, and with each of us members, will they encounter the radiant love of God? Whoa, we, the Temple of God, need cleansing.
Perhaps a reason why John places this event after the Wedding at Cana is that he saw Jesus as the Bridegroom who seeks a bride (all people) purified from following any strange gods, and clinging with love to the one true God. Do we need to say to our attachments to strange gods, e.g., the gods of more money, pleasure, self-interest, false security, no matter the cost of weapons, oppression of the poor and pollution of the earth, do we need to say, "Take these out of here"? Do we need to purge from our lives the unending distractions from our media, from power politics, even within our church, so we can give our valuable time, study and money to the millions without the basics of clean water, food, home, health, education - those near, and those far, like the orphans of Rwanda?
Jesus began the fulfillment of his Father's original plan of a wedding between heaven and earth, of a new covenant, of his close union with us his Body. Amazingly, he calls us, through the Spirit's power in Baptism and Eucharist, to continue that marvelous work everywhere we go. But without being cleansed and purified by the hard work of prayer, fasting and almsgiving during Lent, we won't be able to really celebrate that new covenant, that wedding of heaven and earth at Easter.
Mary Sluka is a a catechist of the Good Shepherd and a member of the Adult Formation board at Ascension.
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