This Sunday’s gospel put Jesus’ knowledge of our human nature so clearly: He really knew what was going on in men’s hearts. He knew what they thought. He saw what they did to the Temple. The Temple was a place of worship. It was a place of celebrating the spiritual presence of God in the world. And they transformed it. They changed the Temple into a marketplace. They utilized a system of money changing that robbed the poor people, forcing them to spend extra money for the prescribed practices. He knew men’s hearts. He knows our hearts. He knew that our celebration of his birth at Christmas would be transformed from a day to celebrate the Spiritual Becoming One with Us to a celebration of materialism. He knew that we would hide the celebration of the Resurrection behind the Easter Bunny. He even knew that some people would begin their Easter celebrations two days early and have a party on Good Friday (That, to me, is the height of paganism.)
He knew that people would see the signs that he worked, the miracles he performed, but would refuse to see the messages behind the signs and the miracles. Instead they would see him as a wonder worker, a super man, a good show. He knew that they would not recognize whom he really was. Nor were they ready to listen to his message. Those who followed the way of the world could never accept sacrificial love, a death on a cross, as the way to salvation. He would show us what real love was. He would die on a cross for us.
For God had entrusted creation to man from the very beginning. He would not take this gift back. If mankind had broken the relationship with God, then mankind would have to make the decision to once more seek this relationship. One who is a man would have to restore the relationship. The man, the Son of God become flesh, would give himself up completely for the sake of others. His death would make God’s life real to the world.
The cross did not make sense to the Jews who wanted signs, wonders, a superman, a triumphant messiah. The cross didn’t make sense to the Gentiles whose philosophers and sophists could not understand the wisdom of Christ’s sacrifice. But, as St. Paul writes, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, an absurdity to the Gentiles, but to all those who are called, Jews and Gentiles alike, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s folly is wiser than men, and his weakness more powerful than men.”
The particular temple that Jesus entered was the third temple, the glorious Temple. The Temple of Solomon had been destroyed during the Babylonian Captivity in the 6th century BC. The temple that replaced it after the captivity was nowhere near as glorious as Solomon’s. When the Temple of Herod was constructed at the beginning of Jesus’ life it was a wonder of the world. Remember Jesus gazing on the temple as the disciples looked at it with their mouths open. But no matter how powerful, how strong the new temple looked, it was insignificant. It could be and it would be destroyed. The Romans would tear it apart in the year 70 AD to such an extent that the only portion left then, and still existing now, is the Wailing Wall. But Christ’s presence would never be removed from the world. His love is eternal. He is always here with us.
During Lent we celebrate our ability to live Christ’s life. We are called upon to consider how well we are following Christ’s way, the way of sacrificial love. Our houses may be destroyed in a natural disaster, but nothing can remove the love of Christ from our homes, wherever we may be. The one thing that will last forever is the sacrificial love of the Lord we have been enjoined to perpetuate in the world. We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves for others, our families and our friends. We must be willing to demonstrate with our own lives that Jesus’ wisdom and strength, the wisdom and strength of the cross, proves the lie of the materialistic mind set of the world.
The wisdom of the cross reveals all else to be folly and weakness.
A NEW TEMPLE
All the four evangelists have left us the provocative incident of Jesus driving out from the temple all the money changers and the people selling pigeons and other animals for sacrifice. He could not bear seeing his Father’s house turned into a market place. They were making a living out of the temple worship. God cannot be bought with “sacrifices”.
John, the fourth evangelist, added in his narrative the dialogue between Jesus and the Jews. Jesus affirms in a very solemn manner that, after the destruction of the temple, “he will raise it up in three days.” Obviously, nobody understood what he really meant. So John the evangelist adds: “He was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body.”
We should notice that John was writing his gospel at the time when the temple of Jerusalem had already been destroyed for twenty or thirty years. Many Jews felt like orphans. The temple, after all, was at the heart of their religion. How could they survive without the physical presence of God among his people?
For those who see in Jesus the new temple in which God lives, everything appears different. To find God, it is not enough to get into a church. One has to get closer to Jesus, join in His project, follow in His steps, and live in His Spirit.
In this new temple which is Jesus, worshipping God is not done simply by burning incense, singing hymns and performing solemn liturgies. The true worshippers are those who live before God “in spirit and truth.” And the true worship consists in living with the Spirit of Jesus and in the Truth of the Gospel. Without these, any form of worship is empty adoration.
The gates of this new temple that is Jesus are open to all. Nobody is excluded. Everyone, sinners, unclean or pagans, too, are welcome. The God that is found in Jesus belongs to all and is for all. Within this temple, there is no discrimination whatever. There are no places reserved for men and for women. In Christ, there are no male and female. There are no chosen races or people excluded. The only ones who have some preference are those who are in need of life and love. We need churches and temples to celebrate Jesus as Lord, but He is our true and new temple.
RELIGION IS NOT AN END IN ITSELF
All the gospels have reported the bold and provocative incident caused by Jesus within the temple premises in Jerusalem. Probably, it wasn’t too spectacular. He might have knocked over a few of the cages of pigeon sellers, turned some tables of the money changers and caused some disruptions for a few minutes. It could not have been much more.
The incident, however, was charged with prophetic force and must have caused his quick arrest and future execution. An attack on the temple was an attack against the Jewish people: the heart of their religious, social and political life. The temple was untouchable. It was the abode of the God of Israel. How could the people survive without their temple? What would happen to them without seeing the temple?
For Jesus, on the other hand, the temple had become an obstacle for the arrival of the kingdom of God as he knew and as he was proclaiming it. His public gesture challenged their economic, political and religious system as symbolized by such “holy place.” What did the temple really represent? Was it a symbol of God and his justice, or a symbol of their collaboration with Rome? Was it a house of prayer or a warehouse of taxes and payments demanded from the farmers? Was it a holy place to honour God or a cover-up of all kinds on injustices?
In reality, it was a den of thieves. While everything connected with the house of God showed opulence, the people’s villages lived in penury. There was no way God could ever justify such religion. A God of the poor could not be housed within the walls of such magnificent temple. With the arrival of his kingdom, such magnificence was totally out of place.
Jesus’ Passover incident at the temple clearly makes us think, as his followers, and invites us to question our temple culture and our practice of religion. Because if our religion is not inspired by Jesus, it could become just a holy symbol that would distract from the kingdom of God that Jesus came to proclaim. The Kingdom of God comes first, before the temple and religion.
What really constitutes our religion? Does it teach us compassion for those who suffer or simply helps us to live in peace with our own selves? Does religion foster our own interests or inspire us to build a better world for everyone? If our religion is very much like that of the Jewish temple, surely Jesus would not have blessed it.
JESUS’ INDIGNATION
Just before the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with his disciples. As he entered the temple precint he saw a most unexpected spectacle: people were selling cattle and sheep and pigeons that worshippers needed to make their offerings to God, as prescribed by the temple customs. Money-changers, too, were sitting at their counters there, because only kind of coins was accepted by the temple priests.
Jesus, evidently, was full with indignation. The evangelist describes His
reaction very vividly: “Making a whip out of some cord, He drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattering the money-changers coins, and knocking their tables over.” He screamed at them: “Stop turning my Father’s house into a market.”
Jesus found himself like a stranger in that Temple. What he saw with his own eyes had nothing to do with the true worship of his Father. The Temple worship had become a business at which priests made a lot of money and worshippers were invited to get favours from God with their offerings. Jesus, obviously, remembered the words of the prophet Hosea that Jesus would repeat often during his public life: “God my Father has said: I want love, not sacrifices.”
The Temple that Jesus was seeing was not his Father’s house in which everyone is welcomed as brothers and sisters. Jesus was not looking at the
family of God that He himself wanted to create with all his followers. What he saw then and there was a market place in which everyone was trying to make some money.
But let us not think that all that Jesus was doing was to condemn a primitive religion which had deviated from its origins. No, his criticism went much further. God cannot be used as an excuse and a cover for a religion that is purely built on self interests. God is our Father and we can worship him if we work together in solidarity as a human family built on love and sacrifice.
Every one of us, unwittingly, can become “sellers and money-changers”
if we start and learn to survive by seeking our own self-interests. We are living in a world that has become a universal market place in which everything is bought or sold. Hence, we run the risk of making our relationship to a mysterious God just another marketing situation.
We have to make of our Christian communities a space and a situation in which we feel that we are in our “Father’s house.” A welcoming and friendly home to which everyone is welcomed, the doors are always open, and no one is excluded or discriminated. A house in which we learn to listen to the sufferings of even the most discriminated against and not merely our own interests. In such house, we must learn to address ourselves to God as our Father, because we consider ourselves His children and wish to live with everyone as brothers.