(Homily 3rd Sunday of Lent –Year B)
Today being the third Sunday of Lent, the
Church continues to invite us to have our gaze fixed on the events of Jesus’
Passion, Death and Resurrection. In fact, the readings and events of the Lenten
season are programmatic and interconnected. On the first Sunday we read the
Gospel passage of the temptation of Jesus, which took place in the desert. On the second Sunday we
reflected on the event of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain. And in today’s Gospel we read about the cleansing
of the Temple by Jesus.
Extrapolating from the above, so far, the contexts of the Gospel readings have
offered us three vital places for a special encounter with God: Desert, Mountain and Temple. Thus, it
serves as a reminder to us, that the period of Lent is and ought to be a season
of special encounter with the Lord, through our prayers, words and actions. No
doubt, the Decalogue is for us a guide. Therefore, today, we are not contemplating
the victory over the antics of the devil (the temptations) nor the glorious
face of Jesus (the transfiguration), rather his ‘angry’ face (in the temple). Indeed, we are
reminded that adherence to God’s word and a courageous fidelity to God are at
the basis of the spirituality of lent.
In the First Reading (Exodus 20:1-17), God gave the Israelites a set of rules meant to
direct their lives and relationship with God and with their neighbors. This set
of rules is traditionally known as the Ten Commandments or the Decalogue. The
Decalogue is often seen as the summary of Christian moral obligation. The
Decalogue appears in two places in the scriptures, precisely in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5. The two versions differ mainly with regards to the
commandment on Sabbath. The Decalogue can be divided into two, the first part
on the duties to God, and the second part on the duties to the neighbor. The
Ten Commandments are rules of conduct that guide man’s relationship with his
fellow man, and man’s relationship with God. They do not remove possibilities to sin, rather they make us to be
conscious of the possibility to sin. Similarly, between the Decalogue and
the cleansing of the Temple is a call to authentic and courageous religiosity. And
in particular a brief story of a friend will throw more light:
A priest was coming back to his parish one evening in the dark, only to
be accosted by a robber who pulled a gun at him and demanded, “Your money or
your life!” As the priest reached his hand into his coat pocket, the robber saw
his Roman collar and said, “So you are a priest? Then you can go.” The priest
was rather surprised at this unexpected show of piety and so tried to
reciprocate by offering the robber his packet of cigarettes, to which the
robber replied, “No, Father, I don’t smoke during Lent.”
Interestingly, one can see
how this robber is trying to keep the pious observance of not smoking during
Lent, but he virtually forgets the more fundamental commandment of God, “You
shall not steal.”
In the Gospel (John 2:13-25), Jesus gives us a
clearer picture of what religiosity or piety beyond mere observance of the law
entails. Today in the Gospel Jesus goes radical, he loses his cool. A thorough
reading of the fourth Gospel reveals that the public ministry of Jesus began
with two extra-ordinary events: the
wedding feast at Cana, where he performed his first miracle or sign of
turning water into wine; and in
Jerusalem, in the temple where he chased merchants out of the temple. Jesus
entered the temple in Jerusalem and saw those who were buying and selling
animals and he drove them all away with a whip and went further to overturn the tables of the money
changers. A careful look into the event
would reveal that Jesus went there,
above all, to cleanse the temple and equally, to convey the message that true
religiosity is not all about observing the religious laws and ordinances but
also the capacity of a convinced performance.
The primal collocation of the Purification
of the temple at the beginning of his Gospel shows that for St. John it is a
very important event. The reason behind
Jesus action of chasing the merchants away, was as a result of a diffused
mentality of that period, the tendency and temptation of thinking that they can
buy favor from God. Is a call to guide against the commercialization of
religion and faith. Many a times, we too fall into the temptation of religious
commercialization. This happens when we want to bend God’s will to our own
desires and needs, when our rapport with God goes with the logic of ‘I give you
prayer and sacrifices, and you give me security and good health’. Love does not
operate with this logic, the logic of love is gratuity, love cannot be bought. As
a matter fact, the money changers and the animal sellers in today’s Gospel made
an error of judgment about what they could do in the temple, but upon his
arrival Jesus seized the occasion to correct that mentality. Sometimes, we may
be influenced by the society and people around us; by what we see and hear in
the televisions and over the radios respectively.
There is indeed, a connection between the
two episodes that constitute the beginning of the revelation of Jesus. While the sign of Cana represents the first
manifestation of the glory of the Messiah, the purification of the temple
prefigures his death and resurrection, the culminating point of his
mission, which will reveal fully his identity and the redemptive love of the
Father. In the episode of the cleansing
of the temple, Jesus manifests for the first time his divine sonship, when he
declared the temple as the “house of his Father” (v.16), which implies a
special relationship with the Father (Lk.
2:49). At that point, the disciples remembered the words of the psalmist
thus: “I am eaten up with zeal for your house” (cf. Ps. 69:9). In the passage, we see a version of the cleansing
of the temple, which is parallel, but however stands out from the synoptic
version. The fourth Gospel combines two different events found in the synoptic
Gospel: 1) the cleansing of the temple (Mk.
11:11.15-19); 2) the prediction of the temple’s destruction (Mk. 14:55-58). More than that, John
introduced some other elements not found in the synoptic. For instance: whips:
which denotes the degree of force used by Jesus and the allusion that the
incident took place when the temple is 46 years since its erection.
After that incident the Pharisees demanded
a sign from Jesus, and behold Jesus told them that he could rebuild the temple
in three days. In that bid, Jesus
introduced a new understanding of the temple. Henceforth, temple is not only to be understood only as
temple-building, but also temple-body. For he was referring to the temple
that is, his body. This substitution of Christ for the temple is indeed John’s proprium. This goes a long way in
expressing the spiritual intimate relationship that exists between the
believers and God. This not only reveals
the intimate rapport between man and God, the presence of God in the life of
believers, but above all, a privileged task and responsibility to be conscious
of Him who inhibits in us and live accordingly. Extrapolating from that
perspective, if my body too is the temple of God, likewise my neighbors’, this
should propel us to see and recognize the presence of God in others, to see the other as a sacrament of God’s
presence and thus to respect, revere and love him/her. “we are his
household, as long as we fearlessly maintain the hope in which we glory” (Heb. 3:6).
Behold, the paramount message of the
purification of the temple revolves essentially around the revelation of Jesus
himself, as privileged place of God’s presence amongst men. He is the spiritual
temple of the New Covenant. Jesus is the New Place of Divine presence, which
will be the center of the worship “in spirit and truth” (Jn. 4:23). He is the spiritual temple from which the waters of the
Spirit will flow (cf. Ez. 47; Jn. 7:38),
that will be the sanctuary of the risen body of Christ. Be that as it may,
brethren, as His Spirit dwells in our bodies, our bodies too will become
temples of and for God (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16;
2Cor. 6:16). Indeed, we are immersed
in this new perspective of Jesus: temple-body, thereby, our bodies become the
temple of God who inhabits in us. In the epistle reading, the apostle
speaks of the wisdom and power of God, which inaugurates a new dispensation and
launches a novelty in the way of worship, as denoted by Jesus’ action in the Gospel.
In the second reading (1Cor
1:22-25),
St. Paul writes from the debt of his enriching experience of preaching to both
Jews and Gentiles. He discovered that the Jews were in quest for a sign, a miracle
(as we can see in today’s Gospel: Jn.
2:18), as a proof of the authenticity of his message. On the other hand,
the Greeks looked for wisdom, as such, they were ready to accept Christianity,
if it was presented in a convincing understanding of the universe and man. At
the time of St. Paul’s writing, the Corinthians desired for wisdom and not
signs. Behold, St. Paul did not repudiate the quest either of the Jews or the
Gentiles, instead he tried to connect it
with the message of the cross. In the parlance of St. Paul, the cross is “dynamis”, power. Interestingly, dynamis is a word that is frequently
used for miracle and it corresponds to sign and wisdom as well. But the “power”
that Paul was talking about here is a paradoxical type of power and wisdom that
may be apparently seen as foolishness in human parlance. However, it takes faith in God to penetrate the density and immensity of
the wisdom behind the folly and the power behind the weakness. In a similar
vein, for those who do not have faith in God, the cross and its message remain
a scandal and folly. But for believers it is God’s dynamis.
Above all, Lent is a period to reform and
renew our consciences, it is a privileged moment to remove from our live
whatever that is based, a period to overturn the tables. The action of Jesus in the temple serves as a reminder to us that every
authentic encounter with Him cannot but overhaul us totally. May we allow
our consciences to be formed by his commandments and his message to turn us
around for a positive change, for as today’s response to the Psalm says: “You,
Lord have the message of eternal life” (Jn.
6:68). May we adhere to his words to gain eternal life, Amen!!! Wish you
all a grace-filled Sunday!!!
(Fr. Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)
No comments:
Post a Comment