Cleansing Your Temple
If God is our ultimate good, then all other things will fall into their proper place. Getting our relationship with God right is the key to getting everything else right in the moral life. The correct worship of God and living the moral life, that we find in the Ten Commandments, is our God-given programme for our happiness and flourishing as human beings.
Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent – 7 March 2021
If you were to look at the stained-glass windows of a church from the outside, and if you had never seen them from the inside, you wouldn’t be too impressed. They are dark, bland and have no meaning. But, if you were to look at them from the inside during the day, they are magnificent, full of light and colour and meaning.
This is a metaphor we can bring to our understanding of the Ten Commandments in the first reading from the book of Exodus. If you had to take these Ten Commandments out of context, they might easily give the impression that religion for both Jews and Christians is set of rules that restricts our freedom. It would be like looking at stained glass windows from the outside.
Rather, the Ten Commandments are an expression of an exclusive love- relationship with God. They were given in the context of covenant relationship between God and his people, through Moses on Mount Sinai. And remember, a covenant is a solemn agreement with undertakings, promises and responsibilities on both sides, for both parties. In terms of the Sinai covenant, God undertook to be covenanted to the people of Israel, and the people of Israel promised to be faithful to God.
This covenant relationship is often described in the Old Testament in terms of marriage. God is married to his people. God is a faithful husband to Israel, and Israel is expected to be faithful from their side. And in the New Testament, we often have the reference to Jesus being the bridegroom and his Church, that is us, as his bride; so the marriage metaphor continues.
This suggests another image which is helpful to show that religion is more than just a set of restricting rules that take away our freedom. Consider a marriage between two people, one that can be said to have stood the test of time, and which has weathered the internal and external storms. In this stable marriage, which is marked by a love-relationship, there are guiding rules which are just understood; they don’t have to be written down. Some things are just not permissible. But the focus is not the rules. If anything, the rules give the framework for the couple to grow their love-relationship and the rules protect the marriage bond.
Of course, this is true for any marriage, no matter what stage it is in, for the reason that marriage is a commitment. Commitments are part of love. You cannot love without giving yourself to that which you love. This language of commitment is helpful when we consider the relationship of God to us and what we are meant to give from our side, in our covenant with God.
The Ten Commandments were given in the context of a covenant relationship with God, and they are a God-given framework for our flourishing, and for directing us in our relationship with God. The first three commandments are about making God our ultimate good, the correct worship of God, and putting this into practice in our lives. The following seven commandments concern relationships between us and other people. A right relationship with God is not separate from how we treat others. A right ordering of our lives to God necessarily involves keeping the commandments concerning people around us.
These commandments are not an arbitrary standard that God decides on to limit us and keep us in check. Rather they are a guard against that which wounds us as human beings and other people around us. Because sin wounds us, hurts us, robs us of long-lasting happiness, it is offensive to God. In the commandments, God gives us the blueprint for long-lasting human happiness and flourishing.
The great lie of sin, and temptation to sin, is that it brings pleasure or happiness. But ultimately, we are cheated because the price we pay is a lack of inner peace, or lack of peace with others, or a burden in some way, and the loss of friendship with God. Our guilt, no matter how much we try to dampen it or justify our actions, makes it clear to us that we have fallen short.
The gospel text for this Mass focuses on Jesus’ cleansing of the temple. It gives a graphic description of Jesus’ angry reaction to what was happening in the Temple with its distortion of the proper worship of God, as well as its greed, corruption and exploitation of the poor.
The part of the Temple which Jesus is most likely to have cleansed would have been the Outer Court, sometimes called the Court of the Gentiles. Significantly, this was the only part of the Temple where non-Jews could pray. This, in itself, would have been enough to make Jesus angry. By compromising the prayer of non-Jews, Israel and the Temple were not living up to the task of being a light to all nations, a blessing to all peoples.
The issue Jesus had with the moneychangers and people selling cattle, sheep and pigeons, is that not only were they showing immense disrespect for the Temple, which was meant to be a place of prayer and worship, but there was an exploitation of the poor who were not allowed to pay in the normal currency but had to first change their money into a special Temple currency before they could buy the animals that would be used in sacrifice. With each transaction the moneychangers took a commission for themselves, and thus exploited the already poor people.
When Jesus was challenged by the Jewish leaders on what authority he acts in cleansing the Temple, he referred to his own body, being the new Temple, being destroyed and being raised up again. As disciples of Jesus, we are Temples of the Holy Spirit, Temples of the Spirit of Jesus, and this Lent we seek to do some cleansing and re-ordering. Let’s allow Jesus to enter into the Temple of our bodies. What will he find there? Let’s let Jesus loose in the Temple that is us and allow him to cleanse it with his purifying power; let him reform us; let him turn over the tables of our wayward hearts.
On this third Sunday in Lent, a question that we could be asking ourselves is, who or what do we truly worship. Everyone has something of supreme value to them. Worship comes from the Old English “worth-ship”. In other words, there is a deep and fundamental connection between what is of highest worth or value to us, and what we worship. And if God is not of highest worth to us, the first priority of our lives, then we are idolaters, idol worshippers.
If God is our ultimate good, then all other things will fall into their proper place. Getting our relationship with God right is the key to getting everything else right in the moral life. The correct worship of God and living the moral life, that we find in the Ten Commandments, is our God-given programme for our happiness and flourishing as human beings.
The most perfect way for us to face ourselves, to know our need for mercy and allow Jesus to cleanse our hearts is the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Confession, is a sacrament that gives forgiveness, and a change of heart. This Lent, using the cleansing power of the Ten Commandments in an examination of conscience, we can allow Jesus to cleanse the Temples of our hearts, Temples of the Holy Spirit, so that we can make God our highest good and live our lives for him.
Today’s Gospel ends by saying that Jesus looked into hearts and could tell what the real motives of people were. He looks into our hearts and can tell what is in us. The Good News, the Gospel, is that when we invite Jesus in to cleanse our hearts, he comes with mercy, not anger. He comes with compassion to heal us and forgive us.