(Ex 20:1-17; 1Cor 1:22-25; Jn 2:13-25)

The Covenant theme has dominated the 3 Sundays of Lent so far. 1st Sunday of lent was about the covenant with Noah in which God promised that he will not destroy his creation again with the flood. 2nd Sunday of lent was about God’s covenant with Abraham in which God promised Abraham and his offspring everlasting blessings. 

This 3rd Sunday is about God’s covenant with Israel in the desert in which God adopted Israel as his special people and demanded in return their obedience to his laws, the 10 commandments as partners in the covenant. 

These highlights are building up to the ultimate Covenant God made with us in Christ, the Son of God.

As we know, the Commandments begin with the worship of God. The 1st 3 of the commandments point to the worship that is due to God. This indicates the absolute importance of our worship of God as No. 1 priority in our life. 

You can, now, understand why the only time in the gospel we see Jesus act with such anger, when Jesus gets mad, really mad, is when the worship of God has been violated in the temple, when the worship of God has been treated with irreverence. 

Mathew, Mark, Luke & John, all 4 recorded this incident in the gospel. 

Jesus isn’t opposed to money, legitimate business, or commerce, but he is opposed to their misuse especially in the dwelling place of His Father and our Father. 

We must keep God where He belongs in our life, and where He belongs is on top, and nothing ought to take up that position. This incident in the gospel seems like the most embarrassing moment for Jesus throughout his 3 year’s public ministry. Isn’t it? He yells out: you can’t play with the worship of God. Jesus wants better, and he cries out: “This is my Father’s house and your Father’s house, make it right!” 

As the 2nd Reading alludes to, human wisdom may deny the primacy of God in our life or even frown at it; but God’s wisdom founded on the Cross of Christ teaches it to be true.

Jesus also makes it clear that this worship of God is for all peoples, and not only for the Jews who had expelled the gentiles, the blind and the lame from the temple and converted their worship spaces into spaces for business activities. That universal access to God Our Father we worship would be realized through Jesus. That everlasting access to the worship of God Jesus fights for in the temple would be made available through his death and resurrection, an event we relive more fully at Easter and recall and renew every time at Holy Mass.

The Commandments we read about today as given by God our Father through Moses are not suggestions, or options or modest proposals. These rules God our Father has made for us are at the base of our relationship with Him and with one another. They cannot bow or yield to human wisdom.

The Commandments and the cleansing of the temple are read to us this 3rd Sunday of Lent to ask us to reflect on our relationship with God, on the place He truly occupies in our life, on our reverence and respect for things dedicated to Him, and on our relationship with one another.

We call Him Lord. How does your life show this? How do you reverence God’s places of worship: the temples and sanctuaries that are your heart, your home, and our church? 

May this Lenten journey and the graces that come with it help us to get these things right. And may we continue to offer God a sacrifice holy and acceptable to Him. Amen!

Peace & Bles+sings!

JT

Pastor