Homily for the Week of March 15, 2009

HOMILY 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year B, 2009
First Reading: Exodus 20:1-17 [1-3, 7-8, 12-17]
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:22-25
Gospel: John 2:13-25
Have you every wondered what we would do if we did not have signs? Signs are everywhere. Some are scary, like those doctors look for when they probe with X-rays and MRI’s. Some are spooky, like those who look for the signs of the zodiac; some are sentimental like the wedding ring or the picture which you carry around in your wallet or purse, some help to win high school trophies, or Grammies or Oscars. Then there are signs that make the day more fun, like the one I saw on a boys shirt at a store this week; Life is uncertain, order desert first, or one on an old rusty truck I saw on the Hardscrabble road: I’ve had seven wrecks and ain’t lost one. And then we have road and street signs that help us get where we want to go.
If we can be creative with our signs, then so too can God. His signs are often in the beauty of a sunset, the cry of a newborn baby, the flight of a hawk, or the crows, the running of maple trees, the sprouting of lilac bushes, or the the sting of our conscience.
God uses signs to explain his intentions for us. And these are the signs which Jews, Christians and Catholics know as the ten commandments just read for us from the book of Exodus. These signs were given to us on Mount Sinai. Jesus gave us another set of signs known as the Beatitudes. These commandments offer us the roadmap of our Christian life and a summary of our responsibilities to God and to one another. Together with the Beatitudes they mark the path of the following of Christ and the royal road to spiritual maturity and freedom.
The Ten Commandments of Sinai may seem negative: You will have no false gods before me; . . . do not kill; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness ... But in fact they are supremely positive. Moving beyond the evil they name, they point the way to the law of love. Jesus summarize these 10 into the commandment of love: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. . . Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus teaches that the way of love is to follow the commandments.
So often, however, we are aware of another voice within us and all around us. It is a contradictory voice. It is a voice which says, BIessed are the proud and violent, blessed are those who make war not peace, blessed are those who get even with the one who hurt them, blessed are those who use the Internet to search for pornography. And these voices seem to make sense in a world where violence often triumphs and the crooked seem to succeed. Which voice do we choose to follow?
We have a tendency to think of Jesus as a NICE GUY. In today’s gospel Jesus refuses to conform to that image. He decides to do some spring cleaning in the church. He makes a whip, he spills coins and overturns tables. He says strange things that even his closest friends cannot understand. Jesus shows himself to be very real. The actions of Jesus are shocking, even violent. But it is the righteous violence of love, the zealous passion of the Son for his Father's house. Such love cannot give sin free rein or allow impurity to go unchallenged. Casting out the money changers was the action of one choosing to suffer everything for the order of the house.
Why did Jesus get so disturbed? Because those buying and selling in the temple lost sight of why they were there. They did not have the right attitude of mind and heart. Jesus had to challenge their viewpoint.
God also uses signs to show that he wants to clean house. And here it is not so much that God was concerned that his house was being abused, but that those who worked, shopped and lived in it did not pay enough attention to God through prayer. In other words he wants to cleanse us. And that is what Lent is all about. Lent is a time when we are invited to pay more attention to the signs which God gives us each day, and to his guidelines for life.
God wants us to serve him with undivided heart and minds. Lent is a time when we can recover this perspective in our own lives. Too easily we can get lost in the rituals of faith: going to Mass, saying our morning and evening prayers, helping those in need, visiting the sick.
Lent is about spending some time by ourselves in order to face ourselves and our temptations. It is a time when we confront ourselves by looking at what we have done and what we might have done and what we have not yet done. It means coming eye to eye with God in prayer and in confession. But most of us are still afraid to be with God alone and to reveal who we are. The ten commandments can be a check list for us.
During this third week of Lent let each of us look into our hearts and minds to see the signs of how we have or have not followed the commandments. Make the commandments the checklist for goodness in your life. Try not to see them as negatives, but as the positive road to spiritual perfection. Let us pray to God and Jesus that we might renew our zeal for Jesus, our zeal for our faith, and our zeal for true love of one another.
Jesus went into the temple today, turned over the tables, and spilled the coins of the money changers because they did not respect church as the house of God the Father. For first-century Jews, the Temple in Jerusalem was God's dwelling place on earth, the house of the Creator. But during the time of Christ it was also the home of a lucrative system of money changing and the selling of animals to pilgrims who came to offer sacrifices during Passover and other feasts. There were fees for changing currency and for having the to-be-sacrificed animals inspected and confirmed as pure and unblemished according to the Law. Price gouging was common. The house of God had become a supermarket and a den of robbers. If Jesus were here today he would also say to each of us: make your church your Father’s house.