We witness a scene so unlike Jesus in today’s gospel. Making a whip out of cords, he drove merchants and money changers out of the temple area. “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” Clearly, he was angry, visibly upset by what was going on. Zeal for God’s house consumed Jesus, prompting him to act as he did.
There are two kinds of anger. The more common form is rage that leads to some expression of violence. That is the anger we experience and express most often from road rage to domestic confrontations. Almost daily, we hear on the news of someone taking revenge by going on a shooting rampage. When this anger is expressed, someone is hurt, perhaps fatally.
Then there is zealous anger. Zeal is defined as enthusiastic devotion to a cause, thus zealous anger is an anger of passion. Those who demonstrate zealous anger aim their energy toward a common good. Zealous anger motivated Susan B. Anthony to stand up for the voting rights of women. Zealous anger prompted Martin Luther King to challenge the segregation laws of the Deep South. Zealous anger compelled Caesar Chavez to safe guard the migrant workers.
Zealous anger moved Jesus to do what he did in the temple that day. The sanctity of the temple was being violated by those who had lost sight of what the temple stood for. The temple was there to serve God, not the merchants and money changers.
The temple is long gone, but the lesson of this gospel remains relevant to us today. We are temples of the Holy Spirit. Imagine Jesus zealously striving to clean our temples of the obstacles in our lives to divine grace, that which thwarts us from having a truly intimate relationship with God.
Centuries ago, God led the chosen people out of a life of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. As the crow flies, any journey across the Sinai would not take 40 years even on foot, so one can’t give Moses high marks for his navigation skills, but at this point along the way, God provided the Israelites with the most important GPS tool they would ever need. God provided them with the Ten Commandments to free them from slavery, not the slavery they knew in Egypt, but the slavery of sin.
I once assumed that most Christians knew the Commandments but I learned otherwise when teaching a class on the Book of Exodus to some high school kids. None of them could name all Ten Commandments, much less in sequence. Soon after that, there emerged across our country a campaign to get rid of any display of the Ten Commandments on public property. Atheists, agnostics and the ACLU contend that such displays violated the constitutional separation of church and state. For five years, the city of Everett fought a suit brought on by an agnostic to remove such a monument that was donated in 1959. The monument is still there, partially hidden by shrubs. Out of sight, out of mind?
The courts have ruled such monuments may remain if they were viewed as historical rather than religious symbols. It shall be interesting to see if someone ever sues the Supreme Court, insisting that images of the Ten Commandments be removed from its chambers, images that serve to remind us that the very law of our land is based on our Judeo-Christian heritage.
For centuries, the Ten Commandments have served as the foundation by which western society has based its law. They have no power. Rather, their value comes from how well they are followed and evidently, they are not always followed well. Many people think of them as being restrictive, calling us to a way of life that is out of tune with much of society, but in fact, God designed them to spare us from the consequences of sin.
Honesty, respect for parents, fidelity, respect for property, putting God before all else, and taking time to worship God are traits that distinguish those who honor the Ten Commandments.
Out of sight, out of mind. That may be how many in our society treat the Ten Commandments, so by what values do they live their lives? Wherever they are ignored, we find little regard for life, respect for others or their property and commitments. When they are forgotten, we are more apt to respond with rage if things go wrong. The headlines remind us of that too often. Instead, of placing God first in our lives, we place ourselves first, thus greed and materialism prevail. I doubt that we would be struggling with the current economic crisis if we as a country had been honoring God by following the Ten Commandments.
If you remember one thing from these readings, remember that you are God’s temple. Just as Jesus cleared the Temple of all its corrupting influences, he wants to cleanse us of the same. Just as he was zealous for his Father’s house then, he zealously cares about every one of us today. In turn, we are urged to zealously live our lives according to all Ten Commandments, thinking of them as our response to God’s covenant for living life free from sin, that is, being the holy people we are called to be.
Paul’s timeless observation is well worth noting whenever we are tempted to minimalize the Ten Commandments. God is so much wiser than we are. Think of all the many laws that govern our lives, yet none can foster a greater sense of civility than the Ten Commandments. Any time we ignore them, we are apt to sin and too often, we find out painfully and much too late that sin devastates us and the lives of others. Sin leads to unhappy consequences. If Lent is to be of any value to us, we should zealously strive to cleanse our hearts of the needless clutter that distances us from the wisdom and love of God.