New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
(Year B: Second Sunday of Lent, 7 March, 2021)
‘God knows’ or ‘God only knows’ used to be a popular saying. If we stop and think about it for a moment, an everyday
saying can have depths of wisdom. For me, the expression echoes concisely the
story of Jesus in the Temple and its aftermath at the time of the
Passover. Jesus, having confronted in no
mild terms the coteries of merchants trading on religion upon the sacred
grounds of the holiest of Temples, walks about Jerusalem in an air of
anticipation. We can read into this passage more than a hint of anger and
anxiety. Jesus lashed out and then stayed in Jerusalem. What did the Temple
officials and association for merchants make of this ‘upstart’ prophet coming
down from Galilee and creating havoc and overturning more than just tables?
Here was someone who appeared mad (just as it seemed to the
extended family and neighbours of Jesus in Nazareth – see Mark
3:21) overturning religious order and Temple regulations by resorting not
only to physically outrageous behaviour, as they saw it, but contradicting many
in the religious establishment by mixing metaphors of Temple destruction with
metaphors of messianic death and resurrection.
God knew what was in store for the Temple, for the
incumbents therein and for those would be excluded. However, Jesus – who is
fully God and fully Human – grew in knowledge (as the scriptures says – see Luke
2:52) because he was fully human as well as being fully God. Yet, God knows
all.
God knows the
evolution of the universe. This does not contradict the truth that God created
everything – notwithstanding the false literalism of some even today.
God knows each one
of us individually from conception to death. This can be hard to grasp. But,
God is God and who are we to put boundaries or limits on the infinite love and
agency of God?
God knows our
every heart beat from our earliest weeks to our final moments on this earth for
he has counted every one of the hairs on our head (Matthew
10:30)
He who knows the secrets of the heart (Psalm 43:22*) knows
you and me infinitely better than we know ourselves or, indeed, each other.
Depending on how you look at this such a thought is scary or liberating. He ‘who searches the mind and knows the
depths of the heart’ (Psalm 63:7*) knows infinitely well our frailties ‘for he
knows of what we are made, he remembers that we are dust’ (Psalm 102:14*). If, as we believe, ‘God is Love’ (1
John 4:8) then Love itself knows of what we are made. He knows ‘my sinful
folly’ (Psalm 68:6*). Our thoughts and feelings are important but let us not
run away with them because ‘the Lord knows the thoughts of men. He knows they
are no more than a breath.’ (Psalm 93:11*)
Saint Patrick, whose feast day approaches this month, was no
stranger to the wiles of persons and the grace of God. Christ be at my side and
Christ be within me was part of his daily prayer as it can be for us. On the freezing and wet slopes of Slemish
Mountain, Patricius, the Romano-Briton
sent to the Gaeil could pray: ‘Behind
and before you besiege me, your hand ever laid upon me. Too wonderful for me this knowledge, too
high, beyond my reach.’ (Psalm 138:5-6*). And who was Patrick? He was ‘a
sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most
contemptible to many’ (from The Confession of St Patrick). With such an attitude
of utter humility, dependence and openness we can say, today and now, with
Patrick: ‘O search me, God, and know my heart. O test me and know my thoughts.”
(Psalm 138:23*). Such simple abandonment, however, carries a price and a prize
summed up in the words of Psalm 141:4*: ‘you, O Lord, know my path’
* Psalm number references in this blog are from the Grail
Psalter using Septuagint numbering.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Notes on the Gospel of the day (John 2:13-25
Preliminaries
In the Temple tantrum, Jesus was putting himself out there
as a direct challenge to the existing religious order and would pay a price for
it in that same city. There were clear political implications of what seemed
like threatening behaviour which, by design or otherwise, would unsettle the Pax Romana and which the religious
authorities had carefully negotiated.
13 The scene
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
As is characteristic of John’s Gospel, there are many
references to ‘the Jews’. We need to
read this in the context in which the very early Christian communities – and
especially the community from which John sprung – developed. The split in the
Jewish community together with the arrival of many gentiles who followed Jesus
and confessed the Christ was the context in which a bitter and divisive
conflict arose – not unlike that between ‘Protestants’ and ‘Catholics’ in the
16th Century and more recently in the North East of Ireland.
14-15 An outburst
In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
Roman coinage was not accepted in the Temple precincts. Hence, money-changers were on hand. Making a ‘whip of cords’ suggests that Jesus was someone to be reckoned with!
16-17 A burning zeal
He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’
In verse 17 Jesus is recounting the words of the Psalmist.
The context of the phrase is contained in Psalm 68:8-10
It is for you that I suffer taunts, that shame covers my face,
that I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother's sons. I burn with zeal for your house and taunts against you fall on me.
There is, also, an echo of Amos
5:21. In response to sacrifice and burnt offering not accompanied by
justice and mercy, the Lord says through the prophet: ‘I hate, I despise your
festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.’ This is as
true today as in former times.
18-20 The seeds of
conflict
The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’
How easy it would be for readers of the this Gospel to
derive negative, racist or contemporary political views in relation to our
sisters and brothers in the family of Abraham?
How careful we need to be in relation to the ways religion can be used
and misused for the wrong purposes. How mindful we need to be of the ways in
which many Christians – perhaps without realising it – facilitated the rise of
atrocities perpetrated against the Jewish people in the Shoah of the 20th
Century. How scandalous is the role of many Christians in not standing up to
this when it happened (and still happens in some parts of Europe). And, it is
easy to judge others from afar or at a distance in history.
21-22 The Body and
the Temple
But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Temple worship had its place in Jewish (and early Christian
community). However, Temple, rites and
Laws were important. Indeed, Churches and sacraments in our time are vital and
necessary signs on the road to God. They open up and usher in. However, we must
see that it is God we worship and serve whether around the Table of his Word
and Body or in the market place.
(The destruction of the Temple around 70AD had actually
happened long before John put pen to paper which was probably towards the end
of the first century)
23-25 Signs are
not everything
When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.
If there was one thing that drove Jesus to anger on a scale
recounted in this passage of John and the other gospels it was the corruption
of religion by money, power and politics. Now, money, power and politics are a
necessary part of human society but those who profess to follow Jesus must work
in these spheres in a way that challenges oppression and that sets people free
from false religion. The job is not complete.
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