LENT IIIB

 

3^rd Sunday of Lent B

 

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17  1 Corinthians 1:22-25  John 2:13-25

 

This Sunday’s readings continue to proclaim to the Christian community the life-giving power of God’s covenants with our Jewish ancestors, who were delivered from slavery in Egypt, and with the whole of humanity in Christ, who by the folly of his cross has unleashed the saving power and wisdom of God.  We are challenged to reject all idols, even the desire for signs and worldly wisdom, which may stand between us and God’s saving will.  Humbly aware of the saving gift of God’s covenants, we can pray the refrain of the responsorial psalm: “Lord, you have the words of everlasting life” (Ps 19).

The Exodus reading recounts the Lord’s giving the commandments to Israel on Mount Sinai; they are to serve as the new basis for their continued covenant relationship with him.  The Israelites viewed this covenant with its laws as a saving gift from the Lord who had already freed them from Egypt.  In the words of the responsorial psalm: “The law of the Lord is perfect,/ refreshing the soul;/ the decree of the Lord is trustworthy,/giving wisdom to the simple” (Ps 19:8).

Although most of the commandments are worded negatively as absolute prohibitions of certain actions, they actually protect the basic freedom of both God and the members of the Israelite community.  In a polytheistic world which tended to worship the forces of nature and the tyrannical power of kings, God demands the right to Israel’s exclusive worship without the fashioning of idols or the vain use of his name for false oaths (see Lev 19:12).  The Sabbath is to be kept holy, or separate, for the Lord by observing a day of rest from labor.  The last six commands guarantee the basic rights of the Israelites: honor for parents in old age, life free from murderous attack, marriage protected from adultery, property guarded from theft and a neighbor’s covetousness, and reputation preserved from false witness.  Is it any wonder the psalmist can say of these commands: “They are more precious than gold/ sweeter than syrup or honey from the comb” (Ps 19:10)?

In the second reading, Paul reminds the Corinthians, who are divided by their commitments to various apostles, that the gospel is not a form of wisdom, as philosophers understand it.  In fact, the heart of the gospel is the folly of a “Christ crucified,” a stumbling block to the Jews, who were looking for spectacular “signs,” and “an absurdity” to the Gentile Greeks who wanted worldly wisdom.   In the mystery of God’s plan, the folly and weakness of the cross contain the wisdom and power by which we are saved.

The Gospels for the third through fifth Sundays of Lent in the B cycle are taken from John’s Gospel, and all point symbolically to the life-giving power of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  In this Sunday’s Gospel Jesus, in the course of cleansing the temple, announces that he in his death and resurrection will replace the temple where animal sacrifices were offered to God.

In contrast to the other Gospels which place this incident at the end of Jesus’ public ministry leading to his trial and death, John recounts the cleansing of the temple in chapter two on the first of three Passover celebrations in his gospel.  A major theme in the first part of John is that Jesus replaces the various institutions of Judaism.  In this case, the temple has been corrupted “into a marketplace” where sacrificial animals are sold.  Filled with “zeal” for his Father’s house, Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives out the sacrificial animals and knocks over the money-changers’ tables.

When asked for a “sign” authorizing this action, Jesus replies: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”  As often happens in John, Jesus’ hearers misunderstand him because they interpret his language as referring to some earthly, often Jewish, reality.  His opponents think he is speaking of the temple which “took forty-six years to build,” but the narrator reminds us that Jesus “was talking about the temple of his body.”

John also notes that only after the resurrection did his disciples recall and believe both Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple and the saying about his body.  For us as well, the life-giving power of the new temple, Jesus’ body, “destroyed” yet “raised up,” is to be remembered and meditated upon as we progress though Lent toward the celebration of Easter.  The covenant of our salvation has not been won by spectacular signs nor though sophisticated wisdom, but by the folly of a crucified Messiah, who had the courage to reject turning his “Father’s house into a marketplace.”