Prior Michael Brunner offered the following reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent (March 7, 2021), as part of a Lenten series presented by the Portsmouth Institute. Jesus' entry into the temple, and his sharp criticism of corrupt temple practices, provokes us to reconsider social injustice, the plight of the poor, and the call of the Holy Spirit to work to renew the face of the earth.
Artwork: Gospel scenes by Georges Rouault (1871-1958).
The first reading for this Third Sunday of Lent gives us a lot to think about. We are all familiar with this passage, having heard it many times. In the Hebrew bible these aren't called the Commandments, but are simply the "Ten Words." Perhaps that can change how we hear and respond to them, not as mere laws and regulations, but more as a way to understand God and what He wants for us. They tell us what God hates and rejects – and what we should as well.
The first of these words or commandments is the greatest. There is only one real God, and we must reject all false gods. To understand the importance of this commandment we only need to consider what did the idols of the Hebrews’ neighbors have their worshippers do? Perform human sacrifice, even of their own children; participate in orgies and fornication; perform magic rituals to hopefully control the idol gods and bind them to human desires. They mistake matter for the divine spirit, mistake nature for the creator of nature.
All of this kind of idol worship, albeit by other names, is alive and well in our own time. So getting back to basics truly does start here, with the first commandment. In the Gospel of St John, Jesus’ miracles are called signs; They are meant to show Jesus' glory, his true identity and that he has come from God. In this week’s passage from that Gospel, Jesus performs a healing of an injured, compromised space, not of a sick person. Jesus’ dramatically clears out of the temple, and after this the authorities want him to provide a "sign" to back up what he is doing and saying. Jesus is in Jerusalem inside the temple where He and the disciples and their fellow Jews all went to worship. That temple built by Herod in Jerusalem would be right up there with the greatest Christian churches of today. Herod was not a religious person, but he built a temple not only to please the Jews but to make Jerusalem a destination city, a place that people would come to from all over the world and worship, admire his power and spend their money.
We cannot underestimate the importance of this event told about in today’s Gospel to what happens to Jesus in the days of Holy Week. Jesus was from way up north of Jerusalem, from Galilee. There we hear a lot about him arguing with the Pharisees. The Pharisees lived all over Palestine, and they believed that scrupulously following not just the 10 but all the 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law was what God was most interested in. The Sadducees, however, were all about the temple and its rituals and liturgy. They thought what God was most interested in was people coming to visit Him in the temple to offer Him all sorts of animal sacrifices. So the Sadducees lived mostly in and around Jerusalem, because that’s where the temple was. And because peace and security was necessary for people to travel, the Sadducees had to be very cooperative with and get along with the Romans who maintained these safe conditions for travel and business. And the Romans depended on the Sadducees to keep things calm and peaceful in Palestine, the southeastern frontier of their empire. Therefore the Sadducees had a lot of power and influence. Jesus didn’t get into arguments or conflict with them until He came to Jerusalem, which he did only twice as an adult.
We hear about him today on one of these visits and he makes a big impression on his visit to the great Temple. First he gets everyone’s attention not by teaching or by performing miracles of healing, but by an action of seeming violence. He makes a whip, and drives out all the sellers of sacrificial animals, all the money changers, who exchanged foreign currency for a profit and were like pawn brokers, taking whatever the poor had of value and turning it into cash at a discount so they could buy an animal to sacrifice. He turns over their tables, spilling their money onto the floor. You can just imagine the chaos, the noise, the frantic merchants, the bellowing animals. An interesting note, however: he doesn’t violently attack those who sold doves, he only reproves them and tells them to take their business elsewhere. Doves were the least expensive creatures bought by the poorest of the poor. Then once Jesus has gotten everyone’s attention, he makes a cryptic, shocking statement about destroying the temple. Jesus words and actions seem to threaten the safety of the city for tourists, the sacredness of the temple for worshippers, and surely the income of the priests.
Jesus was acting as a prophet. We usually only think of their words, but the prophets performed dramatic actions as well. Jeremiah, an unpopular prophet with the king, broke a hole through the walls of Jerusalem and moved his whole household out through it to show what was going to happen to the city. So Jesus’ words and actions in the temple jeopardize the autonomy of Jerusalem, that was supposed to be kept calm and peaceful. It’s no surprise that after this the priests and Sadducees wanted to kill him. All this time, it hadn’t really mattered what the Pharisees thought about Jesus, or even Herod the king of Galilee who had killed John the Baptist. Jesus had now crossed the wrong crowd, and it ultimately cost him His life.
We may think of the events at Selma, Alabama fifty-six years ago. Martin Luther King Jr’s words and actions there cost him his life fifty-three years ago this April. Fifty-three years ago, the positions of RFK cost him his life. Many outspoken Russian opponents of President Putin have lost their lives in recent years. Environmental activists in Brazil and Central America who opposed rich and powerful business interests have been assassinated. It is the way of the world. Jesus word’s and actions teach us what idols we are supposed to avoid. He teaches us because, as those last words of the Gospel today tell us, Jesus understands human nature very well, only too well.
We are the Church, the people of God, the house of God, we are individual temples of the Holy Spirit; we are to scrupulously avoid exploiting the weaknesses of others. We are not to make religion or spiritual things merchandise to be bought or sold. We are not to look for pieces of God’s business for ourselves. Our life is not about living up to some deal with God, and paying up with slaughtered animals, cash donations or anything else. God cannot be bought and cannot be sold. Salvation and grace are not commodities we receive in exchange for keeping commandments. They are God’s free gifts of love to us, to be freely received by our loving back.
I thank God that as a priest I don’t have to slaughter any animals. We have managed to get past that. I wouldn’t want to be a priest if I had to do that. But living up to the rest of what Jesus asks is a big challenge for all of us, as it was for Jesus’ contemporaries. Profit making, taking advantage of the weaknesses of others, exchanging spiritual and material merchandise, making deals: this is a big part of our human lives, especially here in America. And most challenging for us is to be aware of the poor and suffering, the disadvantaged, those so often taken advantage of, all of whom live out of our sight, in neighborhoods we never go. It is a challenge for us to stand up for them.
Of course all of us are poor in some way, in some virtues. We suffer from some loss or psychological pain, some physical ailment or imperfection. We are disadvantaged in some skill or another. But Jesus’ mission, his actions and words make it very clear. He said so himself: he came not for the healthy and righteous, but for the poor, those who recognize their own poverty, the disadvantaged and those deprived of the goods of this world. He challenges us who are healthy and righteous, especially during Lent to follow Him and apply our words and actions to help them, to save them from their suffering. He challenges us to recognize and admit our spiritual poverty, our spiritual hunger that we are futilely feeding with worldly stuff. He challenges us to act in solidarity with the poor and wretched refuse of this world. We fast from food and give up things we like so we can feel their hunger and emptiness and so be more easily moved to act for them just as He did. The Church calls this the preferential option for the poor.
Prior Michael Brunner serving as principal celebrant at morning conventual Mass
It may not make a lot of sense to us, and perhaps it seems unfair that we should suffer or we may think it’s futile, too little resources against such big problems. But the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than all human strength. The poor we will always have with us so that we always have many opportunities, so we can always act like Jesus Christ and love them. The world needs our zeal for Jesus’ mission and His good news. If we begin our good works according to God’s word and his will, God himself will bring them to successful conclusion. The Holy Spirit working through us can and will renew the face of the earth.
(Video link to Fr. Michael's reflection for Lent, Sunday of Week IV, March 14, 2021)