"WE PROCLAIM CHRIST CRUCIFIED."

Third Sunday in Lent, Year B. 1 Cor.1:22-25; John 2:13-25.

AIM: To show that Jesus, who overturned the tables of the Temple money changers, also overturns our ideas and expectations, replacing them with “the foolishness of the cross.” 

          Was Jesus always meek and mild? The gospel we have just heard shows him angry. Why? There is no suggestion that the money changers whose tables Jesus overturned were corrupt. Both they, and the people who sold the animals used in the Temple sacrifices, performed useful and necessary functions. To understand Jesus’ anger, we must turn back to the criticism which the prophets made repeatedly of the way their people worshiped God. In cleansing the Temple Jesus was acting out this criticism in a particularly dramatic way.

          Amos, for instance, the first prophet to write down his message, represents God saying to the people of his day: “I hate, I spurn your pilgrim feasts; I will not delight in your sacred ceremonies. When you present your sacrifices and offerings, I will not accept them.” (5:21). 

          Repeatedly the prophets emphasized that God was not interested in the offering of material things. He desired the worshipers’ hearts and minds. To come before God with prayers and material offerings, while living in disobedience to God’s law — lying, cheating, stealing, and oppressing the poor — was worse than useless, the prophets said. It cried to heaven for vengeance. That was the consistent message of all Israel’s prophets. (Cf. Hos. 6:6; Mic. 6:6-8; Is. 1:11-17; Jer.7:21-23)  

          Hollywood has given us a modern example of what the prophets were talking about in the first Godfather film. Toward the end, a baby is being baptized with the old Latin prayers. As the priest repeats over and over the words “Per vitam aeternam,” “for eternal life,” –the actor Al Pacino, is standing piously by the font, holding a candle. Meanwhile the camera pans to show us Pacino’s enemies being shot down all over the city by his henchmen. This is exactly what the prophets condemned: piety accompanied by violence and injustice.

          The demand of the Jewish prophets for pure worship is the background for Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple. In a dramatic way Jesus was reminding people that worship can never be a form of barter with God: ‘I’ll give you this, Lord, if you give me that.’ Worship is something we owe to God apart from any thought of reward.

          How important that lesson is for us Catholics. We owe God our worship on Sunday, as well as the worship of obedience to him in daily life, simply because God made us. God has given us all that we are and have, sin excepted. Even the things we have gained through our own initiative and hard work, we have only because of the gifts and abilities which God has given us. One day we shall have to give an account of all the gifts God has lavished on us. We owe God our worship also in thanksgiving for the greatest of all his gifts to us: the gift of his Son, who shed his life’s blood to pay the price of our sins.

          The gospel writer is referring to Jesus’ death when he quotes the words of Psalm 69: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The words refer to Jesus’ zeal for the offering of pure, spiritual worship in the Temple, the earthly dwelling place of Jesus’ heavenly Father. But the words have a deeper meaning as well. Zeal for his Father’s house would consume Jesus in a literal sense, by leading to his crucifixion. Enraged by Jesus’ attack on their religious observances, the religious leaders of his people delivered him to death.

          Jesus was also referring to his death when he spoke of the Temple being destroyed and “raised up” in three days. His hearers naturally assumed that he was talking about the building in which they were standing. In reality, the gospel tells us, “he was speaking about the temple of his body.” As God’s Son, Jesus is himself the dwelling place of God in a way that no building of wood or stone could ever be. After he was raised from the dead, the gospel says, Jesus’ friends recalled Jesus’ words, and for the first time understood their real meaning.

          Jesus’ overturning of the money changers’ tables was typical of his whole message and ministry. Jesus is constantly overturning worldly standards and expectations. This is Paul’s theme in our second reading. People who demand a “sign” before they will believe, Paul writes, find this demand overturned by Jesus Christ. He does not offer any sign strong enough to compel faith. Jesus’ greatest signs were the empty tomb of Easter morning, and his appearances to his friends thereafter. Neither then, nor since, did those signs compel anyone to believe in Jesus Christ.    

          It is the same, Paul writes in the second reading, with people who expect Jesus to impress them with some special “wisdom”: subtle arguments, deep philosophy. Jesus overturns that expectation too. Instead of wisdom Jesus offers what Paul calls the “foolishness” of the cross: the symbol not of success but of humiliating failure. “We proclaim Christ crucified,” Paul writes. A crucified Lord drives out the longing we all have for a success story, as surely as Jesus drove from his Father’s house those who were encouraging people to use worship, which is the offering of grateful praise to God, as a form of barter with God. 

          To all those, however, who are willing to have their ideas and expectations and demands overturned, this crucified Lord is, Paul writes, “the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”