Lent 3 Cleansing the Temple
During Lent, I have been reading 40 Day Journey with Parker Palmer, a collection of daily readings taken from the writings of a noted Quaker author and educator. The readings keep directing us to look at the contradictions or paradoxes in our lives. Some of these are irresolvable, such as the tension we all feel between our desire for security and our desire for challenge and adventure. Others are real hypocrisies, as when we project an image of hard-edged arrogance to cover feelings of deep insecurity inside.
Yesterday morning, I read a particularly challenging meditation on how we sacrifice our authentic selves to our need to be “successful” and accepted. And then last night, my colleague, Dianne, and I led a class on “Practicing Prayer”. The focus last night was on “Lectio Divinia”, the practice of praying while reading scripture.
My part of the class was to lead everyone in an experience of “entering the story”. So, I read to them the gospel for this Sunday, John’s account of the cleansing of the Temple. I suggested that they imagine Jesus entering the Temple of their own lives: the sum total of their environment, relationships, values, memories, etc. and imagine him getting angry about something there with a holy, loving anger, because whatever it is, it is hurting them – destroying what they were meant to be as the image of God.
Several people reported difficulty in experiencing this and I can imagine several reasons for that – not least because we often equate Jesus’ love with gentleness. But, I had tried this same meditation myself in the afternoon as I was preparing for the class and found it immensely meaningful. There is a deep contradiction in my life between who I pretend to be on the outside and who I am on the inside. And I could see Jesus entering my life and heading straight for that contradiction.
What surprised me is that, like the priests in the Temple, I challenged Jesus – in a sense, asking him what right he had to destroy this thing in me. And what surprised me even more are the words that escaped my lips: “I’m doing this for you.”
I was deeply shaken by this experience. I realized that many of the worst things in my life are there because I think, somehow, that Jesus wants me to be that way. I am, after all, called to project an image of holiness, caring, and faithful hopefulness even when I don’t particularly feel any of those things.
It does no good to deplore that fact or to go into all the contradictions between who I really am and what I pretend to be retailing them for public consumption. Most religious people, and especially clergy, will recognize them. The point is that the anger of Christ was directed precisely at those things in me – even at the “sacrifices” I have been making to Him and for His sake.
That is precisely the issue in John’s account of Jesus cleansing the Temple. The money changers and sellers of animals were making “sacrifice” possible. But the real sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit that leads to a more authentic life and more authentic discipleship.
