HOLY WEEK - CLEANSING THE TEMPLE

John 2: 13 - 25

If your experience was similar to mine - when you first heard this story of Jesus cleansing the temple, you might have cheered at the fact that Jesus really was human like us. Can you imagine he actually got angry? - in fact, enraged? How justified I would feel putting myself on the same par with Jesus and letting myself off the hook with my negative behavior. This episode is NOT about anger at all, but leads us to the core of what Lent is all about - namely, TRANSFORMATION.

This story of the cleansing of the temple is a story with a sense of urgency. Jesus is actually saying: "No more business as usual. There is not much time left. Be converted, be cleansed because the reign of God is at hand."

Among the most poignant expressions in the gospel are the two final sentences of this reading: "For his part, Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all. He needed no one to give him testimony about human nature; he was well aware of what was in the human heart!"

These people were using the façade of the temple to do just about anything they wished. They felt that being in a so-called holy place could justify their actions. But, the fact was that the temple was anything but a holy place where one could come into contact with God. How well Jesus knew that the purpose behind the temple was so that they could fix God in a specific place and control access to Him. Instead of a life-giving, meaningful relationship with God, the religious leaders began to pride themselves on rituals, rules, regulations and laws and how perfectly they kept these. Looking good became more important than loving God and others.

This is what had to go. This is what had to be overturned. The actions of Jesus are those of someone who is doing something dramatic to get our attention, doing something that makes us say to Him: "Who are you? Why are you doing these things?" Of course, He is asking us the same questions through this story: "Who are you? What are you doing.?"

How often you and I fall into the same trap of seeking perfection instead of seeking God. What needs to be overturned is our belief that we have to be perfect before God can love us. Why do we work so hard to achieve what we already have - God's unconditional love? False religion would lure us into focusing on our flaws and our faults or forget that God gazes on us at this precise moment and loves us as we are!

When we get sucked into constant self-criticism, we lose God's perspective of us and forget our goodness. We also lose sight of the fact that it is God who helps us to grow, who transforms us - but we're so busy trying to change ourselves that we put God on the unemployment line - let's allow God to do God's work. - He knows best what needs change in us.

When our goal is to "be perfect" we can thrash around in our flaws and faults and forget about loving others and sharing our gifts with them. We allow the desire to be perfect to oppress us and keep us in bondage to self-preoccupation. The spotlight is on ME - and God recedes into the background. Who do we think we are to foster an image of a tyrant God who demands perfect behavior of us when God's own description-is one who loves us JUST AS WE ARE, NOT AS WE OR OTHERS THINK WE OUGHT TO BE. Listen carefully and etch these words on your heart - this is God speaking to you personally: "I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have carved your name on the palm of my hands."

It is precisely these misleading and false concepts we have that are the tables that Jesus wants to overturn. Can we use this season of Lent to discover beliefs and attitudes that I carry around that are not life-giving and need to be overturned and cleansed?

I conclude with this prayer: It is time for me to see the flaws of myself and stop being alarmed. It is time for me to halt my drive for perfection and to accept my blemishes and faults after all, God does! It is time for me to receive slowly evolving growth - the kind that comes in God's own good time and pays no heed to my panicky pushing for perfection. It is time for me to embrace my humanness and to love my incompleteness. It is time for me to cherish the unwanted, to welcome the unknown, to treasure the unfulfilled. If I wait to be perfect before I love myself I will always be unsatisfied and ungrateful. If I wait until all the flaws, chips, and cracks disappear I will be the cup that stands on the shelf and is never used.