Like the desert (as we heard on 1 st Sunday of Lent) and the mountain (we heard Last Sunday), the Temple is a place of special encounter with God. But today, we do not see the glorious face of Jesus; we see his angry face. Jesus is not happy with what he sees - precisely because - the way the Temple worship has been organized - no longer reflects God’s original idea of a worshipping community.
Some people have a hard time with our gospel reading today. They have difficulty reconciling the Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple with the Jesus who said: “Turn the other cheek and Love your enemies.
Jesus is God and all holy and without sin. How could He get so angry?
Some knowledge of the design of the Temple will help us here. The Temple had five sections or courts: (1) holy of holies where the Ark of the Covenant was (2) court of priests (3) court of Israel (4) court of women (5) court of Gentiles. The design made room for everybody in the house of God. It was a universal house of God “for all the nations” where every man or woman on earth would find a place in which to pray.
But the Jewish leaders forgot that and thought that it was meant only for them. So, they decided to turn the court of the Gentiles into a “holy” market place for selling the animals required for sacrifice and for exchanging money.
You could bring Roman money as far as the court of the Gentiles but not into the other four courts. The court of Gentiles was no longer regarded as part and parcel of the house of God, and so it had become a market place, pure and simple. Now it was this court of Gentiles that Jesus cleansed.
In so doing - he was making the point that the Gentile section was just as holy as the Jewish sections. God is God of all and not God of a select group. Like the Jews of the time of Jesus, some Christians today still think that God belongs to them alone and not to others as well.
Jesus was mad with the religious establishment of his day because the religious leaders had put religiosity over morality, and they had put particularity over universality; exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
Our text today brings us face to face with the truth that there is such a thing as a healthy anger. There is no disputing the fact that Jesus was angry when he cleansed the temple.
What we need to understand is that anger itself is neither good nor bad, neither moral nor immoral. Its moral quality depends on the reason behind it – meaning - what drove the person to be angry and the way it is expressed. It is possible to be thoroughly angry and thoroughly Christian at the same time. In fact, there are times and circumstances in which it would be utterly inappropriate, even unchristian, not to be angry.
Anger itself is not a sin. Be angry but do not sin in your anger. Do not let your anger turn into resentment and bitterness. Do not let negative thinking take over. Change the negative into positive. Think of anger as a red flag God is waving to get your attention. Pray for the people and situations that make you angry. In the words of the serenity prayer: Accept the things you cannot change. Change the things you can. Pray for wisdom to know the difference.
What is the difference between right anger and wrong anger? The critical factor is – self- interest. Do not be angry just because your ego was hurt. The most evident about the anger of Jesus is that it was never motivated by self-interest. He got deeply angry at the mistreatment of other people. .. abuse of other people.
There were merchants in the temple selling sacrificial birds and animals, but the purchases had to be made with temple money. So the people had to exchange their money for temple money.
This was the business of money changers… and the rate of exchange was almost always to the advantage of the money changers… a religious rip-off, so to speak.
People were coming to the temple with broken hearts and lives. They came seeking understanding, comfort, forgiveness. At such times people can be highly vulnerable. The temple merchants knew that and took advantage of the situation to make unfair profits for themselves.
And so - when Jesus saw what was happening, He got angry. It was then that he made a whip out of ropes and drove the animals and merchants from the temple.
Jesus got angry at man’s inhumanity to man.
Today, we also hear about bullying or a dictator enslaving his subjects and about abuse of the human rights of people.
When people take unfair advantage of other people, it is time for Christian people to get mad.
That presupposes that we care about people. Jesus’ anger was an emotional reaction to the abuse of people whom he loved.
Just think of this - Let someone mistreat a member of your family – a scam artist cheating elderly parents out of their life’s savings; a pusher getting your son or daughter hooked on drugs; people disrespecting your family. How would you react to that kind of thing?
Your anger would be because of your love for the people who had been hurt or being abused. That is what Jesus experienced. He loved those people who were being ripped off in the name of religion, and he simply could not stand by and watch it happen.
If you and I are not angry about some of the injustices occurring in our world today, that probably says more about our lack of love than anything else.
The Gospel calls us to develop or grow in our spiritual muscle so to speak and build character that will enable us to forget about ourselves and care about others.
Someone has said: “You can measure a person by the size of the things that make him or her mad.” Again, “You can measure a person by the size of the things that make him or her mad.”
Let us hope and pray that in our life, in your life and mine, those things that make us mad – are not petty things – but that those things that make us mad are big things, unselfish things and let us hope and pray to learn to make a healthy use of our capacity for anger.
Please always remember – keep this in mind: It is okay to be angry but do not sin in your anger.
God bless…
3 rd Sunday of Lent
John 2:13-25
