02 March 2024 – 3rd Sunday of Lent (Year B) (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Fabian Dicom

Just a heads up. My homily today will be a bit longer than my usual. I know what you are thinking – already normally it is a bit long, lagi long. It’s Lent, okay?

The covenant established by God with the people of Israel through the giving of the decalog, through the giving of the Ten Commandments is a profound affirmation of the bond between God and His chosen community. Now through this Covenant, God not only liberated them from slavery, from Egypt but also promised to guide them and provide for them as they journeyed to the Promised Land. And we know all this. And this was agreed by with their ancestor, Abraham. This Covenant formed the basis of their identity as a community, bound together by their relationship with God. This is very important. These words of the Covenant: I am your God, you are My people. I bind myself to you, I want you. I want you. So that relationship is pivotal in the Old Testament.

Now central to this covenant was the requirement outlined in the Ten Commandments for the people to recognise God as their only and one God. Living out this Covenant was through this. They were called to exclusive fidelity to the one God who had rescued them. And that is the first part of the Ten Commandments: I am your God and you shall have no other Gods, etc.

Deviation from that loyalty threatened the unity of the community. It was that serious as their connection with God was inseparable from their unity and cohesion as a people. The decalog also emphasised the importance of the people’s relationship with one another. And that is the second part: You shall not do this, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, etc.

The commitment to God was to be mirrored, to be mirrored in their treatment of fellow members of the community, reflecting love, reflecting respect and a recognition of each individual’s dignity and rights. So despite the promises of the Covenant, we know from the Old Testament stories, the people repeatedly failed to uphold their end of the agreement throughout their history. This breach led to a rupture in the Covenant Relationship. However, Jesus, the Word of God, the Son of Man, in Jesus, a New Covenant is offered, not only to the Jewish people but to all humanity.

Now this New Covenant extends the invitation to become God’s people, to become God’s children, both to the people of Israel and to the gentiles. Uniting them under the Fatherhood of the Creator, that everyone is the beloved son and daughter of the Father.

So we have Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem following His ministry in Galilee, it highlights the significance of this New Covenant, His dismay or disgust at the commercialisation or perhaps corporatisation of the temple (I am sure you are very familiar with the word corporatisation. Let us hope it is not happening in the church. Okay.), a sacred space meant for worship.

Now His dismay underscores the departure from the principles of the Old Testament. The disregard for the Commandment against worshiping other Gods and the exploitation of religious practices for profit plus the discrimination and deceiving of the people clearly calls for the need for a renewal of the Covenant Relationship.

Now, traditionally, the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers and the bird sellers, traditionally, is interpreted as a way to show His condemnation of using the temple for purpose of conducting business. The idea is that God’s temple is holy and should only be used for prayer and worship, kind of like a church.

Now this has given rise to various literal interpretations as well as perhaps even a code of conduct drawn up in various parishes on their decorum at Mass, in church, dress codes, or the emergence in some places of cry rooms, etc. Some have even questioned the legitimacy of selling food, articles, t-shirts, candles, flowers in the church grounds. 

Let us get this straight. On the surface, this interpretation may make some sense. However, it is entirely possible that this kind of understanding may be missing some facts that would change this understanding rather dramatically. In other words, it is not right if we interpret it that way.

Now, what is this? Jesus cleansing of the temple is depicted in all the Gospels. But understanding John’s version, the one that I read today, requires examining the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Now I just want to take Mark’s account. Jesus also does that, overturns tables, challenges the temple’s system but there He echoes Isaiah and Jeremiah’s prophetic rebukes:
He confronts the exclusive practice of the temple. Emphasising it’s intended role as a house of prayer for all nations. (Mark 11:17)
He says: My house shall be called the house of prayer for all nations. Isaiah 56:7
But He continues, you have made it a den of robbers. (Jeremiah 7:11) 

Now during His entire ministry, Jesus has been gathering the impure outcasts and physically disabled or maimed or even reached out to the gentiles. He expects the temple to embody this inclusive love. In Jesus’ day, David Garland (a commentator) writes:
In Jesus’ day, the temple had become a nationalistic symbol that served only to divide Israel from other nations.

It was exclusive. Further, there was no real place for the gentiles to do their worship. And by quoting Jeremiah 7, Jesus denounces the false security that the sacrificial cult greets. Jesus’ prophetic action and words attack a false trust in the value of the Temple’s sacrificial system. Again David Garland says:
The leaders of the people think they can rob widows or rob widows’ houses (it is in Mark 12;40) and then perform prescribed sacrifices according to the prescribed patterns, at the prescribed times, in the prescribed purity, in the prescribed sacred places and then to be safe and secure from all alarms. They are wrong, he said.

Let me explain to you some of the systems that work in the temple during that time.

The businessmen, the people who are selling there will ‘pakat’ with the religious people, the religious leaders. So both are in cahoots with one another. So when this poor man brings an offering to the temple, the religious leader or the priest will say ‘Not good’ even though it was good.

So what does the poor man or the normal person have to do? Get rid of it and buy from the traders there, marked up price. At least here the prices in the cafe are good. But here marked up price. And after they sell it, divide. The priest also gets money, the traders also get money but the poor man loses everything.

So you understand why Jesus was against this whole system.

Jesus’ attack on the moneychangers and bird sellers was much more than an attack on simple tradesmen. It was less about defiling the temple. The temple needed money, needed and commonly accepted money transaction. But this was more about attacking the power structure of the Jewish society at that time.

The den of thieves refers to the safe haven of the thieves, the Roman collaborators who ran the temple. The ruling Jewish class was dominated by the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Scribes. That ruling class had its base of operations in the temple.

And there was like a cartel. They had a big boss somewhere, like a ‘tai kor’ somewhere. It could have been a king or rich land owner, waiting to take all the land form the poor people. Not very different from what we have in Malaysia. Some had Roman connections. So when you have connections with the top people, nothing can be done to you. That is how they operated in the temple.

So Jesus’ teaching were mostly and consistently about social justice. It is not about keeping this church clean. It was about social justice. His teaching which are foundational or the foundation of the Catholic Social Teaching strongly oppose the system of governance of that time. And thereby, probably any system that creates an elite and powerful class that keeps the masses poor and powerless, for whatever reason.

So if we simply interpret the cleansing of the temple story in the traditional manner, all you have is a critic against defiling a holy place of worship. A physical structure made of stone. And it is terrible because the assumption is that somehow the source of all universe, God, the source of creation is going to be offended by a few businessmen. Seriously!

In John’s Gospel, Gospel of this evening, Jesus transcends traditional Israelite institutions, including the temple. He’s action foreshadows His own sacrificial death which fulfills the purpose of the temple sacrifice rather than directly quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah, John’s account emphasises Jesus’ zeal for His father’s house. His disciples remembering Psalm 69: Zeal for your house will consume me and ultimately it consumed Jesus, leading Him to his sacrificial death.

So finally, there comes an utterance, as we heard just now: Destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up. The authorities misunderstand. But the evangelist John hastens to explain that He was speaking of the temple of His body.  A meaning that would become evident after Easter. It forecast the whole Paschal Mystery.

So after the Resurrection, the full meaning of what Jesus did and said became clear to His followers. Jesus, the Risen Messiah, had taken the place of the temple. Jesus, the Risen Messiah, had taken the place of the temple and all it stood for. The center of God’s presence among His people no longer a place. It is henceforth a person. Jesus. The new sanctuary is the risen body of Jesus.

In this new temple dwells the fullness of the Spirit and that Spirit, my dear brothers and sisters, comes to you and me who believe, and it dwells with us so that we too in our turn become temples of God. No discrimination. All of us. All of us are temples of God.

We pray today that our personal lives, our life as a community reflect that salvific grace that we have inherited through the Paschal Mystery, we have inherited by Jesus’ death and resurrection, that we reflect the Spirit that dwells within. We pray for that.

That our Body, mind and spirit and the bodies, and minds and spirits of each and everyone here together reflect that sanctified cleansed temple, sanctified by the New Covenant, Jesus.

And by death we have the courage to be persons, we have the courage to be a community, we have a courage to be a parish, a church, a temple or temples that are inclusive, that promote and live the principles of integrity, that advocate social justice and equal opportunities for everyone.

And to have a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good of everyone.

For you and me are His beloved sons and daughters and He is our God.

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