Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me. (Gospel of John 2: 13-17)
The gospel reading for the 3rd Sunday of Lent is on Jesus cleansing the Jerusalem temple, inviting us to reflect on the theme of anger. What are the things that get you angry, that irritate you, that make you upset? It may be dealing with drivers who cut in front of us. Or is it calling a government agency or a company’s customer service department and then endlessly waiting on hold as you are reminded, “Your call is very important to us”? Or it may be dealing with a plumber or electrician who shows up late, or starts the work and then does not show up for the next couple of weeks and does not even respond to your calls. Or perhaps it is dealing with children who are ungrateful?
Maybe we see injustice being done, people being disrespected or mistreated. We see lack of respect for life from conception to natural death: a few of them being abortion, capital punishment, human trafficking, physician assisted suicide. Or maybe a value or a principle that we hold so dear to our heart and we see that being rejected or no one cares about it anymore. We all have things that make us angry, sometimes very angry.
In the above gospel we read about Jesus getting angry. Jesus is shocked by the business and the transactions going on in the temple. Merchants were selling oxen, sheep, and doves for sacrifice in the temple. Money changers were there because people who came from all over the world had to exchange their money and get the Galilean shekel, the Jewish coin to pay the temple tax. For Jesus, the holy area had become “a marketplace.”
And Jesus was angry, not only because the Temple had become a “marketplace,” but also because he saw the injustice, the greed – and the poor and the powerless were being cheated and exploited. Jesus finds that the activity going on in the temple is unacceptable and he does something about it. He did not think if it was politically correct to do that or not or how civil and religious authorities would react. Often Jesus’ expression of anger is called the righteous anger.
There is a place for anger in our lives, if it is for the right reason, the righteous anger. As faithful Catholics who are invited to the healing ministry of Jesus through our medical professions, how do we respond when we see injustice or disrespect, or a value or a principle that we hold so dear to our heart is being rejected?
One of the responses can be to be silent like the authorities of Jesus’ time. They had been looking at this scene in the temple day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. While it may have upset some of them when they saw it the first time, they had become familiar, they got used to how things are – over time. And we too can become complacent.
Or like Jesus, the righteous anger can motivate us to do something about it: whether expressing it through writing, speaking, building awareness, educating ourselves and others and/or living out the gospel, Christian and moral values in our own personal and professional lives.
Fr. Thomas Iwanowski also reminds us that the above gospel challenges us to consider the many financial, religious, academic, social, governmental, cultural, political, and business institutions of which we are a part. And then to ask ourselves whether our involvement is making them better, more moral organizations or not?
This season of lent invites us to look at ourselves, the living temple. St. Paul reminds us that we are the temple of God, because God dwells in each one of us. May this season help us also to look at ourselves to see if our lives, our hearts have become places of selfishness, compromise, sarcasm, distrust, to which we have become used to, a “marketplace” that probably needs some cleaning, to make it a worthy and living temple of God.
