Third Sunday of Lent

Reading I
Ex 20:1-17 or 20:1-3, 7-8, 12-17

In those days, God delivered all these commandments:
"I, the LORD, am your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
You shall not have other gods besides me.
You shall not carve idols for yourselves
in the shape of anything in the sky above
or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
you shall not bow down before them or worship them.
For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God,
inflicting punishment for their fathers' wickedness
on the children of those who hate me,
down to the third and fourth generation;
but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation
on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.

"You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.
For the LORD will not leave unpunished
the one who takes his name in vain.

"Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.
Six days you may labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD, your God.
No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter,
or your male or female slave, or your beast,
or by the alien who lives with you.
In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
the sea and all that is in them;
but on the seventh day he rested.
That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

"Honor your father and your mother,
that you may have a long life in the land
which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife,
nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass,
nor anything else that belongs to him."

or

In those days, God delivered all these commandments:
"I, the LORD am your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
You shall not have other gods besides me.

"You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.
For the LORD will not leave unpunished
the one who takes his name in vain.

"Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.
Honor your father and your mother,
that you may have a long life in the land
which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife,
nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass,
nor anything else that belongs to him."

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 11

R. (John 6:68c) Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul;
The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
giving wisdom to the simple.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the command of the LORD is clear,
enlightening the eye.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true,
all of them just.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
They are more precious than gold,
than a heap of purest gold;
sweeter also than syrup
or honey from the comb.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.

Reading II
1 Cor 1:22-25

Brothers and sisters:
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Gospel
Jn 2:13-25

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.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
"What sign can you show us for doing this?"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."
The Jews said,
"This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?"
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.

While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,
many began to believe in his name
when they saw the signs he was doing.
But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
He himself understood it well.

COMMENTARY

The Decalogue (or Ten Commandments) is also found in Deut 5:6-21 with slight changes.  Deuteronomy gives a different reason for the observance of the Sabbath and in the last commandment places the neighbor’s wife before the neighbor’s house.  The numeration of the commandments differs slightly in the tradition; Anglican, Greek and Reformed traditions reckon the prohibitions against false worship as two, whereas the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions count them as one and divide the last commandment into two.  2-6 is a strong assertion that Yahweh is the only deity for Israel.  Since he defeated their former lord and master, he and no other deity is their God.  Verses 3-5a forbid images, which in the ancient Near East, were the ordinary means of encounter between god and worshiper.  Verse 3 refers to the statues of deities in the sanctuary; excavations have revealed shrines with several images of gods in them.  However, no certain image of Yahweh has so far been found at any Israelite site.

Sin in the Bible often denotes the act and the consequences of the act at the same time.  These consequences are sometimes described as directly sent by God and sometimes as the natural result of human actions.  Those that reject Yahweh after having accepted him, commit a sin that will not go unpunished.  Verse 6 is the positive side of this: those who love, who keep his commandments, will experience the divine kindness, Yahweh’s covenantal love; it is a passionate commitment to his people. 

The Sabbath is a peculiarly Israelite institution; at least no satisfactory parallel in other cultures has so far been discovered.  To sanctify it means to set it apart, to avoid doing the work of the weekday on it.

Regarding killing, only illegal killing is prohibited.  The commandment is better translated into “Thou shalt not commit homicide.”  Israel had the death penalty.  Kidnapping is prohibited; ordinary theft is forbidden by the last commandment.  Use of the word hāmad in the commandment “Thou shalt not covet” actually means conspiracy or taking steps to steal.

Paul assures the community of Corinth that to “ask for signs” or to demand miracles is in fact a refusal to trust God and camouflages contentment with the status quo.  By seeking wisdom, they construct a religious system, the demands of which they are prepared to accept.  God’s foolishness is a crucified Christ, who is refused by Jews because of their messianic expectations and by Gentiles because of their rationalism.  Even though the gospel is addressed to everyone, Paul stresses that those who have accepted the gospel are the ones who are called.  For Paul, the authentic humanity of Jesus makes visible God’s intention for the human race and radiates an attractive force that enables response.  God’s intention is thus a paradox: his ways are not the ways of human beings.

John’s Gospel departs from the other three (Synoptics) by placing this episode of the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry rather than as the cause of official hostility against Jesus during the passion.  Here, Jesus’ authority to act as he does is challenged immediately, whereas the Synoptics have some time elapse between the incident and the challenge.  The charge that Jesus predicted destruction of the Temple appears as part of the false testimony against Jesus (Mark 14:58).  John has reinterpreted this tradition to apply it to Jesus’ resurrection.  Its criticism of the Temple prepares for the saying on “true worshipers” in 4:21.  A sharp attack on the Temple provides a more plausible occasion for the authorities to arrest Jesus than the raising of Lazarus, which the evangelist attributes to Jesus’ death.

John mentions sheep and oxen along with the doves, however he addresses the dove sellers separately.  Unlike the Synoptic Gospel’s, Jesus’ justification for his actions is not a Scripture citation, but a saying directly from the Lord.  “his disciples remembered the word of Scripture”: Remembering is a technical term in John for the process by which the community came to see Jesus as the fulfillment of Scripture after the resurrection.  They supply an OT citation from Psalm 69:10, though the evangelist has changed the present tense of the Psalm text into the future, probably thinking of the bitter hostility that is to erupt between Jesus and the Jews.

The request for a sign appears to be closer to the question of Jesus’ authority to act as he has.  Jesus’ answer is formulated as an enigmatic revelation saying that could not have been intelligible in the situation from which the story stems.  As is typical in the Gospel of John, the authorities misunderstand and presume that Jesus has threatened to destroy the magnificent Temple, which Herod had begun around 20 BC, and on which construction continued until shortly before the Jewish revolt (ca. AD 62; cf. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15.11.1 §380).  Taken literally, Jesus’ saying is absurd.  The evangelist clarifies for the reader the symbolic meaning of Jesus’ saying: the new temple will be Jesus’ resurrected body.

REFLECTION

This week’s readings are asking us to take a good look at what God has asked of us with regard to living our lives and with regard to our worship. The Book of Exodus clearly defines what God expects of his people. As a way to achieve this, God hands the Ten Commandments to Moses as the rule for living as his chosen people. It must be made clear that these are Commandments and not suggestions, and they rule every aspect of our lives including our spiritual life, which becomes visible in our worship practices. Jesus was very aware of this when he entered the Temple in Jerusalem that fateful day in John’s Gospel. The cleansing of the Temple is in effect a call for all of us to reexamine our lives based on God’s will.

Above everything else, God’s law is founded on his divine love. The relationship that God establishes with his people, including you and me, is one of the lover and the beloved. In a relationship such as this, what should move us is a desire to please the other. We cannot take advantage of our relationship with another, especially God, to fulfill our own needs and wants. This would be contrary to the law of love and surely not something God as the ultimate lover would do. That is why Jesus was angered by what he saw in the Temple. In his eyes, this love relationship between God and his people had been defiled. The law that should have been fulfilled out of love had become a heavy burden on the people because those to whom the law was entrusted used it for their own benefit and greed. Fulfilling the obligation to offer sacrifice to God had become big business to the priests in the Temple and the people of Israel perceived it in just such as way. God’s house, whether it be Herod’s Temple or our parish should be a place of worship, and cannot under any circumstance become a place of defilement of our relationship with God.

If a person commits himself or herself to someone because of what they can “get out of it” or because of “what’s in it for me”, that relationship is nothing more than prostituting oneself. In Jesus’ eyes, the Temple had been turned into a place of prostitution because worshiping God had become big business. We cannot allow the same thing to happen to us. Our worship of God must be genuine – it must be based on love. We cannot practice a penance or act of kindness because of what we think we can get out of it! It must be done out of love for God and as Christians, as faithful followers of Christ that is the only thing that should move us.
 

Biblical Sources:

New American Bible; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Hyatt, J. P., “Exodus”; Plastaras, J., “The God of Exodus”; Murphy-O’Connor, J., “St. Paul’s Corinth: Text and Archaeology”; Theissen, G., “The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth”; The Collegeville Bible Commentary; Barrett, C. K., “The Gospel According to John”; Brown, R. E., “The Community of the Beloved Disciple”; Schnackenburg, R., “The Gospel According to St. John”; Segovia, F. F., “Love Relationships in the Johannine Tradition”; Brown, Raymond E., S.S., “Introduction to the New Testament”; Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy (ed.) “The New Jerome Biblical Commentary”.

Reflection:

Deacon Lazaro J. Ulloa