What If...

Gospel: Luke 19: 45-48

In our age of activism and zealotry, today's story of Jesus cleansing the Temple is a popular one, used to justify all sorts of behavior and postures by people hard pressed to come up with another Gospel text to know.  But what if this story isn't about what we think it is? This action of Jesus was a small one in a very large complex.  Its impact was more symbolic than substantive.  Moreover, the Temple had already been destroyed by the time this Gospel story was first heard.

Jesus had made it clear - in line with the larger biblical tradition - that the true temple of God is not a stone building, but rather the heart and soul of the human person.  Each person is a temple where God desires to dwell.  Seen in this light, this action of Jesus is really about the cleansing of our own temples and how we have made our own lives a den of thieves and an unjust marketplace.  This story challenges us to consider our own temple and what needs cleansing therein.

It is easy to love this story when it is about somebody else or about some institutional sin.  It is much less likeable when we have to apply it to ourselves and our own sin.  How often is that the case with scriptures in general!  Scripture is designed to invoke moral and spiritual reflection and change within ourselves.  It is not to be used as a weapon against others.  So today let us attend to the cleansing within God's temple - the heart and soul God created within us for divine indwelling and communion.