homily notes: third sunday of lent

If I asked you the question "why did God make you?" I bet some of you would have a very specific answer. It's an old answer, from the Baltimore Catechism, but I think it's still a good one.


So why did God make us? To know, love and serve him in this life, and to be happy with him in the next.


It's a sort of summary of what we know about God. That's what everything comes down to - the point of everything we do and believe.


If we understand that - why God made us - we can make sense of what he does and what he tells us.


That applies to our first reading today. We've all heard the ten commandments before - but what do they mean? What's the point?


Does God just make these rules because he feels like it?


If we look at how they're set up, we can see the design behind them: they're split between two kinds of commandments - ones that tell us how to relate to God and others that tell us how to treat other people. 


Notice that the first three, the ones about God, are the most detailed. They come first because our relationship with God has to be the foundation of everything in our lives. If we are not giving God what he deserves, we won't be able to truly fulfill the other seven commandments.


That's the spirit of the ten commandments - if we worship God alone, if we don't put anything else ahead of him, and if we give him even our time, then we will be able to treat the other people in our lives the way they deserve to be treated.




This is the philosophy behind Jesus' actions in the gospel.


Passover was a time when Jews from all over the empire made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They came and offered sacrifices in celebration of God delivering them from slavery in Egypt.
To make it easier on the pilgrims, animals were on sale at the temple. That way they didn't have to bring their own animals with them - especially if they lived far away from Jerusalem. The money-changers were there because the temple authorities wouldn't except Roman coins. The pilgrims would exchange these for other currency to use to buy sacrificial animals.


None of this was against the law. All of it was in place to help people carry out the law.


Jesus reacted the way he did because this system had overshadowed actually worshipping God.


The temple was the center of the Jewish religion. It was built according to God's design and represented the presence of God dwelling among his people.


Jesus cleansed the temple to restore it to its rightful purpose - not just to fulfill a meaningless rule, but to place God first, to make him the center. As we've heard in the readings of Lent, Jesus came and fulfilled all of God's promises in the Old Testament. He also comes as the fulfillment of the Law. Through Jesus, the law isn't just an external set of rules, but it's something in our hearts that guides us closer to God.


The season of Lent gives us a chance to cleanse the temples of our hearts.


By our fasting, prayer and almsgiving, we clear out the stuff that has pushed God to the side. Maybe it's materialism, maybe it's disordered attachment to pleasure - whatever it is, it's taken the place of God in the temple of our heart. We need to allow Jesus to drive it out so that the worship of God can come first.


We're made to know, love and serve God. That's who we are. That's the fuel we run on.


Let's put him in the center - and be truly alive.