Exodus 20:1-17

The Book of Exodus recounts how the Jews escaped from slavery in Egypt and made a covenant with God on Mt. Sinai. A covenant is a solemn agreement between two parties in which each promises something. God promises to accept the Israelites as his people; they must promise to keep the 10 Commandments.

1 Cor 1:22-25

Paul writes to his Corinthian converts about the difficulty in preaching a crucified Savior. To Jewish people who looked for a powerful Messiah, it seemed impossible that the Messiah would suffer a humiliating death. To Gentiles, it seemed absurd that such a person could be the savior of the world.

John 2:13-25

Bishop Untener's Homily

We shouldn't picture Jesus knocking tables over like someone in a bar room fight, or as though he went on a rampage. This was a symbolic action, the kind of thing prophets did when, for example, they would take a piece of pottery and break it to illustrate how Israel had broken the covenant with God. Jesus, in one small part of the Temple area, spilled some coins and turned some tables on their side and shooed away some animals. And he did it to teach that the Temple needed cleansing to make more room for God's presence there.

It's not hard to apply this to ourselves, for we are the temple of God. Paul says to the early Christians in Corinth, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" (3:16) Lent is a time when we cleanse this temple, something we have to do periodically.

It is something like spring cleaning. We clean all year round, of course. But there are times when we do heavy duty cleaning. We move the sofa in the living room, and other large pieces of furniture. We take down the curtains and clean them, wash the windows. When we do that we notice things we hadn't noticed before. We see how worn the carpet is because that part that was under the sofa looks so different. With the curtains down we notice that the windows need to be washed. And, with the curtains down and all that sunlight coming in, we see cracks in the paint on the walls that we hadn't seen before.

Lent is a time when we move the furniture in our lives, take down the curtains, wash the windows. It's not just a matter of getting rid of dirt. It's re-arranging things, finding ways to create more room, a neater space. We see ourselves differently, make more room for God in our lives.

Mary who was sinless had to do that. She had to change her mind a number of times along the way as she pondered God's word. Developments didn't always go as she expected and she had to come to a new way of seeing things. This very true when her son, Jesus, began his public ministry. And when he died… words could hardly describe what went on in her heart.

During Lent we open our hearts and minds to a fresh, deeper, fuller awareness of God within us, around us. We come to a deeper awareness of God's will for us.

Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving can have that effect. When we reduce our intake of food we discover what it is like for so many people in our world to go hungry all day. We reflect more deeply about life… and death. When we pray more intensely, our mind opens up to wider horizons. When we give things away, we create more space in our lives, more room for God, and we realize how much we depend on God...

This is the third Sunday of Lent. We've got plenty of Lent ahead of us and it's a good time to take stock of how we're doing and move forward with fresh energy. If we haven't been doing too well with our Lenten practices, we can draw a line right here, today, and make a new start. Lent isn't like a hitting streak for a baseball player - once it's broken it's over. Lent is a long season, and we have ups and downs, and we don't have to worry if our string has been broken. We can pick it right up again here and now.

I call all of us to renew the intensity of the traditional Lenten practices - fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. I call all of us to cleanse the temple with the same kind of energy that we have when we go about spring cleaning. I call all of us to take more seriously Paul's words: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"

Originally given on March 26, 2000