Just a word before we go...Third Sunday of Lent...March 3, 2024

Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  Today’s readings ask us, “ who do we say that we are?”  The question of identity arises from both the giving of the 10 Commandments to the cleansing of the temple.

The Commandments set before us guideposts for ethical living, for a respectful, orderly and healthy society, based upon relationships with God and neighbor.  Even our relationship with time is addressed, with the acknowledgment of the need for a sabbath, for a period of rest, reflection, and the renewing of divine and human relations.

The temple area in the time of Jesus had become a marketplace.  Ironically, some of the activity was necessary for the functioning of the temple, as with the required temple tax that had to be paid with temple coins, necessitating the presence of moneychangers.  Or the selling of animals to be sacrificed...who was going to go all over Jerusalem to find an unblemished lamb or a pair of turtle doves? But did this activity need to be transacted in the temple precincts? And was it necessary to rob the Gentiles of the one place they might enter to pray?

We have to assume that the situation Jesus encountered did not begin like this, with people shouting, cattle bellowing, sheep bleating, coins clanging...probably a slow, gradual, subtle takeover occurred as market stalls became bigger and spilled over into the Court of the Gentiles.

Likewise, the ways of the world invade the Church gradually, subtly, never intentionally, and usually in service to the Church and her mission.  The challenge for us as a community, as a parish, is to guard against a marketplace mentality.  We need to find creative ways to keep our priorities straight, to guard against budgets becoming more like bank statements and less like theological statements; we need to live in creative tension between what we need to worship and gather as we do, and what stands in the way of that.  This is true of our lives as well.

Our identity as Christians is formed by what we believe, by what we practice.  The Commandments, the Beatitudes, the person of Jesus Christ, form the foundation of our faith.  The question we have to ask ourselves is this:  Does the living of our lives give witness to or contradict what we say we believe? Who do we say we are in the living of our lives?