God wants us to be inwardly genuine and penitent in our worship.
Just as Jesus cleansed the temple we have to take an internal inventory of where we stand. As we know, taking an internal inventory of our own lives is not comfortable, is it?
We all know that we have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.
We do not like taking those kinds of inventories because we might not always like what we find within ourselves.
Just as Jesus cleansed the temple within, He wants us to be clean within. He tore down the barriers that kept religion from being genuine in the temple. We have to remember that the Church is God’s house. We also have to remember that the church is a hospital for sinners and not a rest home for saints!
Only Jesus can get us back in sync with God. He reminds us that He is in control of the temple – His House. They thought that Jesus meant the temple that was built by human hands. They misunderstood because Jesus relates the meaning of the temple to be being His own body. Only after the resurrection did the disciples grasp that Jesus is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Only Jesus can forgive us, justify us, heal us, sanctify and save us and set us free for service in His Name.
This Sunday’s gospel reminds us of how the season of Lent calls us to take an inventory – an inward look at ourselves to see where God is in charge and where God needs to be in charge of the areas that we have not yielded to Him. We are called to be the church in the world. Like John the Baptist said, Jesus must become greater and we must become less!
Title: Jesus drives out the merchants; Date: 1973; Artist: JESUS MAFA; Country: Cameroon; Scripture: John 2:13-22; Notes: JESUS MAFA is a response to the New Testament readings from the Lectionary by a Christian community in Cameroon, Africa. Each of the readings was selected and adapted to dramatic interpretation by the community members. Photographs of their interpretations were made, and these were then transcribed to paintings. Permalink: https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48271 (Use this link to refer back to this image.)
