사순 제 3 주일 Fr. Don Webber 신부님 강론

We might admire individuals or groups who
see something wrong and commit themselves to putting it right. In our own
country various groups (American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International
USA, Southern Poverty Law Center, Sojourners, National Fair Housing Alliance,
etc.) have formed around many issues because they feel some injustice has been
done. Their passion for justice gives them the energy to pursue a significant
issue, even in the face of official indifference and stone walling. It is often
because they themselves have been personally affected by the issue in question.
It can take the passionate commitment of a few to bring home to all that there
are serious matters that need to be addressed.

Most of the Jews who used the Jewish temple
in Jesus’ day probably did not see any great problem with it. They had grown
up to the ways things were done in the Temple precincts. They accepted it and
went along with it. However, when Jesus went into the Temple, he saw it with
very different eyes. His Father’s house had become a
marketplace. What should be a place of worship had become a place of commerce.
In a daring symbolic action Jesus expressed God’s
displeasure at what the Temple had become.

In the gospel reading, Jesus showed himself
to be a disturber of the peace, because the peace he found in the temple was
not the peace of God. The risen Jesus continues to be a disturber of false
peace today. He continues to challenge ways of relating between people that are
not an expression of God’s purpose. He continues
to set himself against forms of worship that do not take God seriously. God
continues to inspire men and women to challenge systemic injustice.

The disruptive Jesus that the gospel reading
puts before us has not gone away. If we are open to the risen Lord’s presence in our lives, we will come to share his sense of
disturbance at all that is contrary to God’s intention,
whether that be in the church or in society in which we live or in it he larger
world. Taking on the task of disturbing people and situations that need
disturbing will often cost something. When the disciples saw Jesus acting
against the practices of the Temple, they remembered the words of Scripture, ‘Zeal for your house will devour me’. Jesus’ zeal to put right what was wrong literally devoured him; it put him
on a cross. Taking a stand for the values of God, the values that are expressed
in the Ten Commandments in today’s first reading,
will often carry a certain risk. Yet, this is the risk that the risen Lord asks
of us. The risen Jesus does not ask us to stand alone. We take our stand with
other believers. We witness together to the values of the Father as revealed in
the life, death and resurrection of his Son.

Paul states in today’s second
reading, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.” The stand
that Jesus took in the Temple could be considered foolish. He was setting
himself against powerful interest groups, which could only spell danger for
him. God may ask us to take a step that, from a merely human point of view, looks
foolish, and, yet, in reality is an expression of the wisdom of God.

When we take a stand against something, we
do so as sinners. In our efforts to put something right, we are aware that all
is probably not right in our own lives. The temple of our own lives will need
cleansing to some degree; how we speak and act does not always serve God’s purposes. This awareness will keep us humble as we try to give
expression in our lives to the Lord’s passion for the
values of God’s kingdom. The Spirit who inspires us to cry out Abba, Father, as
Jesus does, also works to bear rich fruit in our day to day lives, what Paul
calls the fruit of love, joy, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control. We could add also the fruit of a passion for justice and truth.