Cleansing of the Temple

Dear Friends, 

What are we to make of this scene in today’s Gospel? For the Scribes and Pharisees present, it became a cause for Jesus’ death. 

But what about us here today? Do we stand at a distance and view these happenings as if on a video? Or shall we walk with Jesus up the royal steps, across an open courtyard to stand next to Him at the entrance of the Court of Gentiles, i.e. as far as non-Jews can go.  

At first glance, standing there beside Jesus, we might not be conscious of the inappropriateness of what we see and hear and smell. It looks like an ordinary marketplace to us. 

The Court of Gentiles is indeed a marketplace. Sheep and oxen are herded in so that the rich can buy them for sacrifice. There are also doves available for the poor to purchase. It’s all so convenient! 

Haggling goes on. Deals are struck and the shady make out very well. Money changers hand over acceptable shekels in exchange for the hated Roman coins and money from foreign lands. 

The noise is constant and intense. 

Maybe our reaction to what we experience standing next to Jesus is distasteful, but we shrug our shoulders. Let someone else deal with this mess. It has nothing to do with me. We would pass it by, like litter on a highway. 

But what we see spread out before us is part of the culture of the times. Goods are easily accessible, and God does not seem to be in the mix. 

Whatever has happened to the sense in the people that hear God’s presence is celebrated? Here, people come to recommit themselves to live by the Word of God as is told in today’s first reading. It was as though people ceased to understand that what God wants is mercy, not sacrifice. 

Maybe we are not sure what to think as we stand there with Jesus, but He knows what to think and how to act. Jesus moves through the courtyard with all the energy of a vigorous man in His prime, convinced of the rightness of what He is doing. Frenzy is created among the bigger animals. Jesus releases the doves and topples tables, littering valuable coins across the dirty floor. 

Jesus knows there will be consequences for His actions, but Jesus does not waver. 

He does not waver as our savior either. He invites us to cleanse the temple of our own lives as we move toward Holy Week and Easter. What and who have allowed into our temple uninvited or perhaps casually invited into our temple that distract us from deepening faith and compassion toward others? 

Have we reduced worship to a set of externals without engaging our minds and hearts? 

In our own temple, can we shut off the outside noise of our culture and be quiet before God? Can we find peace in the embrace of God? 

Can we? 

Do we want to? 

What does Jesus see and do as He stands at the entrance of our personal temples? 

~ Sister Joan Sobala 

The Bends of Life

Dear Friends,  

Take a long look at the images above. In every case, someone or something bends. How about us? Would we fit into the page of images? Are we rigid or flexible? Do we bend when we need to learn more, become more, love more? Or have we come to accept that there is only one way to be and that is with strict adherence to a set of rules which we internalized at some point in our lives? Each of us can point to certain rigidities. What have you learned from yours? Have you chosen to retain them or release them? 

When given a choice, do we bend or not? Standing erect mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually is in many ways a good thing. (Luke 21.28) But standing erect could be a place from which to observe but not interact. To interact, we must bend/flex. A person who is self-centered has a hard time being flexible. 

It takes a certain courage to bend toward God in our midst. God is seldom “up there.” God is more often in the world around us.  

Some of the people Jesus encounters in the Gospel were bent over, not by their own choice. The woman with the hemorrhage, the bent over woman, cripples, the emotionally drained. 

Not all bending is toward God or toward life. The phrase “bent cop” denotes a police officer who has succumbed to bribery, greed, other vices. Bent can refer to misshapen and therefore useless, too. We know the phrase, “I get bent out of shape when….” 

Bending and brokenness are not commensurate. We fear being broken. Bending does not necessarily lead to brokenness, but it may – or a branch may break off. Trees need to be pruned. So do we. 

In this short blog, let’s consider only one more thought. This Lenten time can be seen as a road with a series of bends. What are our tools for the road to Easter? 

For one thing, don’t just watch your feet. If we watch our feet only, we risk missing what is around us. Cross-country skiers are taught to look ahead, read the signs of the terrain and adjust their stride accordingly. The bent over woman couldn’t see Jesus’ face. All she saw was her feet and maybe His. But remember that Jesus had a thing for feet. 

On the road, we have decisions to make. Do we follow the road that others have laid out or do we blaze our own trail? Our Lenten challenge is to decide when to follow and when to set our own direction. At some point, do we need a guide? Do we even allow anyone to guide us? Do we perceive God-with-us or do we feel alone on the road? 

Finally, at times we walk with others around the bend in the road, sometimes by their choice, sometimes ours, sometimes happenstance. Any of these moments call for respect for each other’s course as well as our own.  

However we approach the Lenten road that leads beyond the bend, let’s not predetermine the outcome for ourselves. Easter is, after all, the Great Feast of Surprises. 

~ Sister Joan Sobala 

The Significance of God's Rainbow

Dear Friends,

On national news shows this winter, we have seen footage about rampaging storms and devastating floods. Noah and his family knew the uncontrollable power of such floods as we hear in today’s first reading from Genesis.

When calm returned to the scene of the biblical flood, God said to a weary Noah and his family: “I will make a covenant with you. Never again will all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood. This is the sign that I am giving, for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature I will set a rainbow in the clouds. When you see the rainbow in the sky, recall the covenant I made with you and all creation.”

Here on the first Sunday of Lent, the rainbow is given to us as a reminder, a rich symbol of God’s faithfulness, God’s promise, God’s covenant with us.

If we have been to Hawaii or Ireland or the Finger Lakes, we have probably seen rainbows, whole or in part after a summer storm. Sometimes even double rainbows.

Rainbows are a gift from God for us today, even as they were in Genesis:

Rainbows can’t be predicted, even by our best meteorologists.

The potential for a rainbow is always present, but certain conditions activate it.

Rainbows appear where they will. I’ve seen one from an airplane flying at 36,000 feet.

A rainbow extends its reach over the earth, even as God’s embrace is universal.

Perhaps these are reasons why groups that want to be inclusive choose the rainbow as their symbol – Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition and Gay Pride, to mention a few. If only we would put aside our smallness and hostilities!

Today’s Gospel proclaims the Kingdom of God has come. It’s time to change our attitudes, our very lives – to think and act out of a rainbow spirit and frame of mind. Let no one walk alone. We move together into the future God calls us to embrace.

The story is told that the first settlers coming to Boston wanted to build a city on a hill, in the way the Scriptures imagined such a city – a place for all people, a city where the Kingdom of God would reign.

Before they landed, John Winthrop, first Governor of the colony, charged them in these words to work for their ideals:

“For this end, we must be knit together as one. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others’ necessities. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Boston has not quite reached that ideal yet. Neither have we, nor does our world even reflect the kingdom of God and its values.

But we are on our way.

Under the arc of the rainbow.

This is what Lent can mean for us. God has made a covenant with us. It is embodied in the Body of Christ moving as one toward the completion of the reign of God. Let us act as though we believe it.

~ Sister Joan Sobala

Deepening Our Faith Whole-Heartedly

Dear Friends, 

This year, our liturgical calendar and our event calendar blend to offer us a unique opportunity to observe Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day together.  

God is in the ashes. No question about that. Is God in our hearts as well? Receiving ashes on our foreheads is another way of saying to God, “Yes. I will follow you with my feet, my hands, my mind and my heart, with everything I am and have.” 

Will you say that? Will I say that?  

The imposition of ashes on our foreheads means nothing unless that action touches our hearts and lasts.  

Great spiritual practices have been given to us. We can relish them and amplify them during Lent through core practices which are thousands of years old:  

            prayer that opens our hearts to God’s grace,  

            fasting that makes us understand the hungers that really matter and 

            giving alms from what we need and not just from our overage.  

Let’s be imaginative about what these practices mean. One Latin American Bishop, recognizing that in his poor country most people had little to eat, told them to find new ways to fast in their words and their actions. If you know how to read, he told them, take time to teach someone else to read.   

On this Valentine/Ash Wednesday, let us be brave-hearted and heart-whole as we deepen our faith. In these times when the practice of faith seems too unimportant to many people or at least not obvious, let the faith that is in us shine before others, so that they may be warmed and blessed by it. 

God’s deepest desire for us is that we have a wide embrace, enveloping God, the stranger, the family member and friend and the world in which we live. That can only happen when we love the Lord with our whole heart (Matthew 22.37), when we pray with a steadfast heart (Psalm 57.8).  

This Lent, will we count ourselves among the believers in the early Church who were of one mind and one heart (Acts 4.32) and be gentle and humble of heart as Jesus was (Matthew 11.29)? 

With you, I pray that this will be so. May what we have heard from the beginning remain in our hearts (John2.24). 

~ Sister Joan Sobala