RE: 03.05.15 - Readings / Commentaries

Commentary – 3rd Sunday of Lent Year B

March 8, 2015
First Reading – Exodus 20.1-17
In those days, God delivered all these commandments:
“I, the LORD, am your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
You shall not have other gods besides me.
You shall not carve idols for yourselves
in the shape of anything in the sky above
or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
you shall not bow down before them or worship them.
For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God,
inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness
on the children of those who hate me,
down to the third and fourth generation;
but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation
on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.

“You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.
For the LORD will not leave unpunished
the one who takes his name in vain.

“Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.
Six days you may labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD, your God.
No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter,
or your male or female slave, or your beast,
or by the alien who lives with you.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth,
the sea and all that is in them;
but on the seventh day he rested.
That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

“Honor your father and your mother,
that you may have a long life in the land
which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass,
nor anything else that belongs to him.”
Commentary
I AM THE LORD WHO BROUGHT YOU OUT OF EGYPT
Our Jewish brothers and sisters call this text “The Ten Words” and not “The Ten Commandments” because the first words spoken are not a commandment – and yet they are the most important! “I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.” This verse is the prologue: it gives the meaning of and justifies the commandments that follow. It is not the content that makes Israel’s Law original but the reason behind it: the liberation from Egypt. Israel forever knows that the liberating God also gave them the Law as a path of apprenticeship to freedom.

The book of Deuteronomy, a theological meditation on the events of the Exodus and the requirements of the Covenant with God, says this about the gift of the Law: “the LORD is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and… there is no other. And you must keep his statutes and commandments which I command you today, that you and your children after you may prosper, and that you may have long life on the land which the LORD, your God, is giving you forever” (Deut 4.39-40). (see note 1).

Each of the commandments can be read as a God-given means for our liberation, or if you prefer, as an apprenticeship towards human freedom. It begins with the prohibition of idolatry: “You shall not have other gods besides me.” Indeed, throughout the Old Testament, the prophets consistently warned against all idolatry, often with little success. They would perhaps meet with the same resistance today because ultimately, the definition of an idol is something that consumes us to the point of enslaving us: it can be a cult, but it can also be money, sex, drugs or other substances, television, or any preoccupation that so fills our thoughts that we forget the rest.

“You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth”: no image of God is permitted because any image would be false; one can not possess God; God is the Wholly Other, the Inaccessible. Intimacy with God is the free gift of grace.

DO NOT GO FROM ONE KIND OF SLAVERY TO ANOTHER
“You shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God”: the vocabulary used here is that of passionate, insistent love - a love that does not tolerate rivals. God wants free and happy people; God is not jealous of us, but jealous to protect our freedom - God wants to protect us from following false paths.

“Inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments”: at the time, people were unable to conceive of a God who does not punish; nevertheless, the text places much greater emphasis on God’s perpetual mercy to those faithful to the Covenant with God.

“You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain” (verse 7): in biblical language, when God revealed God’s name to human beings, God made himself known to us. It would be monstrous to use the gift of this name, that is, of this relationship, for evil. To do so would be to cut oneself off from God, who has no contact with evil; it would be an act of self-condemnation. This is the meaning of the phrase, “For the LORD will not leave unpunished the one who takes his name in vain.” (see note 2).

The first commandments addressed our relationship with God. Then come the commandments that pertain to our relationship with others, first one’s parents and then all others: “Honor your father and your mother ... You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor...” Our relationship with God and our relationships with others go hand in hand.

The last commandments are in the negative form: “You shall not…”; they are given as clear cut directives for life in society. Ours is the task of translating them so that they can be lived in positive ways in our everyday lives. Each of these commandments, in its own way, works towards our own liberation and that of others. More to the point, they give us a new way of seeing: not to covet what is not ours is one of the paths to inner freedom.
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Notes
1 - The Book of Deuteronomy frequently insists on the happiness promised to those who observe the Law: “Later on, when your son asks you, “What do these decrees and statutes and ordinances mean?” which the LORD, our God, has enjoined on you, you shall say to your son, “We were once slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand... The LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes in fear of the LORD, our God, that we may always have as good a life as we have today” (Deut 6.20 ... 25).
2 - According to Andre Chouraqui, this commandment should be seen in its legal context: it has to do with the use of false oaths to clear one’s name. In court, the oaths were always made in the name of God: to swear in the name of God was the only acceptable way of declaring one’s innocence. Therefore, if a guilty person swore his innocence in the name of God, he could not hope to be acquitted by God.

Responsorial Psalm – 19.8,9,10,11

R/ Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
giving wisdom to the simple.
R/ Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the command of the LORD is clear,
enlightening the eye.
R/ Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true,
all of them just.
R/ Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
They are more precious than gold,
than a heap of purest gold;
sweeter also than syrup
or honey from the comb.
R/ Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.

Second Reading – 1 Corinthians 1.22-25
Brothers and sisters:
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Commentary
CAN THE CRUCIFIED BE THE MESSIAH?
We know that Paul dedicated his life to announcing to his contemporaries that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. We also know that he addressed both Jews and non-Jews (whom he sometimes refers to as Greeks and sometimes as Gentiles). His background had given him first hand knowledge of the Jewish world and of the Scriptures; but he also knew the Greek world, having spent much of his youth with his family in Tarsus, that is, outside of Palestine. For these reasons, he was better placed than anyone to understand how difficult it was for each of these cultures to listen to his preaching: “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

For the Jews it was literally scandalous to claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, for he had been crucified. We can sympathize with them: for centuries, the Old Testament had promised the Messiah; and his coming was to be accompanied by specific signs: the restoration of the Davidic dynasty on the throne of Jerusalem and the establishment of universal and permanent peace. On both counts, Jesus had disappointed them! Worse, he died on a cross: everyone knew from memory the words from the book of Deuteronomy that said that when a man was sentenced to death under the Law and was executed with his body suspended from a tree (which served as a warning to others) it meant that he was accursed of God (Deut 21.22-23). Yet this is exactly what happened to Jesus, so he must surely be accursed of God; he cannot be the Messiah. This is a logical conclusion and it was with this reasoning that Paul, in good faith, initially opposed the earliest Christians.

As to the pagans, they also had good reason not to take Jesus seriously: “Greeks look for wisdom,” says Paul. But Jesus was not a philosopher; he spoke of love and respect for others, of humility and trust in God - nothing to do with the philosophical discourse of the Greeks (in Athens, no one had given much time to what they called Paul’s nonsense).

But ever since his encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, Paul could not deny the obvious: Christ is risen, so he is the messenger of God. Whether this surprises us (like the Greeks) or offends us (like the Jews) doesn’t change a thing! Paul had to struggle with some daunting questions: yes, Jesus was God’s messenger, but in good faith, human beings had killed him! How could they have gotten it so wrong? And how could this crucified individual be the Messiah? These two questions must have haunted Paul for a long time: both the mystery and the scandal of this unlikely Messiah are clearly at the heart of all his letters.

LOVE THAT GOES TO THE CROSS
As Paul read and reread the scriptures and meditated on the scandal of the cross of Christ, he discovered the unimaginable: not only should the cross not scandalize us, it should actually amaze us! Because the cross is precisely the place where God truly reveals Godself! And that is why the cross delivers us! Because we can finally know God as God truly is!  On the cross we can finally see infinite love - a love capable of going that far.

Ultimately, Paul goes on to say that the cross of Christ is Christians’ greatest claim to fame. He says, for example, in the letter to the Galatians, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of Jesus Christ” (Gal 6.14); for, not only was Jesus not a sinner deserving to be cursed, he willingly suffered in order to open our hearts to God’s incredible love for humanity; the words of forgiveness which he spoke on the cross reveal the extent of God's love for us.

As for those who find God's ways inconsistent with human reason, Paul’s answer, in the same letter to the Corinthians, is this: “Since… the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe” (1 Cor 1.21); and a little further on: “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Cor 3.18-19). Jesus had said: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants” (Mt 11.25). Our Christian witness needs no arguments: no amount of fine reasoning will ever lead someone to faith. All of our intellectual constructions crumble like a house of cards before the mystery of God manifested in the disfigured face of Christ crucified between two thieves (reassuring for us, poor evangelizers that we are). The mystery of God’s love is beyond our understanding. It is rather telling that in the midst of our Eucharistic prayer, when we commemorate the Passover, we say, "Great is the mystery of faith"!

Gospel – John 2. 13-15
Since the Passover of the Jews was near,
Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
as well as the money changers seated there.
He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money changers
and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
“Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
“What sign can you show us for doing this?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews said,
“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.

While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,
many began to believe in his name
when they saw the signs he was doing.
But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
He himself understood it well.
Commentary
THE WRATH OF THE PROPHET
Let us place ourselves in the shoes of those who witnessed Jesus’ anger. The selling of animals on the temple mount was nothing new: when pilgrims came to Jerusalem, sometimes from far away, they rightfully expected to be able to buy animals to offer as sacrifice. As for the moneychangers, they were also needed: Jerusalem was under Roman occupation, and Roman coins depicting the bust of the emperor, although necessary for day to day transactions in the city, were unfit to be placed in the collection plate! Therefore, when the worshippers arrived at the temple, they had to exchange their Roman coins for Jewish currency. So why did Jesus react so strongly?

As is often the case, Jesus acts first and gives the reason for his actions later; as for his audience, they only partly understand or not at all. It is later that insight comes: “when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken” (Verse 22). Some however simply fail to understand.

Jesus’ violent action and his words in particular are totally unexpected! The reproach he makes to the venders (“Stop making my Father's house a marketplace”) suggests that he takes himself for a prophet, like Jeremiah, who had said: “has this house which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your?” (Jeremiah 7.11) Furthermore, his actions show that he sees himself as the Messiah, for as the prophet Zechariah had foretold: “There shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day” (meaning the day of the coming of the Messiah; Zech 20.21). And, more daring yet, Jesus calls the temple of Jerusalem “my Father’s house.”

There are two possible reactions to such audacity:  to try to understand (which is what the disciples do), or to put this pretentious and false Messiah in his place (the attitude of those whom John calls “the Jews”). In fact they are all Jews, but some have already seen Jesus in action: since his Baptism in the Jordan and since the wedding at Cana, they have sensed that Jesus is the Messiah and are therefore prepared to recognize in Jesus’ attitude some prophetic gesture. Especially since all present know that the animals sold for the sacrifices should not be within the precincts of the temple: normally the animal vendors had their stalls in the Kidron Valley and on the slopes of the Mount of Olives; but they had gradually moved nearer to the temple until they had installed themselves on the plaza! This is what Jesus rightly reproaches them.

At this point his disciples recall a verse from Psalm 69: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” In the psalm it is uttered by someone who is persecuted for his faith: “God of Israel…  it is on your account I bear insult… Because zeal for your house has consumed me, I am scorned by those who scorn you” (Ps 69.8-10). The author speaks in the past tense: “zeal for your house has consumed me,” whereas John uses the future tense: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” It is a way of announcing the persecution that awaits Jesus and which has already begun! We are still at the beginning of John’s Gospel, but Jesus’ trial is already on the horizon. Soon his lot will be with those persecuted for righteousness: “Zeal for thy house will consume me.”

DESTROY THIS TEMPLE AND IN THREE DAYS I WILL RAISE IT UP
Those whom John calls “the Jews” are not as sympathetic as the disciples. For them, Jesus is an insignificant Galilean (and can anything good come from Galilee?) who dares to criticize temple conventions. In all fairness they have just cause to ask him to explain his actions: “What sign can you show us for doing this?” For believers, Jesus' answer takes on its full meaning only after the resurrection: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” But for now, his words make no sense: “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” Logically, his interlocutors are right: a man cannot single handedly undertake such a project in three days, nor within forty-six years, or even a lifetime! This magnificent temple, respected by all as a clear sign of God’s presence among God’s people has nothing to gain from this carpenter from Nazareth – his three-day bravado doesn’t impress…

Nevertheless, for a Jew familiar with Scripture, three days was a significant number - a symbolic way of saying that God would certainly intervene; we encounter it in the book of the prophet Hosea, for example - a book that the Jews knew very well. However, although it was well and good for a prophet like Hosea to use this kind of enigmatic, symbolic language, this Jesus was not a prophet in their eyes!

According to John, this is the crux of the problem, and if he places the episode of the temple at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry rather than at the very end as in the other three Gospels, it may be his way of alerting us to some stubborn assumptions that prevent God’s word from being heard. The disciples have no such assumptions and this allows them to gradually discover Jesus as they accompany him step by step. His opponents, however, are locked into their certainties and as a result, they miss out on this extraordinary revelation for which they whole-heartedly longed: God’s presence is no longer contained within the walls of a stone building, but resides at the heart of humanity, in the body of the Risen One.
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Note
1 - When they say that the temple had been under construction for forty-six years the Jews are referring not to a new construction but to the work of restoring, expanding and redecorating the temple that Herod undertook in 19 BC; this episode probably takes place in 27 AD.

Translated with permission by Simone Baryliuk, from: Commentaires de Marie Noëlle Thabut, 8 mars, 2015
http://www.eglise.catholique.fr/foi-et-vie-chretienne/commentaires-de-marie-noelle-thabut.html