Let us go to the house of the Lord!

Listening to the Spirit

Song of Praise and Prayer for Jerusalem
(Psalm 122)

I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem.

Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up,
the thrones of the house of David.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers.”
For the sake of my relatives and friends
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.

Listening to the Word

John, 2:13-25

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

Reflection

“I rejoice when I heard them say, let us go to the house of God.” This opening sentence of the psalm 121 is one of my favorite songs. This psalm beautifully expresses the Israelites’ deep desire or longing to go to Jerusalem. This city unites all their tribes. All the tribes long to go to Jerusalem to worship God in His temple.

The gospel for the third week Sunday of Lent presents Jesus, who went up to Jerusalem to us. Like any other Jew, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage since the Passover was already near. Unfortunately, to his great disappointment, the holy temple was desecrated and became a marketplace. When he saw the vendors occupied the temple area and made it a center of business, He grabbed some dividing cords, yanked them into a knot, whipped, and said, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

The incident in the temple reveals to us the burning desires within the heart of Jesus: First, His desire to protect and honor the House of God, the temple. Second, his profound desire is that all the people must honor the inner temple and their hearts and not be defiled by worldly desires.

First: Honoring the Temple of God. Jesus was disappointed with the people who made the holy temple unholy by making it a field of business and perhaps making it difficult for the ordinary people to have access to the sacred temple since everything, including the currency, the offering of the holocaust or animals to be offered must pass through the vendors and money changers. There may also be dishonest practices in dealing with these offerings. Thus, the vendors stole the deep desire of the people who traveled from their places to Jerusalem and their joy to enter the temple of God. The House of God is no longer a house of prayer for the people but has become a den of thieves (Cf. Is 56:7; Jer 7:11).

Second: You are the temple of God. The cleansing of the temple also reveals to us Jesus’ lamentation of the desecration of human hearts. Jesus must have been overwhelmed when he saw merchants winking at these Godly values, preferring cold cash and cheating for it at the dead center of sacred space.” By making the temple a marketplace, they cover their inner sanctuary with wealth, materials, and other disordered desires. When our hearts turn into a marketplace, we can easily forget that we were created in God’s image and were made to worship Him. “We are made to be filled with God’s presence, to be beloved by God personally, and to love God in return. We are most ourselves when riches, honor, and pride do not entrap us. We are designed to “let go and let God.”

Third: Jesus is the Temple. Jesus says, “Remain in Me as I remain in you.” We can paraphrase this, “build your temple (house) in Me as I (the Temple) build in you.” As we continue our journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem, let Him cleanse our hearts from all the disordered desires within us and turn our marketplace into a place of prayer. Let us build our house (life) upon the Temple (Jesus) again and not allow the vendors of the world to take away our joy of returning to God in his temple. May the “Visita Iglesia” that we will do this Lenten season become a moment of honoring God’s temple and our sacredness and deepening our relationship with Jesus, the Temple. And may we sing the psalm joyfully, “I rejoice when I heard people say let us go to the house of God.”