Gospel Reflection | Third Sunday of Lent

Third Sunday of Lent (B)

4^th March 2018

Marcelles Amiatu

Have you ever wondered what Trade Me would look like if instead of being an online company it was transformed into a warehouse? Or what it would look like if we operated it from the church foyer?

In today’s gospel we read that Jesus was angry with the way that the temple was being run. Instead of the temple being a place of prayer and preaching, Jesus turns up and finds that the leaders were in the foyer with tables exchanging money and selling animals for sacrifices.

This of course angered Jesus that instead of the temple being a place of prayer and worship where the people could come to meet God, they instead turned it into a marketplace where people would come and buy, sell and trade. Instead of being a holy place it was transformed into the equivalent of trade me – just in the temple.

 And so after seeing how angry Jesus was after he stormed in and over turned the tables and threw the money on to the ground –the people stood there and asked “So what are you going to do about it?”

Jesus responds to them and says “Well I’m going to destroy this place and then rebuild it in three days”

Imagine – the shock, surprise and amusement the people must have felt when they heard him say that he was going to rebuild a place that took sixty years to build in three days.

They of course missed what he meant...  

Jesus wasn’t talking about rebuilding the physical temple in three days after destroying it. What Jesus was actually talking about was his Life – Death and Resurrection and what it would mean for us after all that took place.

Jesus himself will become the temple….

After his resurrection people will no longer need to go to the temple just to meet God as they did in Jesus’ time. For Jesus himself will be the temple, a place where we will be able to meet the presence of God and experience the Love and Grace the God has for each and every one of us.

As we continue on this Lenten journey let us be mindful of the invitation to grow more deeply in faith and what we do. So that by accepting the invitation we may draw closer to Christ through our Prayer – Fasting and Charity.