03.06.2021 Homily

To set the stage a little bit for today's gospel reading, the public ministry of Jesus as recorded in St. John's gospel begins with Jesus and His relationship, His connection with John, the baptizer and His baptism in the Jordan. And then immediately after that, Jesus is choosing His disciples. Andrew first, and then Peter, James and John. Then Philip, and then Nathaniel. When He has this small group of a half a dozen followers, He goes to Cana and attends a wedding there and participates as a guest.

And it's while He's at the wedding that He does His first miracle that He changes water into wine. And immediately after that, He goes to Jerusalem for the Passover. He makes the trip up to Jerusalem as every pious Jew would to celebrate this very important holiday, this feast. It's the first time Jesus has appeared in John's gospel in a large public setting. Jews from throughout the entire world are there. It is expected that you will come to Passover and you will come to Jerusalem. And because people have come from all over the known world, they need to make some decisions when they arise as to how they're going to participate.

Number one, they're going to have to purchase a sacrifice. They have to make a sacrifice as part of the Passover feast, and so they have to purchase an animal. They have to purchase a sheep, or a goat, or some animal to be used in the sacrifice. And number two, they have to change their money. We've all gone to places where we've had to change money, but it's not as you and I need to do it, it's because of religious purification. They need to pay a temple tax and they cannot use a foreign coin to do that. So these tourists are really under obligation to make some decisions about how they're going to enter into this feast.

And this is where the rub comes. Those pilgrims, those tourist pilgrims are being taken advantage of. The merchants and the money changers are extorting them. Money-hungry merchants and power brokers of the economy are doing a number on those people, they're taking advantage of them. They're overcharging them. And Jesus comes upon and this is what enrages Him. It's not that they're purchasing sacrifices, it's not that they're changing the money, it's that they're being cheated in the process. And so Jesus makes a whip to throw out of the temple, all of those who are doing the extortion.

In the second century, there's a church writer who says in describing this scene of Jerusalem. He says, "It's really the work of the Holy Spirit." He says, "The whip is the image of the power and the energy of the Holy Spirit." It is the holiness of God that disrupts the order of the world, an order that is established for the benefit of the wealthy and the benefit of the powerful. Jesus stands against the process by which a few are enriched and the many are impoverished. All of this is done, all of this extortion takes place because it has to do with the temple and it has to do with worship. And that's the excuse that is used or the cover that is used that allows these people to steal.

And so they confront Jesus, and they confront Him about the temple. "How can you justify what you have?" They say to Him. "How can you stand against the temple? How can you stand against sacrifice? How can you stand against the worship of God?" Jesus tells them that the temple, the sacrifice, the temple, which is the representation is the place of the presence of God in the world. That's the temple and the sacrifice are passing away. He says He is the presence of God in the world.

In a few chapters later on in St. John's gospel, Jesus and the Samaritan woman have a conversation, and Jesus says to her, "The days are coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain, as the Samaritans do, nor in Jerusalem as the Jews do. You will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for God is Spirit and God is truth." Through out St. John's gospel, Jesus teaches that He is the presence of the Father. He says later in the gospel, "No one comes to the Father, except through me."

In John's gospel, the disciple is the one who sees the entire universe and all that happens in it in a Christ centered way. The disciples are called to see through the eyes of God, to see the universe as centered in the mystery of Christ. The mystery of Jesus, suffering, dying, rising, ascending, and sending forth the Spirit. That's the very heart of what it is in John's gospel to be a disciple, to have those eyes that see reality, and see reality only as Jesus standing in the midst of it. Not that Jesus has is causing all of that, but Jesus is present in all of that. Jesus has made all of that a concern of God.

Before the most recent changes in the liturgical language, for 40 years, there was an incredibly beautiful statement that we prayed week, after week, after week that announced the central truth, we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. That's a statement that's an act of faith that acknowledges the centrality of Christ in all of reality.

Now, a Christ-centered world or a Christ-centered universe, an awareness of that is not easy to hold on to. There is nothing in our secular society that encourages that. And sometimes I lose grasp of seeing a Christ-centered world. Sometimes I see what's around me in doubt the fact that God has anything to do with it. And when that happens, what I hope I can do is I can hope if I can't hang on to a Christ-centered world, maybe I can hang on to a Christ-haunted world and understanding of the world in which Christ may not be at the center, but He's lurking around the edge of all that I am and all that I do. That He is not separate from me. That image of Christ-centered and Christ-haunted really comes from a short story that Flannery O'Connor wrote, the story is called The River. And in it she says, "I think it's safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.