It is sad to think of a temple that is more about commerce and trade than it is about worship.  It is sad to think that, in the Father’s house, salvation and forgiveness are commodities to be bought and sold.  Yet, sadly in Jesus’ time the temple in Jerusalem had become that very thing.  It angered Jesus to think of all of the obstacles that people had to overcome just to visit the Father in his own house.  When one goes to another’s house to visit one expects to be received with hospitality and to be led to a place where there can be a meeting and fellowship with the person we are visiting.  The Father’s house should be a house of prayer and communion where we can rest in the Father’s presence and be able to draw nearer to him in knowledge and love.  One does not expect to have to pass through the obstacles of money changers and vendors.  Jesus knew that his Father was not that way and that he would not like what had become of temple worship.  It was more about the pocketbook than about the heart.  The prophet Isaiah speaks from God’s heart when he cries out:  “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!” (Is 55, 1)  God freely gives of himself in worship.  With God, the Father, it is all grace and mercy.

     In clearing out the temple of the vendors and moneychangers, Jesus is effecting a prophetic sign that shows us his deep desire to remove the obstacles that have been created by the world to separate us from God and keep us from intimate communion with him.  Jesus himself is the sign and he offers his body and his death on the cross as the means of bridging the distance between heaven and earth and making the encounter with God more immediate and available.  The temple cult will be destroyed and in its place will come a means of worship that will be raised up in the resurrection whereby through Christ all will have immediate access to the Father and Christ himself will be the lamb of sacrifice that is freely offered to cleanse us of our sins, make us holy and allow us to come into the presence of God in the Father’s house.  The Father’s house will be a true place of hospitality and welcome and all will have access to the Father through the Body of Christ, the Church.  Jesus will be the free gift of grace given in the Holy Eucharist as he freely offers his Body and Blood to satisfy our hunger and thirst.

     Through our consecration in the Spirit in baptism, the heart of each believer becomes a temple in which we may encounter God in the indwelling Spirit.  Our hearts become “the Father’s house” and become a place of prayer in which God may be known, adored and worshipped.  At times our hearts may also look more like the ancient temple of Jesus’ time filled with commerce, buying and selling, deal making and exchanges.  Many times we may enter into our hearts to encounter the Father and rather than resting peacefully in his presence we may be seeking to make a deal, trade one favor for another, work out some compromise in our life or in some other way negotiate with the obstacles in our lives that keep us from a true encounter of love and grace.

     In Lent we are called to a spring cleaning of the Father’s house that is our hearts.  We need to remove the obstacles of sin, selfishness, willfulness and disobedience that keep us separated from God.  The Father’s house of our heart should be a house of prayer and there should be a true and fervent zeal for the Father’s house to keep it clean and always available for divine communion.  We need to enter into the house of our hearts and with the same zeal that Jesus shows today, clear out the merchants of the world and worldly philosophies and place Christ, the one mediator between God and humanity at the center of our hearts again.  Jesus knows our human nature, he knows our weaknesses and he knows the thoughts of our hearts and so we need to make them once again into a place of hospitality and warmth, a place of obedience in seeking the Father’s will and a place where Jesus can feel at home and entrust himself to us in love.  Now is the time for us to do that work in preparation for our encounter with the Father and the new life that will be ours at Easter.