Third Sunday of Lent
Our Ten Commandments were distilled from that particular chapter from the Book of Exodus which you heard in the first reading. At one level, these precepts have been enormously important. Some or all of these precepts have contributed handsomely to every civilisation that ever existed. They contain much common sense and they made their own contribution to peaceful living.
However, we have sometimes elevated what we call 'the ten commandments' to a level that is unrealistic. We have asked them to do some serious duty for us, treating them as the Law of God. Even good and faithful Christians will throw out statements like: "What about the Ten Commandments" as conversation stoppers. This set of tribal precepts is presented as God's last word on particularly complex matters. The traditionally minded will explain at length that we must make a distinction between man-made laws which reflect the mentality of a particular age and culture, and the revealed law of God as expressed in the Ten Commandments. But this is a false distinction. The Ten Commandments were as much culturally conditioned, as much part of their own day, as anti-speeding laws in our own day. They are directed at a nomadic tribal people who had just been miraculously liberated from slavery. They are now moving between other nomads of tremendous religious diversity, and a great variety of Gods. Hence the first commandment: "I am the Lord your God." We do not find in them a code of revealed morality, handed down by God himself. Most of the Ten Commandments were widely known centuries earlier by non-Israelite peoples, and were the common law of Mesopotamia. In formulating the Ten Commandments the Israelite drew on the accumulated wisdom of the surrounding peoples as well as on their own experience of what was needed to keep a people together in peaceful harmony. The laws reflect popular morality of the time, and derive from a variety of circumstances and backgrounds.
And the Jewish people had a great respect for their laws. They carved them in stone and carried them with their tribe throughout their nomadic days. They carried the two tablets of the law in a precious box, known as the Ark of the Covenant. When they eventually settled and built Jerusalem as their capital, their religion will stabilise. In other words, they will construct a Temple which will now become the centre of their worship. A whole cult and ritual will grow up around Temple worship. To ensure continuity, the tablets of stone will be placed in the Holy of Holies. The Temple becomes almost an end in itself, just as the 10 Commandments became ends in themselves in Catholic tradition.
Neither will the New Testament answer all our problems. Jesus left no detailed code of morality, so Paul and the early Christian communities simply fell back on the moral codes current at the time, which happened to come from Greek Philosophers. What is special to Paul and the other New Testament writers is the new context in which they presented these lists. The vices and virtues then current in the Greek world were used to describe what is opposed to 'life in the Spirit'. Neither the old or the new testaments can give us direct and simple answers to modern problems. It does not follow that the bible has no place in regulating our moral lives. It is a valuable source of enlightenment to help us live morally good lives. But we must learn how to understand it and to use it.
The gospel reading is taken from John. This is being written after the resurrection. The Temple at Jerusalem had been destroyed for over twenty years at the time this extract was written. This had been a huge blow to Judaism. Originally, all were all Jews. Much of their religion revolved around the ritual and prayers performed in that sacred place. But once Gentiles began to join their numbers, the temple became a problem. Gentiles were forbidden under pain of death to enter it. And soon, because of their teachings and their association with Gentiles, even Jewish Christians were barred from entering its precincts.
Given this anti-Christian background and the eventual Roman destruction of the temple in 70, all four evangelists narrate Jesus' "cleansing" of the temple, though none as "violently" as John.
John offers a new temple theology: Jesus is now the temple through which His followers come into contact with God. We're no longer concerned with buildings. A person centers our faith. Indeed it was in John's Gospel that we have Jesus telling the Samaritan woman: 'The day will come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Lord but in Spirit and in truth.' Once again, we're dealing with a relationship.
Religion is a lot less demanding when relationships aren't part of it. There's just one problem: Faith is impossible without them. But by John's time, the followers of Jesus had been long expelled from the Jewish synagogues. Indeed it was in John's Gospel that we have Jesus telling the Samaritan woman: 'The day will come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Lord but in Spirit and in truth.' The age of the cultic temple at Jerusalem had passed. The centre of worship is now the Body of Christ. He will form the centre of this redeemed community.