Well, isn’t this a wonderful Gospel text to preach on. Jesus, as I heard it expressed recently, having a "temple tantrum." That really says it all for me, being a parent I have experienced quite a few tantrums in recent years…and not just from my children. But Jesus, who has gone to the holiest of the Jewish places of worship, throwing stuff around, chasing animals, chastising people. Just look at your bulletin; is this the picture of Jesus you have neatly tucked away in your mind?!

Now we could, and maybe we should talk about the good reasons for Jesus’ behavior…the way in which our religious traditions and practices are commercialized so that we can avoid the real cost of faith, that is, the offering of our whole beings to God .…We could talk about how we mistake buildings and our own building efforts as the Church, when in fact our church is built out of far different materials…the actual body of Jesus Christ….We could dissect this text and talk about so many things that justify, explain and clarify Jesus’ temple tantrum. But what I want to talk about is something much more basic. Today let’s talk about how terrifying this text really is. You see, if Jesus can blow his top in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, just think what he could do when he reviews the temple of my body and my pathetic efforts to live a good and decent life. Am I the only person here who is scared by a Jesus who seems to lose his cool when he sees just how perverted human beings can make anything in their lives, just how far we can twist any good thing to make it something other than what God intended.

A temple tantrum. This is not the traditional name for this Gospel lesson is it? Do you remember what the traditional Christian shorthand is for this lesson? "The Cleansing of the Temple." Nothing in there about loud words and knocking down tables. At first I thought this was just our typical way of avoiding the fear that closely follows a careful reading of a disturbing text. But the more I thought about this, the more I realized just how fitting it is to call Jesus’ temple tantrum, his angry outburst, a cleansing, cleaning house as we say in both the domestic Spring cleaning mode that has come to so many of us in these wonderful, warm days, but also cleaning house as that term is used in the business world when heads role and the fiscal screws are tightened.

The cleansing of the temple - what does it mean for us in the Christian tradition, especially in Lent, especially for our Catechumens, who are teaching us all once again what it is like to excitedly pursue the meaning of God and life and all things.

A wonderful vignette written by Elizabeth Bettenhausen may help us here. This keen observer from the prairie writes:

There are hidden corners of my mind, so out of sight that I don’t even have to worry about them when I clean up before company comes. Not even the most fastidious, nosy guest would check out those niches for dust, for the fluff-balls which accumulate out of the thin air of day to day living. I live with this mess on the edges, knowing it is possible on a rainy or procrastinating day to get at it, straighten things up a bit. But all of a sudden, quite out of my schedule, God comes bustling through, dust rag, mop, pail of water in hand, and scours and sweeps and shakes and rubs away at those hidden corners. Then apparently enthused with the results, God goes wild and soaps me down completely, uses a tough bristled brush, tosses pails of water at me to rinse me off, and hangs me up to dry, dangles me on the line with two tough clothes pins. Hanging there I am like the smell of fresh sheets, of fluffy towels, blowing in the wind of a spring day in South Dakota when there is still snow in the corners of the garden. Then God comes back, unpins me and lets me loose again. It is a fearful thing to come into the hands of the Living God.

We are always so ready for the gentle spirit of God. But there is also a restlessness to the Spirit, a restlessness that comes from a willingness to speak the truth, to struggle, to be honest with God; a restlessness that comes when God cleans house even if a few tables (such as our pride, our desire for security, our unwillingness to face shame) get overturned.

One of the most wonderful things you have permitted me to do as your intern is to be the Catechist for the High School youth seeking baptism or affirmation. It has been an unbelievable experience as the four (sometimes five) of us have struggled with what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Sometimes after a long and heated discussion, we seem to really get it, realizing not only the beauty and joy of the Christian faith, but also that there is a cost to discipleship. From my discussions with Jenny Carroll, I think the adult catechumens and their sponsors are experiencing the same thing. In a way, I see the catechumens as following Jesus into the Holy Temple, they are unafraid to upset the so-called sacred tables and unloose the caged holy animals in their struggle with the Christian basics: the 10 Commandments, the sacraments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles Creed. When this struggle has been at its best, it has not been an arrogant mind game. Rather, as is always the case with faith, it has been a struggle of the mind and the heart, seeing with new eyes the truth of our lives that are so in need of cleaning and also the great desire of Jesus to cleanse us.

Today, we the church continue the struggle to submit to this cleansing in our hearts and in our minds as we confess what we believe using the Apostles’ Creed. As our mouths confess, it is our hearts that yearn: O God, what does it mean that you are so concerned about us that you are as close to us as a loving Father? What does it mean that you actually became a human being because we are so in need healing, your cleansing touch, that you had to come to us. God, what would we be like if we really became open not only to your gentle spirit but also your restless spirit in our lives? One thing is for certain - we wouldn’t always be so shocked by the surprising, challenging, sometimes disturbing, ways of God.