Third Sunday of Lent reflection

By Jesuit Father Larry Gillick
Creighton University

The opening declaration of God to the Jewish people, in this Sunday’s first reading from Exodus is a profound yet simple identification: “I am the God Who saved you from the slavery of Egypt. …  You, Israel, are the nation and people saved by My love for you.”

The commandments are guides by which they will avoid chaos by doing or not doing things when and if they forget who they are in God’s eyes. If they could keep the memories alive, they would not need to be justified by their completion of their identity by what they have to do or avoid doing.

In listening to or reading the very exact laws, each of us can give ourselves a letter grade on how we have been doing lately. Yes, Lent can be a 40-day examination of just how bad, unfaithful and inconsistent we each have been. So, we can make a promise to stop or begin.

I would suggest a good Lenten practice might be giving up self-criticism. Not one of us feels as if we have lived up to our baptismal initiation. You might respond then, “What should I pray about, with or say?”

Our reading from John’s Gospel might assist us with an answer. The cleansing in the temple in the three other Gospels takes place rather close to Jesus’ arrest and condemnation to death. In John, it takes place in the second chapter, right after the changing of the water into wine. Yes, it is tucked in after the first sign of his identity and mission. The very and absolute mission for Jesus is, by his life, death and resurrection, to re-identify God as the saving-loving God, and us as the very created-people of God. He has changed water, a symbol of chaos, into wine, the symbol of life. Jesus moves, in this second chapter, to his mission of re-creating God’s loved family, nation, people.

In our class here at Creighton on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, a young man in his fourth year offered the question about what exactly is meant by “justification.” Ah, the class discussion heated up quite quickly. Prospective law students knew precisely the correct meaning. The theology majors were a bit quieter, but definitely certain. The philosophy majors took us from Aristotle and Plato through others most of the class had never heard of.  I, in true Jesuit style, invited them to read today’s readings, plus all of Leviticus.

Human frailty is embraced by the human Jesus. Keeping over 600 laws is an impossible expectation. So an unjustified person can fulfill the rules to obtain righteousness by sacrificing various animals, which would render God pleased and back in relation with the sacrificer.

In today’s Gospel, the sellers or money-changers provide such animals – sheep and cows mainly. They are helping those who feel separated from God by their not observing various laws of God. Dramatically, Jesus, the man of change, appears doing his mission, living his identity. Here and in many confrontations, Jesus is defining that he is justification, he is the Lamb of Sacrifice, he is the loving face of God bringing God’s people out of slavery and out of darkness about their, and our, identities.

So the real answer to the young scholar is not what is justification, but who is! Our Lent is giving up false identities that tend to disidentify ourselves. We operate as misnamed, misidentified flying objects. We are invited to allow Jesus to turn us over, drive out our ways of chaos and allow him to meet us in our simplicity, humility and faith.