Imagine you're sitting in your office with the rest of your coworkers. Let's say it's at Nasa. Your team has been handed the order to work on a robot designed to analyze martian soils. The boss has given a deadline of one year to design this robot, and it just doesn't seem like it's possible. One day, one of your coworkers comes up with an idea, "Hey guys, this project sucks. I have a better idea. Lets build a robot that mows the grass." So, the team abandons the martian soil analyzation robot and begins constructing a grass-cutting robot. Everyone huddles together and starts exchanging ideas, and the work is going great! In a matter of weeks, the team has installed plots of grass inside the office. Models of lawnmowers are spread throughout the office, and the whole place looks like the Home Depot garden center. The team is so excited about the project, that they forget they even have a boss. They've become their own project supervisors, and have completely overhauled the original intentions of the boss.
One day, the boss shows up to check in and see how the martian soil analyzation project is going. To his dismay, as he walks in the door he feels something funny under his feet, looks down, and notices he's stepping on grass. What the &*^$! What's going on here? The boss is so angry he rips up every plot of grass he finds and throws it out the front door. He takes his practice putter he keeps in his office and starts taking out all the lawnmowers sitting around. He throws computers and grass-cutting robot models out the windows and yells, "Get out of here! Every last one of you! You've turned my office into a zoo!"
The boss had spent years on preparations for this project, and what did he get in return? Grass-cutting robots!
Essentially, this is what happened when Jesus walks into the temple at Jerusalem. The project he's been working on, that's been in the making since the beginning of time has turned into an economy run by loan sharks. There are people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and charging interest-spiked loans to people who can't afford them - all for the sake of making sacrifices in return for forgiveness of sins.
Jesus gets pissed. He makes a whip out of leather and starts driving people and cattle out of the temple to clear it of the money changing charades. The Jews ask him, "What gives you the right to do this?" Jesus answers, "This temple will be destroyed, and in three days be rebuilt again." The Jews exclaim, "What! We spent forty-six years building this temple, and you're going to rebuild it in three days?" His disciples remember the scriptures that were written long before this scene: "I am full of zeal for my Father's house."
Later on, when Jesus dies and is raised from the dead, the disciples remember this event and believe what Jesus said and what was written in the scriptures.
The temptation around Lent is to make a bunch of sacrifices in our lives in order to gain some kind of reward. For some of us, we still haven't conceded to our innermost selves that we are forgiven, and are still trying to do more ministry, serve more homeless, be nicer, work harder, pray more, memorize more scripture, fast more, etc. For some of us, we are doing Lent to receive something else. So, my question for us is: What currency are we exchanging in the Temple?
Are we doing Lent with motives of connecting with the love of God? What about connecting with the love of fellow human beings? Or, are we secretly hoping that we can successfully climb the spiritual ranks of our peers, and become the best of the best at fasting, eating right, or not eating chocolate?
I believe Jesus invites all of us to gratefully and joyfully exchange the currency of love during Lent. Whether we're giving something up or taking something on, we can turn it into another rule for ourselves, or we can let it be an opportunity to maximize our profits of love for God and from God. As we go out today, may we leave our false currencies outside the temple, and practice exchanging love with God and the people we interact with today.
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