It has been so busy around the parish church sites that I have gotten a wee bit behind in posting some articles I have written for the parish bulletin. Here is one from a couple of weekends ago …
The human virtue of “honor” is one of our highest values. In our wedding vows, we hear the bride and the groom promise “I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.” The Boy Scout Oath and the Girl Scout Promise begin with the words, “On my honor.” The scripture readings for today can be summed up as to what it means “to honor”.
The Ten Commandments are about how we love and honor God and our neighbor. Jesus is irate about the dishonor the merchants heap upon the sacred space of the Temple. He overthrows their tables, scattering their money and their commodities everywhere. The merchants had vandalized the sacred place of God (in Jewish theology, the Temple was the “footstool” of God) by turning the Temple into a place of human commerce.
The center of Jesus’ life is expressed in the Great Commandment of loving God and loving neighbor. For Jesus, it was not only important to love and honor the Temple, the physical building dwelling place of God, but to love and honor the physical dwelling place of God in the human body. If we begin to see the human body as the Temple of God, as disciples of Jesus, how well do we love and honor this sacred dwelling place of God?
We are shocked when others vandalize and destroy our sacred worship spaces. Are we as equally outraged when people vandalize and destroy the Temple of God dwelling within our human body? We see the violence inflicted upon this Holy Temple by other humans every day. Human bodies riddled with bullets, spouses and children physically abused, young women and men sold in the sexual trade, babies aborted, children dying from the poisons in our air, water, and land, are daily reminders how often humanity totally disregards the command of God to love and honor God’s Temple enfleshed in our humanity. How do we define the “merchants and moneychangers” of our society? Do we participate directly or indirectly in their commerce? How do we treat the Temple of God enfleshed within ourselves?
