Sermon: 3rd Sunday in Lent, March 3rd, 2024

Text: John 2: 13-22

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I would like to preface this sermon by saying that this one will be different from the others you’ve heard from me. I will be talking about some hard things that are going on in our world. Let us not fear the naming of these things. We worship a crucified God, we are commanded to speak the truth, especially the hard truths.

I’ll begin: Righteous Anger is a powerful feeling. Righteous anger can be defined as “anger that is primarily motivated by a perception of injustice or other profound moral lapse”, as opposed to anger motivated by a personal insult or the like. It can be an overwhelming feeling. It can cleanse as it can destroy, it can possibly reveal or muddle the truth of a situation. But often what precedes an act of righteous anger, is deep love and solidarity for something. I remember vividly the swelling of righteous anger that I experienced in the summer of 2019 back in Puerto Rico. It was almost two years after the devastation of Hurricane María, and things back home were as bad and inefficient as they could get. Over 3,000 excess deaths due to the hurricane and government system failures, reconstruction was slow, and the government was playing politics as if nothing had happened. There were rumors of hurricane aid and supports going first to towns affiliated with the ruling pro-statehood party, which caused aid received to spoil in closed garages and open fields. There were rumors that the government was intentionally undercounting deaths to save face in the public. There were rumors of people salivating at the prospect of profit from the devastation. It was an inescapable revelation of the blatant political corruption the Puerto Rican people were tolerating for the past decades. Up until they couldn’t anymore. Scandal took the spotlight. A phone chat was leaked to the public with the correspondence between the governor at the time, Ricky Roselló and his group. What came out was a ruling class who had contempt of its own people, making fun of the bereaved families, of their own voters, of those who died from the hurricane, homophobia, misogyny, every kind of sin imaginable in an elected official. You can certainly say, that we the people were very angry. So what happened, when it came to light that we were being governed by an unjust ruler? We took to the streets. For two weeks, the people demonstrated their righteous anger in the most creative display of protesting. Two weeks of horse race protests, kayak protests, yoga protests, motorcycle protests, you “cacerolazo” protests (meaning that every night people would take an old cooking pot and bang away to remind everybody that Ricky Roselló needed to resign), you name it. Everybody spoke with one voice, “Ricky renuncia”, “Ricky, you must resign”. The climax of the protests happened on July 22, 2019. Up to a million protesters shut down one of the main Highways in San Juan. I was there among them, alongside my cousin. I brought a cardboard sign that said a few words from Isaiah and Proverbs, saying that whoever oppresses the poor offends their Maker. It was a beautiful day. There was much anger, but also there was joy, there was love and solidarity, which gave our anger a constructive way forward. We shouted our grievances, we danced in the rain after a scorching noon sun, we sang and walked together for a just cause. At the end of the day, the governor resigned, and a celebration overflowed. It was a great day to be Puerto Rican, when we stood steadfast in our dignity, and demanded things to be made right. Our anger was righteous, and the outcome was purifying. We loved our island too much to allow such injustice to go unattended.

So why am I telling you this history? In our text today, Jesus gets very angry. “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”” From the perspective of the money-changers, Jesus caused a whole mess in the Temple, He could have been accused of rabble rousing! For those who were monetarily benefitting from the devotions of the people in their beloved Temple, Jesus was an unwelcome presence. But at the sight of this use of the Temple, what was Jesus’ perspective? Why was He angry? Clearly, he wasn’t much of a capitalist in this moment, there was no praise for profit-making. Jesus was angry because these people had desacralized the Temple! The Temple had a purpose and they have mangled it for their own ambitions. Like the saying goes, “Is there nothing sacred anymore?”, isn’t there any sense of reverence and specialness to a place dedicated solely for the uplifting of the heart and the enjoyment of God’s presence? They made a place of spiritual enjoyment and enrichment a place of use and profit and haggling and power and greed. They had distorted what the Temple was for, and that earned the righteous anger of Jesus.

This text reminds us that following in the footsteps of Jesus, while not meaning that we should use Jesus as an excuse to act unruly, but that there will be things in the life of a Christian that provokes righteous anger, and that we are justified in our anger. Important to note, Jesus was angry for love of the Father’s house, of preserving the true purpose of the Temple as a place of spiritual sustenance and worship. He did not abide to see others sell their souls, and therefore their lives, to the seductions of power and wealth. In the end, even the rebuke of the money changers grew out from love. The anger of Jesus was tied to justice, to do right by God and therefore the poor and the disadvantaged. We also read Exodus 20, which recounts the covenant that God makes with His people by establishing the 10 commandments, which details how they should walk with integrity according to His will. And in many ways, this covenant was being violated at that moment in the Temple, no less. So Jesus’ anger is also call to repentance, to return to God’s commandments. So in our walk with Jesus upon this earth, we will encounter situations where our anger and our integrity are called for. If we cease to be out of touch with this feeling, we might need to start wondering if we have become spiritually numb. I’m a big believer in gentleness as a way to live out the Christian life, but gentleness should inform and mold our anger, not suppress it or ignore it. For there are things to be angry about, and that should rightly cause holy anger. I will not lie, I was very angry, when I marched that July 22nd, 2019 in that Highway. Not for a second did I doubt, that Jesus was marching with us too. And I didn’t need to look far, for walking with me I saw the Body of Christ in movement, the presence of the church was felt, priests, pastors, deacons, lay people, rabbis and imams even made an act of presence that day. And we were all angry, but we all felt it because we loved and yearned for justice in our nation. And that moment was the past, right now, there is much that should provoke our holy anger. We should be angry, that the planet and our natural environments are being so callously mistreated and resourced. It is immoral and it offends God. We should be angry that economic inequality persists in our day, and the gap is becoming wider by the year, with a few rich, and the majority poor. It is immoral and it offends God. We should be angry, that gun violence and gun culture is so rampant, that we have adapted to mass violence and the specter of its possibility. It is immoral and it offends God. We should be angry, that in Arizona there are laws that are trying to be passed that make legal the killing of immigrants that are perceived to “trespass” on someone’s property, that human faces, made in the image of God, in need of support, are being treated like animals at the border. It is immoral and it offends God. We should be angry, that over 15,000 children have been murdered in Palestine, in total 30,000 people, mostly civilians, have been murdered. Listen to me well, I grieve for the hostages from Israel, but we should not be comfortable with the level of destruction that is happening – it is unconscionable. We should be angry, that those precious children of God have been robbed from their families until God comes in justice. I ardently pray to God that a cease-fire happens soon. And this Litany could go on, as we the church have often renounced our duty to prophesy to the people in our communities, to speak God’s Word that seeks justice and love not just for a few, but for all.

Beloved, there is much to pray ardently for. There is much right now where our Christian integrity is being called upon. What are we to make of God’s House? My mother always taught me that the body is a temple, just like our text refers to Jesus’ body that will resurrect. In us we carry the seeds of God’s Kingdom to plant, sow and reap in the world. In the world, we see the whole of humanity that God loves, unique lives where He wants to be in like a temple. How are we treating these sanctuaries of God? Like marketplaces to profit or ignore the value of? Or like the God-residing lives that they are?

I actually have Good News for all of us. And that is that this Christ, this bodily temple rebuilt in three days, this one that has won eternal life and forgiveness of sin for us, seeks to drive out the numbness from us. He wants to make you feel, and by making you feel He wants you to love and care deeply, He wants you to go the Father’s House and pray for this aching world, to make our gathering with Him a House of Prayer, to mold your efforts and your words into life-giving and compassionate acts. The beauty of this promise of resurrection, is that it frees your life from being possessed with yourself into living it freely for others. You have been given the promise that You are well taken care of. You belong to God. So in the footsteps of Christ that gave Himself away as a gift for others, gift your community with liberated self, gift your community with your love, your compassion, and yes, with your righteous anger and indignation where it is due. It is salvation to not be comfortable with the way things are, it is salvation to make the Father’s House a House of Prayer and not a marketplace, it is salvation to reside in the faith of Jesus Christ, that seeks the benefit of all beings. May we drive out all those things that sell our soul, and bring in the faith that saves it.

Let us pray: O Lord, You are the God of Justice and Peace. You teach us the right pathways of righteous anger, where it can be channeled into love in action. Grant that we may act with integrity, that we may be molded powerfully by Your Holy presence into a people that can call out injustice and live out the fruits of Your Kingdom in this world. Lord, there is so much suffering going around, guide us through it according to Your Will. In your name we pray. Amen.