Today’s readings: Exodus 20, 1-17; 1 Corinthians 1, 22-25; John 2, 13-25

The way Christianity is meant to sell itself goes against all principles of good marketing. Good marketing offers concrete guarantees, provides reassurances and money back promises; things one seeks before buying a product. But in today’s second reading St Paul writes that preaching the Gospel rests on no such solid signs and reassuring promises.

While our temptation, even in religion, is to rest on long-standing traditions and customs consolidated with time, the only foundation of our preaching is the crucified Christ, which from our standpoint manifests more God’s weakness than His power. For Judaism at the time of Jesus, the law and the temple were the solid foundations of belief and this is what prompted the anger of Jesus.

The law and the temple have their function and importance in our faith, but the solidity of belief is to be sought and found elsewhere in interiority, rather than in the exterior structure of religion. There is so much in Christian life and in the Church as still projected nowadays that always prompts in us the attitude of ‘It has always been like that!’ This is the attitude that kills the spirit in any religion and it is what actually infuriates Jesus throughout the gospels, as we read today from St John.

Jesus stands for an alternative spirituality, a different way of life, a more liberating relationship with God, a liberating spirit that innovates rather than perpetuates. When change is the issue, it always takes courage, what St Paul terms ‘parrhesia’, boldness, to move on from exteriority to interiority. When we lack the courage to make things change, change comes across while we watch things collapse, and when change is not managed, it comes with the violence of a tsunami. This, to an extent, is happening in our churches.

This also explains the anger of Jesus in today’s gospel for a people and an attitude unable to read the signs of the times. What is at stake even today is not change for its own sake but a deeper understanding of what can be the solid foundation of belief in an age of unbelief. On this third Sunday of Lent, the Scripture readings delineate the liberating process of authentic conversion that goes beyond the law as given in Exodus and the temple as conceived to be the focus of religious life for the Jews.

The radicalism of Jesus in this direction emerges in his words “Destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will raise it up”. The temple religion very often substitutes the true search for God. If we fail to discern God’s presence in the crucified Christ, in the crucified people today, in those whom the world considers disposable, fleeing their countries and finding closed doors in the civilised world, then our temple religion is just a parody of what faith should be, and our invocation of God would be simply idolatry.

In the fluidity of our human experience there is so much emotional instability which undoubtedly impacts on how we interiorise our beliefs. What may have always been taken as signs of God’s presence can easily lose strength and meaning in how we face today’s challenges. This is the conversion of mentality and the call to radicalism that every year is central to the Lenten season.

Failing to understand what is the conversion we are called to today, we will keep repeating things that no longer make sense, like, for example, that conversion is about quitting cigarettes or refraining from chocolate on Fridays. This is the trivialising of conversion and it amounts to putting our entire faith to ridicule. If we reduce our religion to this, then Jesus would undoubtedly come not to liberate us but to drive us out of our temples violently, as he did in his days. And our reaction would most probably be the same as that of the Jews – that this has always been our tradition.