To listen to this homily, click here.
This Sunday’s scriptures call our attention to divine anger and holy jealousy which are emotions we don’t often associate with God. Most of us have been taught to suppress and resist these feelings in our own lives and for good reason. Sinful anger, which the Catechism defines as “a desire for revenge” is destructive to us and to the person who bears the brunt of our wrath. Sinful jealousy covets what belongs to other people and hates them for having it.
So how do we reconcile the fact that our all-good, perfectly-holy God openly admits and displays feelings that cause so much pain and dysfunction when we act on them? Is God being dramatic? Did Jesus put on his crabby pants before he went to the temple that day?! Or is there something we can learn about the anger and jealousy of God? Is there something holy about them?
Let’s start with jealousy. In giving the Ten Commandments, the Lord makes an astonishing admission, "I am a jealous God". Then he threatens severe punishment on those who worship false gods. How do we understand God's jealousy? We begin by looking at human jealousy. For us, jealousy is born out of fear and insecurity. We wonder why someone else has something they don’t appear to deserve as much as we do. We worry about what it says about us that we do not have the same possessions or relationships. Jealousy moves us to either want them for ourselves or want the other person lose them. Jealousy ends up consuming us and making it impossible to enjoy the blessings we actually have. That's what happened to Saul. He was the first king of Israel and in the beginning, a pretty good king. Then along came a young man named David who was a better fighter than him. One day Saul heard the women of Israel singing: "Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.” Rather than be glad he had a powerful warrior in his camp, Saul became jealous. He wanted to destroy David but wound up destroying himself.
God, on the other hand, has no fear or insecurities. He lacks nothing and needs nothing for his fulfillment and happiness. He created everything out of generosity not necessity or neediness. If that is hard to comprehend or imagine, that’s because there is no other being like God. He is completely free, loving, and generous. When God says he is "jealous," it is not disordered like ours. Unlike human jealousy that destroys, God's jealousy puts things back together. He wants us to belong to him because he knows, as our maker, we will have no happiness apart from him.
A positive word for jealousy is "zeal." The two words come from the same Greek root. Which leads us to the gospel where Jesus cleanses the temple. Jesus is filled with an all-consuming zeal as he sees his Father’s house reduced to a shadow of what it was meant to be. God’s people have settled for less than what God wanted to give them. Their greed and small-mindedness made it difficult even for the pure of heart to offer true worship. To remove barriers between God and his people, Jesus tips over tables, scatters coins and stampedes cattle. He is willing to unleash some chaos in order to get our attention. Seeing such zeal, such jealousy, it makes you wonder: For the sake of our souls, to what lengths will he go? Of course, in a few weeks, we will find out.
Many people read today’s gospel and just figure Jesus lost his cool, as if he was finally pushed too far and he couldn’t take it anymore. However, that is how we experience anger. We know all too well how it feels to absorb the sting of someone else’s rage. Each of us, unfortunately, has done and said things in anger which we later deeply regretted and had to humbly apologize for. Anger can do great harm to ourselves and others. In our daily life we should avoid anger and, when it does boil up, we have a responsibility to find ways to tame and control it. My anger is not the problem of other people, regardless of their words and actions. I must learn how to manage it, hopefully with the grace of God and not simply willpower alone.
With that being said, as today’s Gospel shows, some circumstances require a different expression of anger which is not rooted in hatred but love. Jesus was not motivated by rage or spite as he knocked over tables and drove out merchants and their animals. He saw how far they had moved away from God and how dangerously close they were to losing their souls. They had made gods out of money, profit and commerce and if they didn’t immediately, they would lose everything.
This was not the first time that Jesus observed the Temple being profaned, but he decided now was the time to act. He wasn’t angry for his sake. God has no ego like we do. His anger is only stirred for our good and conversion. When God gets mad, it’s because he knows that to be patient or quiet would make him a divine enabler or coward. Jesus knew there was one last hope for the temple authorities to change their ways and offer right worship. If they didn’t repent now, the temple would be destroyed forever. Holy anger was the only remaining hope to stir them out of their sinful stupor. Jesus did not hate the merchants or the priests or anyone else with his anger. That’s what is different from us. His anger flowed from perfect love for those who were running full speed into destruction and desecration. He knew full well the consequences of his actions. They weren’t for his benefit but ours.
This is sometimes called “righteous anger” and it can only come from God. It’s motivation is not to humiliate or destroy. Instead, righteous anger seeks to restore the wrongdoer to right relationship with the one person who can fulfill every desire and offer perfect love, God himself.
Lent is a season to examine the anger and jealousy within us. Is any of it holy? Do our hearts burn with a zeal for God to be glorified in all things? Is there any righteous anger within us, fueled by love of God and the good of our neighbor? Has God won our hearts or have the temples of our souls become a marketplace of greed, selfishness, and sin? Lent is an opportunity for us to be stirred out of complacency and complicity. God is jealous for us; let’s stop running away from him and tell him we are his and he is ours.
