March 7, 2021: Third Sunday of Lent

Today's Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030721-YearB.cfm

I’ve always found today’s Gospel passage to be particularly striking. The imagery of an angry Jesus flipping over tables while quite literally chasing the moneychangers out of Temple contrasts so starkly against the gentle, lamb-cradling Shepherd we tend to depict Him as. As a child, I found this angry, raging Christ figure to be quite frightening, especially when paired with the angry, punishing Lord we see in the first reading of the day. I can even remember being a nervous six year old at Bible Camp, genuinely concerned about incurring the Wrath of God for whispering with a friend as a man with puppets tried to teach us the Our Father. So yeah, this passage has stuck with me for some time now. 

But as I’ve gotten older and hopefully grown a bit wiser, I find myself increasingly at home with an angry Christ, especially as I try, with great difficulty, to make sense of the world around us. You see, Jesus wasn’t malicious that day in the Temple; He was human. In the face of an explicit desecration of God’s Temple, Jesus resorted to rage and violence as the only form of action that He could have managed in the moment.

Watching the persistently bleak state of social justice affairs in our nation, I find myself a kindred spirit in this Raging Christ. When I see Breonna Taylor, a Black EMT, murdered while asleep in her bed, I want to flip a table too. When I see migrant toddlers separated from their families and locked up in cold concrete cages, I want to make a whip out of cord and bring it down on the detention centers. And when I see elected officials refuse to address the violent acts of terrorism at the Capitol, I too want to scatter their coins and drive them from the building. 

Anger is a natural part of life, and so it also must be a part of our journey as people of faith. As Catholics, we are called to direct action. As Jesus drove desecrators from the Temple, we too must rise up in righteous fury in the face of desecration of human dignity. If turning a Temple into a marketplace is an affront to God, then surely standing by as injustice after injustice is inflicted upon marginalized peoples must be too. 

Jesus will always be the Good Shepherd of this Body, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to lay down and let the wolves dig in on our vulnerable siblings. It’s high time we cast aside the comforts of political apathy and cowardice, and start funneling our fury into constructive and meaningful action. Systemic changes start with the individual. So follow Jesus’ lead and get angry, pay attention, and put in the work to fight the injustices choking the very soul of our country. 

- Brooke McPherson, Caldwell University '20

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