There are few stories in the Bible more startling than when Jesus cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem.  It is startling because it is so seemingly out of character for the Jesus.  I said “so seemingly” because most people never really get to know the full character of Jesus and the image they do form seems almost universally to preclude the violence seen in the incident in question.  But that is an issue for another time.  My favorite accounts of this story are in Mark and John.  Both accounts quote Jesus as justifying His action by saying something like, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”  In other words, something very good – the Temple – has been perverted into something else.  This is exactly what we were discussing yesterday.  Jesus’ violence is quite sensical when you consider His mission – to teach people about character and to enable them to develop it – and yet here is not merely the world, but God’s own priests, showing a lack of the very character He has come to create.

We face myriad problems in the world today, including the fact that our own nation seems headed in many wrong directions all at once.  At the root of all of it is that we, individually, are headed in wrong directions, lacking the guidance that a God developed character gives us.

Lent is upon is.  We prepare for Holy Week – the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice that removes all impediments to our exhibiting the character we were created to have.  And yet we allow the small perversions that lead to big evil to creep into our lives.  Moreover, we do not look at them, we cover them over with sanctimonious claims of virtue.  We present ourselves as doing good while sowing the seeds of evil.

Let us pray this Sunday in Lent that God will remove our blinders and permit us to see the small gradual perversions that are our individual contributions to the problems that plague our nation and our culture.  Let us claim the victory of Holy Week.