Repentance and discipleship

Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the Temple and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons (Mark 11:15)

When Jesus arrived at Jerusalem at the beginning of that momentous Holy Week, he at once made his way to the Temple.  The Temple building itself was situated in the northern part of a vast courtyard, the court of the Gentiles into which, as its name implies, people of all nationalities and religions were admitted.  It was this court which Jesus entered on his arrival.

Running round the sides of the court was a wide and lofty cloister and it was the scene both there and in the court itself which roused Our Lord’s anger.  It had all the appearance and atmosphere of an Eastern bazaar.

Under the cloisters were the tables of the moneychangers, with their neatly stacked piles of coins.  They were there because victims for private sacrifices had to be paid for in Temple coinage which was not in ordinary circulation.  Therefore all would-be offerers, before they did anything else, were obliged to buy at a high rate of exchange, the Temple money that they needed.  In the great court itself were the sacrificial victims, a restless mass of sheep and oxen herded into pens, with cages of pigeons piled high on top of one another.

All this highly profitable business was the monopoly of the family of Annas, the old high priest whose son-in-law Caiaphas was the actual high priest at that time.

As, therefore, Jesus stopped and stood at the entrance gate, he witnessed a scene of confusion – the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep sounding against the never-ending hubbub of the stallholders shouting their wares and the buyers and sellers haggling over the prices.

It was not that Our Lord disapproved of the practice of sacrifice – he took part in it himself.  What he condemned was the way it had been used to commercialise the House of God.  Here he was standing, not in a heathen temple, but in the religious centre of God’s Chosen People where, above all other places on earth, Jewish pilgrims and Gentile visitors alike should find an atmosphere of peace and prayer.  What he found was offensive to God, distressing to the devout and a scandal in the eyes of the unconverted.

He therefore quickly twisted together a whip of cords and striding down the long cloister he pushed over the tables and their piles of coins and then he drove the stallholders and their animals before him.  And he did not stop until the great courtyard was cleared of the men and their animals.

St Paul reminds us that we, as members of the Church, are temples of the Holy Spirit, but do we in fact allow the Holy Spirit to dwell within us?  Do we find within ourselves the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control?  Or do we find in the temple of our souls very different things – jealousy, envy, anger, selfishness, vindictiveness, strife and a refusal to make up quarrels?  Do we find ourselves entertaining shameful thoughts that cannot co-exist with God the Holy Spirit who is our souls’ true guest?

Now, just as Our Blessed Lord visited the Temple that Holy Week, so this Lent he visits our souls and he will expect to find them cleared of everything that offends him.  He is now standing, as it were, at the gate of our soul and with us he looks within.  Nothing escapes his all-seeing gaze; and we too must deliberately face the truth about ourselves and cover nothing up in false shame or self-deception.

First of all we have to bring our sins out into the open before Our Blessed Lord and that we do by means of a searching and thorough self-examination undertaken as in his presence.  Then, once we have them arrayed in front of us, we must own up to them, confess them systematically and in detail.  There is no substitute for this if there is to be room in our souls for God.  So we have to go round with Our Lord and help him drive them out one after another.

That is not a pleasant business because it disturbs our pride and self-esteem.  But Holy Scripture gives a straight answer to anyone who likes to pretend that it is not necessary: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (NRSV, 1 John 1:8-9).

We do not confess our sins in order to inform God of what we have done.  He knows that far better then we do.  He saw us commit them.  We own our sins so that we may disown them.  We now say to God that those particular things which once we loved and willed, we now hate and abandon.

One wonders how many of the stallholders were back at their old pitches the following morning.  Probably the majority, but no doubt there were some vacant places in the lines.  Those who stayed away did so for one of two reasons.  Some of them had no scruples about the way they had been going on, and would have been back again as usual if they hadn’t been afraid of Our Lord and of what he might do.  But others stayed away because Jesus had made them genuinely ashamed of their irreverent and unscrupulous conduct and they were truly anxious not to offend God again.

And that is the sorrow which has to be ours: not a fear which may prevent us from sinning but does not prevent us from desiring to sin if we could or if we dared; not that, but a love for God that becomes a resolute determination not to wound his love again.

Thus penitence is more than a mere feeling of sorrow.  It results in taking practical steps to amend, so that we make up our minds not to do this or that particular thing again, and to avoid such people or places or situations as we have found by experience to be sources of temptation; and to make a new start in our personal relationship with God.

For our sins do not die of old age, however old they are.  Until we go to God and get rid of them they go on and on stifling the life of the soul, and make a separation between us and him.  We become strangers to him and that state is worsened by each successive act of sin.  As our alienation from him grows, so our powers of resistance to temptation become progressively weakened.  And on God’s side our sins alienate him, because he is too holy and loves us too much to pass them over or pretend that they make no difference.

Repentance alone, that is, true sorrow for one’s sins expressed in a thorough self-examination, a full confession and a sincere determination to turn over a new leaf – that alone can remove the estrangement and make it possible for us to receive God’s forgiveness.

Hence repentance is not the end of Christian discipleship but its first beginning.  And even when discipleship has begun, if it is to continue unbroken, that penitence has to be regularly renewed.

For our soul is either a place of confusion and sin without God, or a temple of peace and purity with him.  It is our repentance and God’s resulting forgiveness which turns the one into the other.