The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation during Lent
Exodus 20:1-17
Today we read the “decalogue” – the ten words/dictums/commandments. These form the initial stipulation of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel.
The commandments are arranged in two groups:
1. Duties to God. Each commandment in this group contains the phrase “the LORD your God.”
2. Duties to fellow human beings.
These commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy 5:6-17 with some variations. It’s generally accepted that there was an earlier, simpler form of these commandments from which both lists were derived.
The Jewish Study Bible says “The Bible does not endow [the list] with the iconic status that is sometimes accorded to it in modern times.” For faithful Jews, this list undergirds everything but it is very basic.
There are ten commandments, as indicated by 34:28 as well as Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:4. But there is no clarification as to how they should be divided to reach that number. If I asked you to list the ten commandments, the composition of the list would mostly depend on your faith tradition. See this chart from the Jewish Study Bible, Second Edition, page 141.
Prior to today’s reading, the people had arrived at Mount Sinai after the Exodus and God tells Moses he’s going to appear to the people so they had to get ready. Then there’s a spectacular theophany – the mountain is wrapped in a cloud and fire and loud noises. Moses goes up on the mountain and God gives him these words, the commandments. After this experience, at the end of chp 20, the people will tell Moses: don’t let God speak to us again – that was way too frightening! From now on, you tell God to just speak to you and then you tell us what God says!
Verses 2-3 start with authority: why can God lay down these laws for the Israelites? Because he brought them out of slavery. God freed them from Egypt, which demands their loyalty. In God’s view, this creates an exclusive relationship. This was a unique demand in a culture that worshipped many Gods with a sort of “cover all your bases” mentality. Right from the start, the Israelites are commanded to act and to live differently than those around them.
Verse 5 gives us an interesting image of God as “jealous.” A better word choice would be “impassioned” or “acting with righteous indignation.” This is the anger or jealousy felt by one who is owed something that is given to another. God has a passionate involvement with humanity. He’s not some distance, unassociated being.
In the latter part of verse 5 is a glimpse of the theology of divine retribution – God visiting his impassioned jealousy to the 3rd or 4th generation. We could ask Does God actively reach out and strike generations for their ancestors’ sins? Or does one generation’s sin inevitably affect future generations? Another way to look at this consequence is in the context of multi-generational households. One person’s sins would inevitably affect all generations living in the household. These are interesting questions but we can’t take them out of context from verse 6: God shows love down to the thousandth generation. Love here is fidelity and faithfulness. No matter how troubled we may be by the retribution expressed in v5, the fact is that a little love goes way further than sin’s effects.
Verse 7 says we are not to take God’s name in vain or swear falsely. Invoking God’s name in vain is like saying “May God strike me dead if I don’t do …”. when , in fact, I have no intention of doing it even as I am saying it. I think the meaning of this verse in contemporary parlance is “Don’t use God’s name when swearing.” In his ministry, Jesus will take most of these commandments and stretch them further than anyone thought possible. “Don’t murder” becomes “Don’t harbor hate against anyone.” One commentary extended that idea to this commandment by saying, “The holiness of God is involved here; it is blasphemy to take the Lord’s name with the intention of associating it with an evil action. This is far-reaching. How can we invoke, name, God in prayer and afterward harm others?” Or, we might say, not see to the good of others.
Verse 8 is about keeping the Sabbath holy. To keep something holy is to set it aside from common use. So to keep the sabbath day holy is to withdraw it from the common use of labor and reserve it for a special purpose. This was another command that was unique to the Israelites and much of the law code that comes after is around what exactly this means – to keep the sabbath day holy. By Jesus’ time, there was a huge list of restrictions on work and what it meant to keep the sabbath holy, such that a common person probably couldn’t follow everything that was prescribed.
V12 is the bridge command between honoring God and honoring others – the command to honor your father and your mother. This one comes with a promise: that you may long endure on the land. This is not about personal longevity but rather occupying the land as a people, on a national scale.
Verse 13 is the command to not kill or commit murder. Jewish interpretation is generally that this is not to be taken too broadly; this is about illicit killing or murder. Even the Torah sometimes mandates capital punishment and war.
Verse 14 references adultery. In that culture, this was about the woman and the legitimacy of her offspring. Jesus will turn it around and apply it to men as well.
Verse 17 is about coveting. The Hebrew word for covet indicates more than a desire to have something; it implies scheming or maneuvering to acquire it. This commandment is not about a feeling of envy but, rather, taking action on that, scheming to appropriate your neighbor’s things.
The ten commandments are often used as an examination of conscience before sacramental confession. Think about doing such an examination with some of the expanded meanings that Jesus proposed (such as murder vs hate).
Few of us like to hear rules expressed as “thou shalt not”! Could you turn some or all of these commandments into a positive version like the commandments around the sabbath and honor of parents?
1 Corinthians 1:22-25
A summary of 1:18-31 might be: believers must detach themselves from the standards of the world around them if they are to understand the way God relates to them.
An insistence on clinging to what can be understood or perceived was the cause of much division at Corinth and was why Paul was writing to them.
Verse 18 begins the section with Paul saying you can basically divide humanity into two groups: those who accept God’s message and those who reject it. The gospel is divisive. There are those who consider the message of the cross as foolishness and those who consider it as power.
V19 is a quote from Isaiah 29:14. V20 is a series of rhetorical questions. Paul says if you think you can understand things through your own wisdom, step up and be counted. Because the nature of the message is that we can’t fully comprehend it through our intellect alone.
This brings us to v21 which starts today’s reading and reiterates: rational thinking won’t allow us to fully comprehend how God has worked through the crucifixion and death of Christ.
Remember there are two groups of people: those who believe the message and those who do not. Verse 22 references the latter. In the gospel, we’ll see a group ask Jesus for a sign to prove he has the authority to do something like clearing out the temple. Their rational thinking did not allow them to comprehend God at work in that way. These are the people trying to rationalize or intellectualize the gospel at the expense of an experience of God.
In v23 Paul puts himself in the group of those who believe and proclaim a crucified Messiah. Again, that message doesn’t make any sense to those who do not believe, the ones who try to rely on their own rational thinking. Paul tells us in verse 24 that we are all called to believe.
He closes this section in v25 with rhetorical irony: if we could say in any way that God is “foolish,” that “foolishness” would be far wiser than our highest human wisdom. God’s ways are not our ways.
Some people will try to start a “conversion” encounter by offering rational proofs for why God exists and why God should be obeyed. The Catholic catechism does a great job of this. But starting with the catechism falls back on human wisdom, which, Paul tells us, will never get us there. What does get us there is an experience of God – an experience of knowing ourselves as created and loved beings of a God constantly reaching out to us. If you were going to share your faith to someone who does not believe, would you start with an intellectual approach or with your own experience? What stories might you share?
John 2:13-25
For the next few weeks, we get stories from John’s gospel. Today’s story is usually referred to as the cleansing of the temple.
All four gospels have this story in common. The synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) use this event as the reason for Christ’s death, and they place it towards the end of their stories in the days leading up to Christ’s arrest. The Gospel of John uses the Lazarus story for that purpose. In John’s gospel, the priests and ruling authorities view Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead as the final straw, the final challenge to their authority.
For John, this story of the temple follows on the heels of the water to wine miracle at Cana. Both are signs that invite the disciples to ever-deepening faith.
Why is Jesus doing this and why is it so important? At the surface level, he’s cleaning out the temple of things that don’t belong there. On a deeper level, he’s showing that there will come a day when true worship will no longer be centered in a building. He’ll come back to this theme when he talks to the Samaritan woman at the well.
Verse 13 opens with everyone going up to Jerusalem for the Passover. You always go up to Jerusalem no matter your starting elevation. Jerusalem and the Temple are central to everything.
It says that Jesus found some things in the Temple, a word which means “to discover something, especially after searching.” Jesus didn’t just pass by and happen to see them. He goes to this area with intent. He finds people selling animals there – these of course would have been used for sacrifices. It’s Passover and a lot of people in Jerusalem are there infrequently, maybe even a once-in-a-lifetime journey. So they want and need to buy animals to make all the proper sacrifices. Money-changers are also a necessity: people came from all over the country and each city had its own currency. The money changers performed a valuable service for getting on in the big city. It might also be significant that a lot of the money very likely included Roman coins bearing the image of the emperor.
None of this was intrinsically wrong; most of it was necessary to a degree. Nevertheless, Jesus makes a whip and turns on the sellers and money changers.
Later on, as the Christian community contemplates this event, they will recall various scripture passages that seem fitting. The quote in verse 17 comes from Psalm 69:9 and seems particularly fitting for what Jesus has done.
In John’s gospel, remembering or recalling is an indication (almost a technical term) for the process by which the community came to see Jesus as the fulfillment of Scripture after the resurrection. We can assume that this connection is not made on the spot but is, rather, a product of decades of reflection on the event. Paul talked about humanity in two groups and v17 references the group that believes, the group that, through the Spirit, comes to understand the meaning and significance of the events of Jesus’ life.
Verse 18 shows the group that doesn’t believe, doesn’t allow the spirit to reveal this. The question at hand: What’s your authority for doing this? In John’s gospel, the Jews are those who oppose Jesus. This is the opposition and they want to know: What sign can you show that proves your authority to do something like this?
Jesus’ response is totally incomprehensible to them. In 587 BC the temple was completely destroyed by Babylon. 70-80 years later the Israelites began to return home but the temple wasn’t rebuilt until Herod the Great began the project in 20BC and completed it around 62AD. They say it’s been under construction for 46 years at this point. Human wisdom would agree that a massive temple that took 80 years to build could not be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. That impossible.
The author of the story helps us understand in v21. For the Jewish people, the temple was a sign of God’s presence amidst his people. It was also the place where that divine presence was mediated to the people. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Christian community will come to understand they don’t need the Temple to mediate God’s presence anymore. The new temple is Jesus himself, his resurrected body. Paul’s theology will develop this to say that Jesus lives in us through the Spirit and we ourselves become the temple of God.
Verse 22 says again, they remembered, and this after long reflection on the events. The Spirit helps them understand what it all meant.
Several times John uses the idea in verse 23: that people saw what Jesus did and they “began to believe.” I have always loved these verses because they tell us that believing is a process. It’s not something we accomplish overnight. They saw the signs he was doing: not just the miracles but all the actions that indicated who he was and what he was about. At the end of John’s Gospel he says, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (20:30-31).
Verse 24 is interesting. The Greek is a play on words that we lose in English. Basically what it’s saying is that in v23 there are those who begin to believe because of the signs he did. Throughout John’s Gospel, we’ll see that believing based on the signs is not enough. It’s not sufficient. God wants a deeper belief. This verse is saying that Jesus doesn’t trust those who only have a surface trust in him. God wants far more than that for us.
In v25, because Jesus is human, he understands that sometimes we get carried away by signs or impressive events. But this kind of response doesn’t always go deeper into the kind of faith that God desires for us.
Ponder the idea that you are a temple of God. What are some areas that Jesus is asking to cleanse within you, to remove that which does not belong in the temple?
What is Jesus feeling as he enters the temple and decides to take action?
Connections of the readings
The Gospel reminds us that the season of Lent is to remove all that hinders us from our pursuit of knowing God. The Old Testament reading suggests a basic moral code as a starting point. We read this knowing that Jesus greatly expanded it. Paul invites us to move into the camp of believers – to be those who rely on something greater than our wisdom to understand.
Questions to ponder
The purpose of Lent is to prepare the people of God for the Paschal feast. How does each reading prepare me for the Paschal feast?
The ten commandments are often used as an examination of conscience before sacramental confession. Think about doing such an examination with some of the expanded meanings that Jesus proposed (such as murder vs hate).
Few of us like to hear rules expressed as “thou shalt not”! Could you turn some or all of these commandments into a positive version like the commandments around the sabbath and honor of parents?
If you were going to share your faith to someone who does not believe, would you start with an intellectual approach or with your own experience? What stories might you share?
Ponder the idea that you are a temple of God. What are some areas that Jesus is asking to cleanse within you, to remove that which does not belong in the temple?
What is Jesus feeling as he enters the temple and decides to take action?
Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
© 2023 Kelly Sollinger