Third Sunday of Lent

The OT reading is from Exodus. It's the Ten Commandments. Seems like usually, when a reading has brackets to indicate a short version, we still get the long version. But today we actually get the short version. It still covers all ten, but just little more briefly.

I have at home these really fun finger puppets, one of Brahma and one of Kali. When Gloria reads the the second commandment, about carving idols, I wonder if my finger puppets count as idols. I've also got lunch boxes, one with Krishna, another with Ganesh. They're less idol-like, but they do have visual representations of Hindu gods. Do they count?

Then the Gospel is from St. John where Jesus drives the moneychangers from the temple area. I remember being a kid and arguing with other kids, at Sunday school probably, about whether Jesus was committing some sort of sin in this scene. We of course believed that Christ was wholly without sin, but we wondered how you could chase guys around with a whip of cords sinlessly. Surely you'd have to be breaking at least one of the commandments? I probably argued that I'd feel like I was if I chased you around with a whip. But we could never figure out which commandment that would be breaking.

As an adult now, I go along more with what Christ tells us in St. Matthew, where "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." Not worshipping false idols, not killing, not stealing? Bah, that's the easy part. Loving God with heart, soul and mind? That's the hard part, folks. And then loving my neighbor as myself? Hard too.

But, then again, Christ also tells us, again from St. Matthew, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill." So we're not off the hook for the commandments really. But the New Testament adds like two more. Or one and a half. Or something.