19th March, 2006

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN?

When I was going to school we had ‘catechism’ every day. Religion class was called ‘catechism’ because it largely consisted of learning by heart the questions and answers contained in our catechism. Very little allowance was made for the fact that we were very young, and very often had no understanding of the words we were memorising. I might have ‘coveted’ my neighbours goods if I had only known what ‘covet’ was. And I knew that ‘adultery’ was the opposite of ‘infantry’, or something. But in the midst of it all I did learn that there were ten commandments, and I was a little wiser than the young lad who reputedly when asked what was the first commandment in the Bible answered ‘When Eve told Adam to eat the apple”.

I have learnt a lot since then, not least that life is rarely as black-and-white as the commandments could make it appear. Take the present unrest among university students here. I don’t profess to have any deep understanding of the issues involved, but I do know that a lot depends on which side of the argument you believe. Is the new legislation likely to help employers to more easily take on more young employees? Is the new legislation likely to help employers to more easily get rid of young employees? Is it to facilitate hiring or firing?

Unfortunately life is full of those apparently grey areas, areas that leave us asking ‘whom should I believe?’. But there are a lot more certainties in life than the modern, often self-appointed, experts would have us believe. And one of those certainties, I suggest, is that God is never taken in by spoof. That’s certainly the case in our Gospel today. The traders and money-changers would have people to believe that they were there to provide a service – after all, the people coming to worship needed ‘certified pure’ animals to sacrifice; they needed the correct ‘image-free’ coins to pay their temple tax. But Jesus knew exploiters of the poor when He saw them.

I’m sure very few of us are really exploiters of the poor, but we can very often be exploiters of the ambiguous – we call it giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt. In a world that casts doubt on the value of each human life; in a world that casts doubt on the value of keeping our promises; in a world that suggests that the only real crime is to be caught, we will always find plenty of opportunity to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. How many times have we copped out with ‘I don’t think that God really expects me to…….’?

The Jesus of our gospel today is not a Jesus who is prepared to have the wool pulled over His eyes – our spoof is not going to work on Him. But He’s also the Jesus who was prepared to give His life for us spoofers, in the hope of opening our eyes to the certainty, the non-ambiguity, of His love.

Time to whip ourselves into shape!