Lectionary Meditation Tuesday of 1 Lent

John 2:13-22 (NRSV)
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ 17His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

I entered Lent with a great many plans, as so often happens they didn't work out the way I'd expected. Lent this year feels very un-Lenty (if you will indulge the word). I am not feeling penitent, nor contemplative. I find myself feeling every day, normal, entirely less spiritual than you might expect. My careful Lenten plans lie in ruins at my feet. Now I could feel guilty, or I could acknowledge that the best laid plans of all of us are often no match for life. I can acknowledge that I'm not the one in control and instead enter quietly into Lenten discernment, where is God calling me deeper into communion?

What is happening this Lent was unexpected. I normally read about half of the daily lectionary since I switch every other night between Compline (with the daily office readings) or a long meditation session. But this first week of Lent I have found myself reading the daily office Gospel reading even when I can't find time for the daily office. And I have found myself entering into those readings more deeply than ever before. The reading above was from Tuesday. It is a familiar story, as so many of them are, but I am different now than I was the last time I heard it, or indeed than any time I have heard it before.

The words that sounded with profound truth for me were one simple sentence:

21But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

Yes, this is a foreshadowing of the resurrection and surely that is what the original author intended. But I could not help but hear the words we use to send LEVs out with their charge: "We who are many are one Body..." I could not help but hear "The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven" as the wafer touched my hands and my eyes met those who spoke them. For when we speak those words, priest or LEM, we not only name the gift we share with our brothers and sisters we name our brothers and sisters. We acknowledge the one who kneels before us as the Body of Christ.

What I heard in the Gospel that night was hope, not hope for resurrection of the physical body of the historic Jesus two thousand years ago but for the resurrection of the Church. I heard the protest of human beings who have always done their flawed best to build a suitable home for God, and who have always failed.

20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’

And I heard Christ say that yes, despite all our failures God indeed has a temple here on Earth in which to dwell: within each of us, within the Church. I heard that God has built God's own temple, one that cannot be destroyed. One that God will raise up in resurrection again, and again, and again. I heard hope.