He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”[1]

Pastor and author, Casey Tygrett, tells the story about the difficulty he experienced with his dad.[2] He writes about the time he was driving on the freeway in the US to meet his father, to confront him with an issue that had divided them for a long time.

When Casey was driving to that meeting, he had gotten lost in his thoughts and almost missed an amazing, absurd sight: A car had pulled over, its hazard lights flashing. Even from a distance, the tilt of the car gave away the diagnosis: flat tire.

Flat tires are common. What was uncommon was that the person changing the tire was Hellboy. You know Hellboy? He was a comic book character from the 1990s. Hellboy was a large, red-skinned demon-man with a giant right hand made of stone and two horns protruding from his head, filed down into blunt circles.

And that’s what Casey witnessed that day on the side of the highway. Here was a grown man, dressed in cinema-grade costume and make-up, changing a flat tire. Hellboy was hard at work mending his world.

What struck Casey in that moment was that it felt far more believable that Hellboy would change a flat tire on the side of the highway than that he, Casey, would make peace with his dad.

The rift was so deep and had gone for so long. What chance was there of going back? What chance was there for forgiveness?

In this sermon series in Lent, we are looking at various lines from the Lord’s Prayer, and to reflect on their meaning and importance for us today. Today, we consider the line at the heart of the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses…”

To do the work of forgiveness, we live, as Casey realized, between our desire to see our relationships mended on the one hand, and the seemingly absurd belief that that mending is even possible.

In the Gospel for this Third Sunday in Lent, Jesus gets angry and cleanses the temple because, to put it one way, the religious leaders and money changers had sinned.[3] They had turned a holy place into a marketplace.

Jesus cries in anger, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

Because of Jesus’ display of anger, the Gospel pushes us to imagine Jesus entering our own sanctuaries. The Gospel pushes us to imagine Jesus entering a place within our own hearts and minds. And once there, the Gospel pushes us to imagine Jesus overturning our own cherished rationalizations about the world and the people in it.

And for what purpose does Jesus overturn our world? Why does Jesus create this disruption in our own lives? To drive us out into renewed relationships.

To imagine this is not easy. That’s why we receive this Gospel during Lent.

“Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

A marketplace is a place of exchange, of transaction.

And whenever religion gets into the business of buying and selling of God’s grace, requiring sacrifice to earn God’s love, we have a problem. Whenever we catch ourselves laying judgement on whether someone deserves a break, or forgiveness, or a second chance, we know we are fully immersed in the mentality of transaction.

Forgiveness is not a transaction. Forgiveness is not a mechanism you switch on or off in response to situations that you’d rather not have to deal with, because forgiveness is hard.

What kind of economy does Jesus operate in? When Jesus said, “Get these things out of here,” it’s a clue to the source of Jesus’ anger. He spoke those specific words directly to those selling the doves.

A little background on temple sacrifice: Ordinary people had to make sacrifices to be made right with the priesthood and the temple. They sacrificed oxen and sheep. But the very poor were allowed to offer doves.[4] Recall that Mary and Joseph had to give doves when they brought the infant Jesus to the temple.[5]

Jesus knows that his religion is not taking care of the poor. In fact, his religion is stealing from the poor, making money off the poor and making them give even the little they have, to feel they are right with God.

Jesus gets angry about that and overturns the economy of transaction. He overturns the mentality of exchange into the economy of grace, of forgiveness. And making that shift of thinking and of being and acting, is not easy. It’s not easy for us to receive forgiveness, nor is it to forgive. It doesn’t compute, to live in that unconditional way.

Maybe it is easier to believe you’ll run into Hellboy on the side of the road! Maybe it is easier to believe the fakest news possible, the most fantastical, absurd and improbable thing imaginable, just because someone on YouTube says it’s so. Maybe that’s easier to believe than in forgiveness, never mind with God, with one another.

And it does matter, with one another. Because in the Lord’s Prayer forgiveness is not something that’s validated just between you and Jesus. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Divine forgiveness hinges on the practice and posture of forgiveness between people on earth.

To forgive someone, in Casey Tygrett’s own words, “is to abide in a land of ache, beauty, and frequent disappointment. It is a place of work and persistence, not a one-time display of obedience. It is the place in between, the restless present tense.”

And when we take a mending posture toward our world, we are in the presence of grace well beyond what we could imagine. “Grace is oxygen to all of us, should we choose to inhale.”[6] It is given already. Will we open our hearts to receive the gift?

The Psalmist, who expresses our deepest longings as well as articulates our sharpest struggles, proclaims that while God’s anger lasts but for a moment, God’s compassion lasts a lifetime.[7] God’s grace overrides all the other ways of being in relationship, even when we mess up, and stumble from time to time in the lifestyle pursuit of forgiveness.

Healthy people are not purists in the sense that they never have faults or setbacks. They just get up and go after falling. That’s the forgiveness trait. They never give up trying because they believe and trust in God’s forgiveness.

And why will we get up renewed in our commitment and faithfulness to God? Why will we be honest, vulnerable, and expressive of the love of God in our lives? Because we believe nothing we do or don’t do will jeopardize God’s steadfast, unwavering, unending, unconditional love for us.

God forgives you. Believe it. Forgive yourself. Then, forgive others.

Repeat.

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[1] John 2:16

[2] Tygrett, C. (2023). The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons. Broadleaf Books. pp. 90-91, 146.

[3] John 2:13-22

[4] Rohr, R. (2024, February 25). Jesus’ Anger: Where Anger Meets Love. Daily Meditations. Center for Action and Contemplation. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/jesus-anger/

[5] Luke 2:22-24

[6] Tygrett, ibid., p.101-102.

[7] Psalm 30:5; see also Psalm 103:8-11