Texts: Jeremiah 7: 1-11; Mark 11: 15-19

In Jerusalem at the remnant of the Western Wall of Herod's Temple, called the Wailing Wall, I tried to imagine what this area must have looked like in Jesus' time. Now there is only the wall with little papers inserted in the cracks, papers that contain prayers of the faithful; now there are men and women standing by the wall, usually in ultra orthodox dress, separated by a curtain to keep the minds of men on God rather than on women. Hasn't it always made you wonder why women are called the weaker sex? Evidently men are more weak emotionally than women because the curtain was certainly not put there to keep the minds of women on God rather than men! Be that as it may. The stone floor, although almost fifty feet below the rest of the Old City, is a relatively recent addition, that is, perhaps only a few hundred years old.. The curtain was installed after the Israelis regained control of this part of Jerusalem after the 1967 war. Photos from the 1920s show men and women at the wall together.

The temple courtyard must have been enormous because the original wall was 1591feet long; or the length of five football fields today only196 feet remain. The largest extant stone is 45 feet long, 15 feet high and 15 feet deep, and the Temple was built without the benefit of cranes and modern machinery. The Temple courtyard was full of people selling doves and pigeons to be given as burnt offerings under the various laws and regulations laid down in the Book of Leviticus. Beyond the courtyard, the Temple had four courts: an outer one open to all except menstruating women; a second one for Jews and ritually cleansed women; the third court for ritually pure men; and the last for properly attired priests.

The priests made their living off the offerings of the people; the peasants had to turn over a portion of their harvest – and not just to the priests. There were also the hated tax collectors, symbols of Roman power. Think collaborators. The peasant class lived on very little, very, very little. Think third world with poverty like India or Bangladesh. The priests also administered the estates of widows and it was the rare widow who could recoup a theft from her husband's estate. Think thief.

Enter Jesus. If you look at the preceding verses, he has just been hailed with hosannas as a Son of David, one who comes in the name of the Most High. When he attacked the moneychangers, he was not just throwing out an assorted group of persons who made their living from the people purchasing sacrifices or changing their Roman currency for Jewish coin to pay the temple tax. He was attacking the accommodations the temple hierarchy had made with Rome and the very temple system itself. There are few events in Jesus' life reported in all four of the Gospels. This is one of them. It was manifestly clear that in terms of the timing of the attack, that Jesus' challenge to the temple system was the last straw. No longer was he simply an itinerant prophet and miracle worker but he was calling the power structure to task and taking them on. Prophets who take on power structures often get killed. Think King, Romero, Syrian freedom fighters.

We, who are not charismatic leaders or people who consider ourselves courageous – or foolhardy, depending on your point of view – we often ask what we can do to take action in the world as did those we revere. Turning over tables is dramatic; however, following the drama, the slow, tedious, and sometimes hard work to be done may not seem like much but I submit to you that the small things we do constitute taking action in the world. That is what the uncomfortable words of Jesus tell us to do. We hear them at Lent and we hear them the rest of the year. The question becomes how do we respond to them.

Sometimes we squirm when we hear uncomfortable words. Sometimes we just get angry at the person who uses them. Our response depends on how deeply those words affect our sense of ourselves. Lent is being in the dark, doing something that I don't want to do. It could be a small thing like listening to a person tell me the same story for the fortieth time and – this is probably most important – refusing to take my advice on the issue, whether it's a legal one or a personal one. Sometimes it's because we feel we have no power or influence to change the outcome of a situation. And the words just hang on us, interminably.

I know that when someone doesn't take my advice that he or she may find my words not to his or her liking – uncomfortable. I may be laying out the options to get out of a bad living situation with a partner or spouse. Those words are uncomfortable. Those words may be about taking some actual responsibility for what has been done or needs to be done. Uncomfortable. Well, I think, that's too bad because patching up and dreaming up one's act involves dealing with the uncomfortable.

If we really think about it, that's what our faith offers us: that ability to see beyond the immediate and imagine the possibilities of what can be, Lent is the dark side of our dream. Lent reminds us that there is a life beyond the immediate, the here and now. It is the promise that is spelled out by the prophet Jeremiah: that God remembers us when we remember the least marginalized of this society - the poor, the orphan, the widow and the stranger - that's where we are called, reflecting the community to which Jesus himself felt called.

There's nothing glamorous about serving the poor and marginalized, but as followers of the One who moved and lived among them, we can ask for nothing more. For after Lent, comes Easter. Amen and Amen.

Let us pray: We pray, Lord, that you move us beyond the open courtyard into the holy place of your abode, a place where all are welcome, including those forgotten and ignored by society. And may we be as attentive to their needs as was the One we follow, even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.