Third Sunday of Lent, March 7, 2021 – Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

“When fact becomes legend, print the legend.” When fact becomes legend, print the legend. Those are the closing lines of the movie, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” For those of you who have never seen the movie, a very, very brief plot summary.

A greenhorn eastern lawyer, played by Jimmy Stewart, comes to a wild western town, in a western territory not yet a state, armed only with his law book and the belief in the freedom of the press. The town to which he comes is controlled by a powerful bad guy named Liberty Valance, who is the henchman of all the local ranchers who, for some reason, feel that acquiring statehood will be financially ruinous for them, and they will do anything to stop the move for statehood from going forward. Naturally, Stewart is pushing for statehood.

Early on in his time there, he meets one of the most upstanding citizens of the town, played by John Wayne. At first Wayne belittles him as a greenhorn, but finally begins to form a friendship, and teaches Jimmy Stewart how to shoot. Jimmy Stewart winds up being a very good shot, not matter what, and he will not carry a gun.

Unbeknownst to Wayne and Stewart, they are both attracted to the same woman. Finally comes the inevitable showdown, when Liberty Valance calls out Jimmy Stewart because of the articles he’s writing in the newspaper. And there’s the typical western scene, two men with guns, alone on a street. Both men draw at the same moment, and Liberty Valance falls.

But what the audience knows, that no one else knows, is, up on a rooftop is John Wayne, with a long-range rifle. He managed to fire at exactly the same moment, so you only hear one gunshot. But the bullet that kills Liberty Valance comes from John Wayne’s rifle, not from Jimmy Stewart’s gun. Wayne has done that to honor his girlfriend. And, in the end, he loses his girlfriend to a local hero now, Jimmy Stewart, who has killed the bad guy. And, on the basis of that one heroic act, he becomes not only a local hero, but a powerful influence in this newly formed state, and spends his whole life as a senator in the United States on behalf of this new state.

The story is told by a reported interviewing him, near the end of Stewart’s life. And, after the reporter learns the whole story, and the secret behind it, he tells us, the audience, “When fact becomes legend, print the legend.”

I tell you that because that is typical of storytelling. Another good example of it is the novel and movie “From Here to Eternity.” It is built around the story of the days leading up to the terrible attack, by the Japanese, on Pearl Harbor that brought us into World War II. But the story is all about the men and women at the military base in Pearl Harbor, rather than about the war itself. The war is used as the backdrop for the story.

There are several famous movies about the Battle of The Little Bighorn, but if you watch “They Died With Their Boots On,” starring Errol Flynn, and then watch “Little Big Man,” starring Dustin Hoffman, you get two very entirely different pictures of the meaning of the Battle of The Little Bighorn.

The point of all of this is that there is a difference between event and story. An event becomes a story, and the event changes as it moves through the story. There are not too many stories in the gospels that are told in all four gospels, but two of them that are, are the story of the loaves and fishes, and today’s story of the cleansing of the temple by Jesus. But that’s where the similarities end.

 We know the story as part of Palm Sunday. Jesus and His entourage parade into Jerusalem amid great fanfare and He immediately goes to the temple, finds this mess there, and drives all the moneychangers out. And Jesus’ quote in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is, “My house shall be a house of prayer for all people, it is written. But you have made it a den of thieves.” Only in John’s gospel does Jesus go to the Jerusalem temple, not at the end of his ministry, but at the beginning. The other three evangelists used it as the trigger that eventually leads to Jesus’ crucifixion. St. John uses it to set up an opposition between Himself and the authorities of Israel that will dog his footsteps throughout His ministry. That’s the first difference.

The second difference is that Jesus does not say in this morning’s gospel, “It is written, ‘My Father’s house shall be a house of prayer for all people, but you have made it a den of thieves.’” All He says is, “Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace.” It’s limp by comparison. But the same message is there.

I was looking up the original words that are used, and I discovered something very funny. When John describes the area as a place where there are moneychangers, the word in Greek that he uses for moneychangers is “clippers.” Clippers. We have an expression in English - a clip joint. What we mean by that is a place where people are cheated out of their money. So, John has used the same idea without using the expression “den of thieves.” But you notice that the quote is very different.

Second difference. Only in today’s gospel are we reminded of the scripture quote, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” It comes from one of the psalms. And there are two stories going on here, right at that spot. There is the story that John is telling about the event of the cleansing of the temple, and there’s the story about how the early church viewed this story. He says, “His disciples remembered this quote.” When did they remember it? Long after the Resurrection. A couple of lines later he says that Jesus meant His own body as a temple, not the building. When does that become important? When the disciples remember it after the Resurrection. So, the story we’re being told is one story. The story the church remembers is a different story.

The story we’re being told has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with justice. Jesus is enraged. It’s an interesting thing. “Zeal for your house consumes me.” The word zelus in both Latin and Greek means something that boils, like a pot of water. So, I’m boiling over with rage. It’s eating me up inside. It consumes me. It’s eating Him up inside. Jesus is furious, not because there is business being conducted in the court of the temple. Oh, no. That had to happen. Because, in the first century, if you wanted to make a money donation to the temple, you had to use Jewish coinage, but the only coinage you could use to shop anyplace else in the Roman Empire, was Roman coinage. So, somehow or other, you had to make the exchange if you wanted to leave a donation in the temple. And it was only fair that people who did that should make a small commission as their livelihood. Similarly, when first the temple was built, the Jews were an agrarian society, and everybody brought their own sacrifices – their fruits from their garden, their lambs from their flock. By the time this story takes place, the Hebrews are no longer an agrarian society, so if they want to have a sacrifice to offer in the temple, they have to buy it someplace. The simplest place to buy it is at the temple itself. Those things, in themselves, were not the least bit disrespectful or unjust. What was disrespectful and unjust was that people were making a killing over this necessary work. They were defrauding people right and left for their own gain. And worse than that, the priests of the temple were turning a blind eye on it, or themselves were pocketing the profits. That’s where the rage comes. It comes from social injustice, not from the violation of religious principle.

That’s very important because, today, we get to the point in our Lenten journey where the vertical journey between us and God intersects the horizontal journey with all men. Remember, I asked you to try and decide for yourself why this first reading was linked with this gospel. It’s because all of the commandments have to do with our relationship with one another, except the worship of God. Jesus taught us that there are two great commandments, and one is the same as the other. Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself.

The point of the connection between the giving of the Ten Commandments and today’s story of Jesus’ rage at social injustice is this. Worship, without charity and justice, is hypocrisy. Charity, without justice, is mere condescension. And justice, without charity, almost always leads to vengeance and power. The three are intimately connected. That’s why St. Paul tells us, in the second reading, that, “The folly of God is wiser than men. And the weakness of God, is stronger than men.”

When the fact becomes story, becomes legend, print the legend. The facts that we live with all the time need interpretation. We interpret them in three different ways. Through our love of God, which becomes love of neighbor, which becomes, hopefully, acts of charity and justice.