I wonder how many of you remember the first time you ever got the wind knocked out of you? You take a hard fall and for a few frightening moments you can't breathe. Been there? I must have been about eight or nine when it happened to me. I was out in the desert, horseback riding with my grandfather. I was riding with just a blanket that day. The horse zigged and I zagged and I went flying off, landing hard, and couldn't breathe. I remember very clearly looking up at the brilliant blue sky and calmly thinking that it was a beautiful day, and I was dying. I remember that I wasn't afraid at all, but I felt bad for my grandfather who, I could hear, was running towards me and I knew would be very upset. Of course, a few minutes later, I was back up on the horse and have obviously lived to tell the tale.

Sometimes the Word of God can knock the wind out of us. Sometimes the Bible can astonish us with its directness and power, and leave us reeling. POW! If we're honest, the story we hear today about Jesus in the temple is one of those moments, isn't it? Jesus THIS angry? Jesus angry at all? But to make a whip of cords to drive out the money changers and the animal sellers and all their animals, too, the sheep and oxen, to drive them all out, pouring out the coins of the money changers, overturning the tables. . . ! Jesus?

Whew. Take a moment and try to catch your breath. What do we do with the anger and the passion of this clearly very human man in this story, this one sent of God, usually portrayed as meek, mild, submissive, loving, kind, gentle, the one who washed the feet of his disciples? How do we deal with a Jesus so stirred up with zeal that he rages in frustration and distress?

The disciples get a clue into this anger. They remember that it was written in the Psalms: "Zeal for your house will consume me." What's going on in this story that Jesus' zeal for the house of God led him to such dramatic action?

Let's remember a couple strands from Jesus' own life that help us understand. On the one hand, he was a devout Jew and he shared the Jewish love of the Temple of God. Just as we say that the sanctuary is God's house, that God is present here in some mystical and powerful way, so was the temple a holy place, and to be protected from profanation. Unbelievers, the unclean, were excluded from the inner courts of the temple in Jerusalem on pain of death.

Everything foreign, unclean was excluded. Hence, any foreign currency brought by pilgrims to the temple had to be exchanged for the coin of Israel. That's why the money changers were there. And the animal sellers were there to provide the oxen, sheep and doves necessary for sacrifice. To ensure the ritual purity of the temple. To safeguard its holiness.

And Jesus loved that sacred place. Remember how, as a boy, his parents had nearly died of fright when they had all gone to Jerusalem for the festival and he stayed behind? Mary and Joseph thought he was lost! And they went back and searched for three days until they found the boy in the temple-this same temple where we find him again today as an adult-then a boy of twelve sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And Mary asked, I'm sure with no small amount of anger in her voice that day, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." Jesus answered, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

Jesus loved that sacred place, and that love filled him with zeal and passion for its integrity and purpose. It was to be a house of prayer. It was, therefore, bitterly ironic that those very merchants and money changers who were to serve, protect and further the ritual purity had, in fact, corrupted that purity-had through greed made it into a profitable market by jacking up their prices and taking advantage of the pilgrims who needed their services. And God's own people had distorted its purpose as well, making of the temple an idol, letting the beauty of the place usurp for itself the dedication that rightly belonged to God alone.

Jesus knew that the real worship of God must occur in the heart, not in a place. And he knew, with painful awareness, that God's people could forget and focus on the wrong thing. For Jesus was not only a rabbi who taught in the temple; he was also a prophet, in the line of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Micah and John the Baptizer. And so, for as much as Jesus loved being IN God's house, studying, praying, praising God, part of him always stood outside, ready to call the people to accountability lest they fall away from the true purposes of God.

Jesus knew the words of Amos who heard God asking: "Do you think I like all those sacrifices you keep offering to me? I hate your religious gatherings. They are all corrupted by your sins. I hate your feasts and your holy days. They are a burden I am tired of bearing. Wash yourselves clean. Stop all the evil you are doing. Learn to do what is right. See that justice is done. Help those who are oppressed. Give orphans their right and defend the widows and the poor. "

In the line of the prophets, Jesus knew the constant temptation to God's people to separate the worship of God from the doing of justice. He knew the all-so-human tendency to get comfortable with ritual within the safety of the four walls of God's house, and comfortably forget about God's people suffering outside. He knew that the real temple of God existed not in stone and mortar, but in the hearts and lives of God's people.

And so, you see, he was consumed with zeal, like the prophets before him. On that day, when he saw that everything had been turned inside out and the focus of worship had been distorted, and God's plans for justice and righteousness had been conveniently ignored through preoccupation with temple worship, he lost it, as we would say. In anger and frustration and despair he sought to purify God's house and make it again truly sacred. The true temple, he said, is my body. It is my body broken for you. It is my body, which will be raised up after three days.

What Jesus was trying to accomplish went much deeper than clearing the temple space of the bankers and merchants, the silver and gold, the oxen and doves. He was trying, yet again, to get the people to understand that in him God was doing a new thing. That the old temple worship had outlived its purpose, that the people had taken a detour and had forgotten what religion was for. He wanted that day to knock the wind out of them, so that they'd have to stop and catch their breath and realize that what God wanted of them wasn't so much what happened inside the walls of the temple as what happened to the least of God's children on the outside.

Now let's be clear on a couple things. Many of us have trouble dealing with anger. We think that being religious, or being "Christian," means not getting angry. So we don't do anger well. We mostly swallow it and then it comes out in inappropriate and destructive ways. So lest we conclude from today's story that Jesus' anger justifies whatever anger we might feel about this, that or the other thing, let's remember that this is not a story about personal anger between individuals or about anger over a personal slight.

Jesus is angry that the purposes of God have been thwarted by God's own people. Jesus is angry on God's behalf and is passionately calling the people back to faithfulness. Jesus' anger is the voice of the voiceless, the empowerment of the powerless. In this cleansing of the temple, Jesus' anger is the other side of compassion FOR the least of God's children. It is the expression of his heart breaking for love of God and love of humankind.

Christ's anger breaks open the possibility of love. For Jesus, anger is not an end in itself. It is not part of personal therapy. Christ's anger does not hurt the other. It is not abusive or vindictive of an individual broken by sin or error. Jesus' holy anger is an expression of God's love for God's people, and its purpose is to lead to the possibility of new life.

St. Augustine wrote some strange words that sum up what's going on in this gospel story about Jesus' anger. Augustine said: "Hope has two lovely daughters. Anger, so that what must not be cannot be; and courage, so that what can be will be." All great reformers and activists have been motivated by these two daughters of hope: anger and courage. I recently read about one such person, motivated by anger and then courage to work for preservation of the environment, specifically the preservation of the Hudson River as a viable and healthy ecosystem.

Those of you who have become fans of the Sopranos -- and I don't mean our choir, but rather the TV show -- know her as Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony Soprano's shrink. In that ironic and somewhat tongue-in-cheek role, Dr. Melfi helps the mobster work through the consequences of personal anger that sometimes gets the best of him.

But in the real world, the actor Lorraine Bracco deals with a different kind of anger in a different way, perhaps something akin to the kind of anger we saw Jesus display in today's story. Lorraine Bracco grew up in New York state, where in the '60s the Hudson River had become something of an open sewer line with virtually no environmental controls. Out of her own anger at the desecration of this great river, Bracco joined the board of an organization called Riverkeepers, something of a neighborhood watch-type program to protect the river. Polluters have been reported and prosecuted under the federal Clean Water Act. Today, through the efforts of the Riverkeepers and others, the Hudson River is the only large river in the North Atlantic states that still retains strong, spawning stock of its entire historical migratory species. These fish support recreational and commercial fisheries along the Atlantic coast. And the river is again safe, not only for fish, but for birds and children and families, for swimming, boating, and recreation.

Jesus' passionate behavior in God's temple, polluted by greed and idolatry, reveals to us that anger and courage can combine to create hope even in situations where hope seems nearly lost. In our Lenten journey this year, may the example of Jesus knock the wind out of us for a moment or two, may it cause us to stop and to take stock of what's really going on in the world and in nature around us. Then, when we take that first new breath, may we be filled with zeal for God's temple, the temple which is the church, which is the whole created world, which is the Body of Christ . . . that hope may be born anew.