Third sunday in lent -C

Third Sunday in Lent
A man who was driving without seat belt was stopped by the police, he grabbed for the belt and put it on. But it was too late.
I was visiting the school children and said, "We believe in one God and the Father is God and the Son is God and who is the other person?" One boy said, "You are God..." I said, "You got A+". And then they were asking more and more about Mummy. How mummy come back to life and so on. And at one point, I looked at them and said, "If you want to know more about mummy, just ask your daddy".
Once a police officer looked at a man and said, "You weren't wearing your seatbelt" and he said, "yes, I was" Then he said, "If you don't believe me, just ask my wife". The cop looked at the man's wife and said, "So, tell me, was he wearing seatbelt?" The wife looked at the cop and said, "I have been married to this man for forty years and there is one thing, I have learnt, never argue with him with he is drunk. Just give him a ticket.
Today we celebrate the third Sunday in Lent. During this holy season, we renew our traditional catholic disciples namely prayer, fasting and works of charity. Last weekend, we talked and reflected more about the power of prayer and how we could connect ourselves with God through prayer. We wanted to be like our Master the Messiah spending time with God alone.
Christ is the Messiah. He is proving Himself the Messiah by cleansing the temple. The people of Israel strongly believed that the Messiah would come and gather the twelve tribes of Israel. Yes, he would bring those scattered people to one place the holy city Jerusalem. Then He could cleanse the temple in Jerusalem. More than anything else, what made Christ to be crucified was the cleansing of the temple. Christ chased the sheep and the cattle, the money changers and others saying, "Do not make my Father's house a market place" That made the Pharisees and the Scribes, the elders and the people so mad and thus they found a way to crucify Him.
Once a man prayed to God saying, " God, I am a sinner and people don't let me in the Church". And god that night said to him, "What are you complaining about? They don't let me in either".
As Jesus saw how the holy temple of God was abused by the Pharisees and others, He made a whip of cord and chased them all away. He cleansed the temple saying,
"This is my Father's house...Yes, this is His house and we are called to keep it holy and clean.
Then Christ says, "Destroy this temple and within three days, I will raise it up..." He was talking about His body. He was foretelling His coming death and resurrection.
In his autobiography, Gandhi says how he was in his student years was deeply interested in the Bible, especially the Sermon on the Mount. But as he went to Church few times and saw the unchristian things, he changed his mind and said, "I like your Christ not Christians.
In order to experience the love and kindness of God; in order to know and love Christ in the Church, it's so important to keep our bodies which are the temples of the Holy Spirit pure and clean.
One of the Lenten disciples namely fasting helps us to keep our temples pure and clean. Fasting means leaving behind things that hinder us from loving God and others and fasting means say "No" to our physical, material and spiritual temptations. Fasting purifies our bodies and it cleans our minds.
We all human and we fall and rise, and we go away from God and do the same stupid things again and again and at the same time, as we come to know that Christ is our loving and forgiving Messiah and helps us to cleans our temples, we turn away from sins and shortcomings; pain and failures and come to Him. So, let us cleanse our temples even before coming to God's temple. Amen.