Bitter sweet!

Revelation 10:8-11 

Then the voice from heaven spoke to me again: “Go and take the open scroll from the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” 9 So I went to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll. “Yes, take it and eat it,” he said. “It will be sweet as honey in your mouth, but it will turn sour in your stomach!” 10 So I took the small scroll from the hand of the angel, and I ate it! It was sweet in my mouth, but when I swallowed it, it turned sour in my stomach. 11 Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.”

Luke 19:45-48 

Then Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people selling animals for sacrifices. 46 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” 47 After that, he taught daily in the Temple, but the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the other leaders of the people began planning how to kill him. 48 But they could think of nothing, because all the people hung on every word he said.

Food for thought

Did you notice how twice John is told to take the roll? It is not handed to him; even when he asks the angel to give it to him, the answer is that he must take it. The meaning is that God's word is never forced on any man; he must take it. It is a personal decision; God does not force himself on us. If we wish, we can take God's message into our very life and being.

In the Gospel Jesus goes into the Temple to pray, but what he finds in there is all but sweet; the Temple had  turned into a den of thieves, full of business dealings. This is the irony in the First Reading: what is supposed to be sweet has turned into something else; what is supposed to be house of prayer is now house of business; what is supposed to be holy place is now profane place. Is this not what we have done with the Day of the Lord, Sunday? We have turned it into a day for selling and buying.

There is something almost incredibly audacious in the action of Jesus in teaching in the Temple courts when there was a price on his head. This was sheer defiance. At the moment the authorities could not arrest him, for the people hung upon his every word. But every time he spoke he took his life in his hands and he knew well that it was only a matter of time until the end should come. The courage of the Christian should match the courage of his Lord. He left us an example that we should never be ashamed to show whose we are and whom we serve.