3月7日（日）四旬節第3主日 レイ神父様の福音メッセージを、聖書朗読箇所と併せてご紹介します。（英語版も掲載しています）
• ヨハネによる福音書 ２章１３－２５
この福音書の話を聞いた人は誰もが少し驚いてしまうと思います。イエスが鞭を持ち人々を怒りを含んだ声と絶望感で追い出した話など聞いたことがありません。イエスらしくありません。私たちが大いに期待する辛抱強くやさしく憐れみ深い人が、突然自制心を失ったかに見えるからです。他に考えられることはありますか？いえ、ないのです。あなたたちは見過ごしたかもしれませんがイエスはある理由を語ります。
初めて神殿に上った少年イエスのことを覚えていますか？父母と一緒でしたが神殿に心を奪われてしまい、そこに留まったのです。両親は帰って行きましたが、イエスがいないことに気がつき、走り戻ってきました。そこで見たのは、イエスが年上の人たちと質問したり答えたりしながら座っている姿でした。
私たちの教会において神殿の意味にこれ以上のものはありません。それは神のシェキナーと呼ばれたもので、そこはこの世における神の最高の居場所、神の住む最も神聖な場所であり、神に礼拝がなされる大切な場所でした。多くの苦しみ、砂漠や辛い状況をくぐり抜けてきた一群の人々が最後にたどり着いた小さな選ばれし土地。そこに神殿、美しい神殿が建てられ、神のシェキナーが栄光のうちにきらめき、はるか遠くから訪れたすべての参拝者はこの世で神の最高の居場所である素晴らしい神殿を見たのです。
さて成人となったイエスはその神殿に入り、そこで何が起こっていたのかを目撃します。そこで商売がされ人々は貧欲に金儲けをしています。何のために？父なる神のシェキナーのために？「父の、父の家を家畜市場にしてはダメだ！」イエスはこんなのは決してされるべきではないと大声で訴える少年です。怒りでほとんど許すことができません。そこで鞭を手に人々を蹴散らします。もちろんこの人たちだけが追い出されるべきではなく、そこを仕切っていた人々が問題なのです。これを許可していた祭司長たちが分っているべきだったのです。場所をわきまえず金儲けをしようとしていた欲深い小者たち。イエスはそれを承知していたので答えはとても不思議なものでした。祭司長たちが来て「なんでこんなことをするのか、どんな権威があるのか？」と言うとイエスは不思議なお答えをされます。「この神殿を壊してみよ。三日で立て直してみせる。」
イエスはご自分の体のことを話しておられたのです。周りにいる人々をご覧になりながら、悟っていまた。もしこのようなことが神の神殿でされたなら、イエスの心の底にあった大きな恐れは本当でした－いつの日か人々は彼を捕らえ生贄とし丘の上で磔にする。そして生まれた日と同様にはっきりとわかっておられたに違いありません。
自分が来たのは、何と悲しい・・・
しかし、聖書にあるご自分の話と神のシェキナーをご存知でした。神、父ご自身がイエスを送り、その命と引き換えに世の罪を贖い、そして人類と神との新しい関係の、世界の果てまで到る章を開くことを知っておられました。なぜなら自分がメシアであることを理解し始めていたからです。父の選ばれし者、神のシェキナーの平和と喜びを再びもたらす者、そしてそれは地の果てまで届いて行くのです。
そのように福音記者は彼のこのことを書き記します。
イエスが過ぎ越し祭の間イスラエルにいた時、多くの人々はイエスのされていることを見て彼の名を信じ始めました。しかしイエスは彼らをすべてご存知でしたし、人間の性分を語る必要もないので敢えて彼らを信用されようとしませんでした。神ご自身が人間となります。人間であることが何を意味するのか、苦痛に耐え、期待は打ち砕かれ、最後に死に直面することを彼が知らなかったとは誰も言わないでしょう。イエスは心の中でそれを知っていました。これがイエスの大きな気持ちのわけです。「どうして、どうして愛することを学べないのか。なぜこのような行いをするのか、どうして先に行かねばと思うのか、なぜ人々は傷つけ合うのか？なぜ人々は神の偉大な寛大さを腐った市場に変えてしまうのか？」神への愛がイエスを突き動かします。十字架上から言われたように、神への愛が理解をします。「父よ、彼らをお赦しください。自分が何をしているか知らないのです。」
そうです、今日、私たちはここでイエスに出会います。ここで自身の人生を見つめ始めます。メシアがこの教会で私たちのところに来られたからです。私たちと一緒にいるために来られたのです。私たちを勇気づけるために、癒すために来られたのです。神のシェキナーは今やイエスそのものです。そしてこのことは今日の朗読の意味です。「救い主はどこにいますか？」あなたの中に、たがいの中に、共同体の中に、そしてここにおられます。次に私たちは何をしようとするでしょうか？イエスの時代の人々のように「しるしを見せてください、奇跡をおこしてください、派手にいろいろやってください」と催促しますか？
いいえ、イエスはわかりやすく言われました。「今日、明日、いつも、そして世の終わりまであなたと一緒いる。」あなたの人生とは何でしょうか。それはイエスと共に歩き、語り、感化されることです。そうすることであなたも人生を喜びと、平和と、そしてなによりも新しい愛と共に、神に向かってではなく、イエスに向かってでもなく、お互いに向かって歩むことができるのです。
• Gospel: John 2:13-25
I’m sure you, as everybody who hears this gospel, are a bit surprised. And never have we heard Jesus taking a whip and driving people out and anger in his voice and almost desperation. It is so unlike him, the one who is patient and kind and forgiving and all these things that we expect of him, and, all of a sudden, it seems that he’s lost a gigantic temper. Is there any way out of this? No, there isn’t. And he tells you – you might have missed it – he tells you one of the reasons why.
Do you remember the little boy Jesus, who went to the temple for the first time? He went with his mother and his father. And he was so fascinated by the temple that he stayed there. And his parents went away and then they realised they’d lost him and they came running back and they found him sitting in the temple with the elders, asking and answering questions.
We have nothing like the meaning of the temple in our church. The temple was what they call the Shekinah of God, where God was most present in this world, where God lived in the Holy of Holies, where God was worshipped and treasured by a people who went through so much pain, through deserts and some terrible conditions, to finally get to the little place, the chosen land, and build a temple, a beautiful temple, a temple where the Shekinah of God could blaze in glory to all the visitors that would come from far, far away to see this wonderful temple where God was most present in the whole world.
And now grown to manhood, Jesus walks into the temple and he sees what has happened to it. He sees a shopping area. He sees people hungry with greed to make money. And to make it on what? The Shekinah of his Father? And he says, “You have taken my Father’s house, my Father’s house, and you’ve turned it into a cattle market. How could you do that?” He’s a little boy complaining in a great voice, that this should never have been done. And he is almost unforgivable in his anger. And he does take up a whip and he does drive them out. And, of course, these are the people who don’t deserve the whip or the driving out. It’s those who are in charge, the high priests who allowed this to take place in their temple, they should have known better. These are only greedy little people trying to make money and don’t care where they try to make it.
And Jesus knows that and that’s why his answer is so strange. When the chief priests come up to him and say, “How dare you do this! By what authority do you do it?” and he says, very strange, he says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.”
And he was talking about his body. He was talking about — he knew, he looked at them and he looked at the people around him — if they could do this to God’s temple, then the great fear that he had within his heart was true: one day they would take him and he would be the sacrifice and they would drive him up a hill and they would crucify him. And he must have seen that as clear as the day he was born.
And how sad, he who came…
But he also knew his Scriptures and he knew the Shekinah of God. He knew that God Himself, his Father, was sending him to lay his life down that he might redeem the world and to open another chapter in God’s relationship with mankind, a chapter that would reach the farthest ends of the earth.
For he began to understand that he was the Messiah, the Chosen One of his Father, who would bring back the peace and joy of the Shekinah of God and it would go into the farthest ends of the earth.
And so it is that the writer says this of him,。
While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
God Himself becomes man. No one can say that he does not know what it means to be a human being, to suffer pain, to have expectations shattered and, finally, to have to face death. He knew that in his heart.
And this is the cause of his great feeling. “Why, why, why can they not learn to love? Why must they act this way? Why must they feel they must get ahead? Why must they hurt each other? Why must they take the great goodness of God Himself and turn it into a rotten market place?”
The love of God drives him on. The love of God allows him to understand just as he said from the cross, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”
Yes, this is where we meet him today. This is where we begin to look into our own lives.
Because the Messiah has come to us in this church. He has come to be with us. He has come to encourage us. He has come to heal us. The Shekinah of God is now Jesus himself.
And this is the meaning of the reading today.
When you say, “Where is the Messiah?” He is in you, in each other, in the community, and he is here.
And what are we to do? Challenge him as the people of his own time did and said, “Show us signs, show us miracles, do some razzle dazzle”?
No. He just said very simply, “I am with you, today, tomorrow, all days, even to the consummation of the world." And what is your life? Your life is to walk with him and talk with him and let him influence you, so that you too can walk through life with joy, with peace, and, most of all, with a new love, not for God, not for Jesus, but for each other.