A homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, on John 2.13-22. Like many of my recent homilies it resonates with the voices of the theologians John Caputo and Thomas Jay Oord.

There is a rare and beautiful peace at St Pancras Old Church — a tranquility that seems to gather itself in the stones, in the air itself. The last time I visited, I sat enveloped in a silence so deep
it felt like the world had drawn a breath and held it. Outside, London roared and shimmered with its endless noise, but there, within those walls, the silence was almost holy. I remember coming to the realization that in that silence I wasn’t so much praying to God, as I was listening for God — listening for the stillness that speaks beneath all sound.

I hadn’t gone there to flee the world, but to find it — gathered, quiet, held within the presence of God. And yet, even in that great stillness, something in me stirred — a small, restless echo of the city I had left behind. My mind began to race through the week ahead — meetings, errands, emails. It was as if the inner temple of my heart had vendors shouting for attention, tables cluttered with busyness and noise.

That’s when today’s Gospel came to mind: Jesus entering the Temple, seeing the sellers and the money-changers, and overturning the tables. “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

And I wondered: what has my heart become? A place of prayer — or a marketplace of anxieties and distractions?

If we’re honest, we all know that experience. We come here, to this beautiful, sacred building, and we bring our clutter with us. We kneel… and somewhere in the back of our minds are the lists, the worries, the regrets. Our hearts are temples — and yet they often look more like crowded markets.

Today’s feast — the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica — reminds us that this isn’t just about one building in Rome. The Lateran is the Pope’s cathedral, the mother of all churches — the first public church built after  centuries of persecution. Its dedication in the fourth century was a sign that faith could now be lived in the open — that God’s people could gather publicly to worship. It was the moment the Church stepped out of hiding to become a visible sign of God dwelling among us.

But this feast also points beyond stone and glass.
Every church building — from the grandest cathedral to the humblest chapel — is a sign of what God wants to build inside each of us. Every arch, every altar, every candle whispers: you are the dwelling place of God.

Yet God’s presence needs space. And so Jesus comes to the temple of our hearts with a fierce and tender love, saying, “This clutter — this noise, these distractions — they don’t belong here. Let me make room for what matters.”

When Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” the people think he’s talking about the building in Jerusalem. But he isn’t. He’s revealing a new kind of temple — not made of masonry and mortar, but of living flesh and love.

In Christ, the presence of God moves from sacred geography into human life itself. The true temple is love embodied.

And that means this story is not about anger — it’s about transformation. God is not distant or domineering, but dwells within us as a quiet, persistent call to love. The cleansing of the temple is not destruction — its re-creation. It’s God clearing away whatever keeps us from being fully alive.

Sometimes that work can feel unsettling. Because when Christ walks through the temple of our hearts, he still overturns a few tables.

Maybe he’s toppling the table of perfectionism — the one that says you must be flawless before you’re loved. Maybe he’s scattering the coins of comparison — the ones that measure your worth against someone else’s. Maybe he’s driving out the vendors of fear, resentment, or shame. Not because he’s angry with you, but because he loves you too much to leave your inner temple cluttered. God’s anger here is simply the love that will not tolerate anything less than wholeness.

And that love is not just personal — it’s communal. When Jesus cleanses the temple, he also confronts a system that had turned worship into transaction. So too, the Church — this living Body of Christ — must always let him purify her from anything that distorts the Gospel: pride, exclusion, injustice.

The Feast of the Lateran reminds us: the Church’s holiness begins with our willingness to be cleansed — to become again the dwelling of God. But the work begins in each heart. When we let Christ overturn what no longer belongs, something astonishing is raised in its place.

The Gospel says, “After he was raised from the dead, the disciples remembered what he had said.” Resurrection begins in the temple that’s been cleared. New life starts where clutter ends.

So let me ask you: What tables need overturning in your life?
What noise is echoing in your temple? What transaction is taking up the space where prayer should live? Whatever it is, hear Christ’s voice — not scolding, but summoning: “Take these things out of here. Let me make room again.” Let him cleanse the temple. Let him insist on the holiness already within you.
Because this feast — this dedication of a basilica — isn’t just about Rome. It’s about you. It’s about the truth that God’s home is the human heart.

And if that’s true, then holiness isn’t about walls or rituals alone. It’s about letting your life become a sanctuary of love, mercy, and truth. Every time you forgive, every time you listen, every time you love sacrificially, the temple of God is rebuilt within you.

When the temple is restored inside you, you begin to see every person as holy ground, every encounter as sacred space, every act of love as worship. That is the zeal of Christ for you — the passion of God to dwell fully in the temple of your heart.

Amen.