Smoke and stars. There is much in the world that causes enough smoke to temporarily hide the beauty of the stars. Our TV screens and newspapers have been full of such smoking images this week. In today's gospel reading, Jesus gets angry when he sees the beauty of God's grace being smoked out by the marketing of religion.

This text, when Jesus drives the moneychangers from the temple, is a favorite of activists. Those of us who get angry about injustice love to compare our righteous rage to that of Jesus in the temple. There is nothing passive or sweet or even non-violent about this Jesus. This Jesus is mad as hell and ready to fight the power.

Some commentaries say about this text that Jesus was angry because the people were being cheated by these vendors. But the text doesn't say anything about cheating. They were just doing their job. And their job was to sell appropriate livestock to religious pilgrims who had come to the temple to make an offering. Since people came to Jerusalem from all over and it wasn't easy for them to carry along the birds or goats they would need for an offering, they needed to buy these sacrificial animals when they arrived. This was simply what their law required. Religious rules clearly spelled out which kinds of animals were acceptable for which kinds of offenses and the merchants at the temple were actually providing a needed religious service.

In their minds, I'm sure many of them thought that they were, in fact, doing good and godly work, by helping others to carry out their religious obligations. They must have thought Jesus was nuts when he came through with a knotted whip, destroying property and creating havoc.

Why did Jesus get so mad? Jesus had come to Jerusalem for the Passover -- the great and sacred feast commemorating the liberation of the slaves from Egypt. The message of Passover is freedom. Jesus saw the temple market and felt that people were being put back into bondage -- enslaved to religious traditions that made the Jewish pilgrims poor while others got rich. Trapped into a system of sacrifice where ones ability to pay would guarantee one's level of forgiveness.

It was a system of legalism that left no room for grace. Jesus knew that the heart of a Passover faith was freedom. Freedom not only from oppressors and captors, but freedom to know and love God without owing anyone anything.

The temple was the holy center of that freedom. The place where the Israelites had landed after forty years of wandering. It was the symbol of the promised land, the land of milk and honey, but now, at its gates were the advertisers, the marketers, the people demanding money. And Jesus knew that money could not buy freedom. Not the kind of Passover freedom God offers, at any rate.

So Jesus got mad. And when he did, he gave us permission to get mad, as well. To get mad about all the things that send up so much smoke that it becomes hard to see the stars. His righteous anger had a purpose -- to clear the air again and let the light shine through.

So here, during this week of war, during this new kind of March madness, is our task as well: to clear the air again and let the light shine through. To continue to remember the stars, even while the air is full of smoke. It is not an easy task, even when no bombs are falling.

Clear the way for the light to shine. Unfetter what is shackled by fear. Liberate what is captive to confusion. Make peace.

Make peace, because whatever our political leanings, however we might disagree about the particulars of strategy, this is our common calling. To keep making peace, because we follow the Prince of Peace.

These are the days that make us ask, in whom do we trust? These are the times that demand of our souls, what will save us?

This is a week when we must look behind the smoke and seek the light.

Whom do we trust? Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life."

What will save us? I'll leave you with these words from a theologian writing after World War II: