When I was growing up in Maryland, we’d often go to visit my grandmother, who lived in a little New Jersey town called Pitman, near Camden. Along the way, we’d usually pull in to a rest stop on I-95 that was just about the halfway point: The Maryland House. I think it’s still there. And we’d stop there for gas or food, to stretch our legs or get some fresh air.

Well, here we are, at almost the halfway mark for Lent. It’s the third Sunday of Lent, and three Sundays from now, it will be Palm Sunday. And scripture gives us a kind of pit stop – but it’s hardly for rest and to stretch our legs.

The Old Testament reading lists The 10 Commandments – and then the gospel gives us the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, the moment when Christ literally upsets the old order.

Both readings, I think, are intended, at the center of Lent, to keep us centered. To remind us of the reason behind this season.

And you find that reason – the guiding force that animates everything that we do – in the very first commandment, in the first reading. This, I’d argue, is the one commandment so many of us break again and again, maybe without even realizing it.

“I, the LORD, am your God, ?who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.? You shall not have other gods besides me.”

It is easy to recognize the gods that the early Israelites had – especially the golden calf we all remember from the movie with Charlton Heston. And clearly, the money-changers in the temple had their own gods, as well — which might be familiar to some of us, too. Those are what infuriated Christ so much – the idols of money, wealth, greed.

They are gods which would certainly be recognizable to Bernard Madoff.

But then there are other gods in our world that are less obvious.

Last week, the papers had the obituary of a man who was unknown to most Americans – but who had a profound impact on many, many lives.

He was a priest named Joseph Martin, and over many years he gave a number of talks around the country. The most powerful and influential of those talks all began with the same seven words: “I’m Joe Martin, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Two of Fr. Martin’s talks – so called “chalk talks”, because he used a blackboard – were filmed, and became standard viewing at treatment centers and hospitals all over America. He helped countless people he never even met. One doctor interviewed said, “Fr. Martin has done more to help those suffering from addiction than anyone in the last 50 years.”

He often spoke candidly of his own struggle with alcoholism. Days when he was afraid to go near the altar, because of his drinking. Sundays when his hands trembled. The years that he kept bottles of liquor hidden in the bathroom. The time he was confined to a psychiatric ward in California.

He finally was sent to Guest House, a treatment center for clergy in Minnesota, where he turned his life around, and began the slow process of turning around the lives of tens of thousands of others. He established a treatment center in Maryland – and one of the patients there was Michael Deaver, from the Reagan White House, who once said, “I had been with presidents, kings, popes and prime ministers, but Father Martin was the most powerful person I had ever met. You see,” Deaver explained, “Father has the power to change people, to make them better, to make them whole again.”

It was a power, I think, that was rooted in something you’ll find in today’s readings. Like the ancient Israelites, Fr. Martin had been freed from a place of slavery. And he had turned away from an addiction which had become, for him, a god.

As we near the midway point on our Lenten pilgrimage, it’s worth asking ourselves if there are gods in our own lives that we need to turn away from.

As Fr. Martin discovered, there is the god of addiction. It could be addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography. It could even be an addiction to the Internet.

But there are also gods like ambition. The god of egotism. Or bigotry.

There is the god of self-doubt and fear. Of mediocrity or dishonesty or hypocrisy. These are all gods that can overpower us.

But Lent encourages us to take a long, hard look at all the problems and frailties that haunt our lives — all our setbacks and downfalls, all our stumbling blocks. All the small gods that loom large in our lives. And it asks us to stop, and quietly walk away from them. To turn back to the only God who can uplift our hearts and save our souls.

A few months before he died, Fr. Martin marked 60 years as a priest, and 50 years of sobriety. And he spoke of his journey in terms that can resonate with each of us, as we look forward to the bright hope of Easter.

“How can I explain,” he asked, “what it feels like to be risen from the tomb of addiction?”

How can any of us explain what it feels like to turn from our old way of living and dwell in the hope and the promise of Christ?

Lent is a reminder to us that we can change the way we live. Taking a cue from the gospel: this is a time to look at the wreckage of overturned tables and scattered coins and livestock, and sweep out the debris, and begin anew.

It is a time to cleanse the messy temple of our lives, with all those false gods, and get back to basics.

It can be daunting to re-order our priorities, to clean up the mess. I’m sure the money changers in the temple had to do it one table at a time, one coin at a time.

Fr. Martin did it, like so many alcoholics, one day at a time.

Maybe there is a lesson there for all of us.

We have 27 days left in Lent — 27 opportunities to turn our hearts and our minds back to the one God before Easter.

27 chances…to begin again.

Let’s make them matter.