Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up"

Creation of the heavenly lights - Mosaic, 1180s.  Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Sicily

 

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.  When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.  And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away!  Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!"  Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."  So the Jews answered and said to Him, "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?"  But He was speaking of the temple of His body.  Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

- John 2:13-22

In our reading from yesterday, we read of the events of the sixth day (and the seventh) given of Christ's ministry:  the wedding at Cana, and the first sign of seven John includes in His Gospel.   There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding.  And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine."  Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me?  My hour has not yet come."  His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."  Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece.  Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water."  And they filled them up to the brim.  And He said to them, "Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast."  And they took it.  When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom.  And he said to him, "Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior.  You have kept the good wine until now!"  This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.  After this He went down to Capernaum, He, His mother, His brothers, and His disciples; and they did not stay there many days.

  Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.  When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.  And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away!  Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!"  Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."  In the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this event occurs at the end of Jesus' ministry.  But John places it right at the beginning, just after His first sign performed at the wedding in Cana, of turning the water to wine (see yesterday's reading, above).  Some Church Fathers teach that Christ performed this act twice.  We make note that this is the first Passover festival given in John's Gospel.  Altogether, He will attend three, and it is from this that we deduce Christ's ministry lasted three years.  The disciples remember the verse from Psalm 69:9.  Those who sell animals in the temple are selling them to pilgrims who must purchase them for sacrifice.  The money changers exchanged Roman coins for Jewish temple coins, as coins with the image of Caesar were considered to be defiling.  Those who sold doves did so to the poor, who could afford only the smallest sacrifice.

So the Jews answered and said to Him, "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?"  But He was speaking of the temple of His body.  Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.  My study bible comments that since Jesus is not a Levitical priest, His authority to cleanse the temple is challenged.  In John's Gospel, the term Jews most often refers specifically to the leaders; in this case, my study bible says, it refers to the chief priests and the elders (see Matthew 21:23).  Christ is careful not to reveal Himself to scoffers, and so He answers in a hidden way.  The ultimate sign given will be His death and Resurrection.

The psalm verse that the disciples remember is taken from Psalm 69, verse 9.  If we read it in context (verses 8 and 9 in full), it reads:  "I have become a stranger to my brothers, and an alien to my mother’s children;  because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me."  In the full sense of the psalm verses, we will read later on in John's Gospel of the antagonism from Jesus' brothers (that is, those who are most likely stepbrothers -- sons by a previous marriage of Joseph, or cousins).  And the zeal with which Jesus approaches the temple as a house of prayer results in the reproaches from those who fail to honor the Father by making it a house of merchandise.  Therefore, if we follow Christ, we should also understand that our faith is not a faith of "merchandise."  It is not a sense of material commodities to be bought and sold, and belonging to this person or that one.  We do not purchase our faith with nominal good deeds, and even our most hallowed and cherished of rituals do not retain their meaning for us without a prayerful understanding of what our life with God is all about.  Nobody "owns" the wisdom and holiness of the long tradition and history of God's covenant and promise, begun in the Old and fulfilled in the New.  We do not earn it, it is given to us as a gift of grace.  We can't purchase it; it's not for sale.  It must be cherished for what it is, it must be beloved to be truly valued properly.  John's Gospel immediately sets up for us two ways of seeing, which are in complete contrast.  This was introduced in the Prologue, which spoke of the Light that came into the world, and the darkness that can neither overcome it nor understand it.  This is what we see played out in today's reading.  Jesus has a way of seeing and being in the world, He is the Light that illumines for us the truth about God and God's love and communion with us.  We are either going to "get it" or fail to see it; either it is going to reach us somehow in our perceptions, or we dash it by the wayside, seeing everything as commodity, as merchandise.  And it is in fact in the way we see that things take on meaning and value.  Is a beautiful house the thing that gives our life worthiness?  Or is a tattered and old photo, filled with the meaning and presence of someone we love, something we cherish for that memory?  The smallest gift with love present remains a memory of something cherished, and the most expensive thing we can buy becomes worthless without meaning and with an empty and always-hungry heart.  Without the presence of that Light which illumines such depth of meanings and relatedness, life doesn't give us anything but merchandise.  And this is the root of the sacramental life that the entire Bible teaches us.  God gives us an abundance of life and all the good things God creates for us.  We have been reading John's first chapter and the first sign given, a full seven days of Jesus' ministry (up through yesterday's reading), paralleling the creation story in Genesis.  All of it tells us about the gifts of good things God gives us, the crowning of God's creation.  And our job as those who return that love is simply to return all the gifts to God so that they may be endowed with God's value, God's love, God's way for us to live and to grow in communion.  Without that, they are merchandise for which we toil.  With God, all of it become Eucharist, securing a deeper communion.  Let us consider Jesus' zeal, and His way that tells us that all of life and all of this world of creation and cosmos is more than just merchandise.  Help is always here to give us that light, and to lead the way out of what seems only meaningless.  Our own zeal may even at times bring reproach from those who cannot see the point, but we enter into a struggle into which we are invited, with Him.  The image above is a mosaic of the creation of the lights of the heavens, the stars and the planets.  Let us remember that He is the Light we need to find meaning in all of this creation, made for us.  None of it is merely "merchandise," it is filled with meaning, and a gift to us, for life.  Let us not be like spoiled children, but keep in mind that there is so much to learn about how we are to dwell in it, with His light.