Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up

 

 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.

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.

 

- John 2:13–25 

 

Yesterday we read that on the sixth day given in John's 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 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 the ministry of Jesus, the first action of Christ in Jerusalem during Holy Week.  Here, John puts this event of cleansing the temple right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry.  There are certain patristic writers who teach that Christ performed this act twice.   Those who sold oxen and sheep and doves are trading in live animals used for sacrifices; the money changers exchange Roman coins (considered to be defiling in the temple as they bore the image of Caesar) for Jewish coins.  My study bible comments that the cleansing of the temple points to the necessity that the Church be kept free from earthly pursuits.  Also, each person is considered to be a temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19), so this is also a sign that our hearts and minds should be cleansed of earthly matters.

 

  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.  Jesus is not a Levitical priest, and so His authority to cleanse the temple is questioned and challenged.  Only the Messiah would be one with such authority otherwise.  It is the beginning of the constant pattern of the religious leadership, that they will be demanding a sign from Christ to prove His identity to them.   John sets out parties and factions right away in his Gospel.  We should keep in mind that the term Jews in this Gospel frequently refers specifically to the leadership; in this case it is a reference 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 will be His death and Resurrection.  Here we encounter the perspective of John's Gospel, the last of the Gospels to be written, where in the perspective of the Church and the events to come after Christ's death, this statement by Jesus was understood as a reference to Resurrection. 

 

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.  John's Gospel gives us the events which occur during several religious festivals, and the attendance of Christ and the disciples at three different Passover Festivals (see also 6:4, 11:55).  This is one way we know that His ministry lasted three years.  Here, John also tells us something important about Jesus, that He is the "heart-knower" (in Greek, kardiognostes/καρδιογνώστης), another property of the divine (Acts 1:24, 15:8-9).

A weekly message from a parish priest reminds me today that now is a time of preparation for commemorating the Virgin Mary on August 15th.  For the Eastern Orthodox, and traditionally in the whole of the Church, the two weeks leading to that feast are a time for fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. (See Jesus' reference to these practices in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 6, an important central piece of the Sermon.)  These different practices focus and center us more in the place we need to be and in relationship to God and to one another, and there are many ways of practicing each of them.  We don't just fast from certain foods (and there are no "bad" foods for Christians), but we fast from things like gossip, or too much television or internet, or friends who aren't really good for us to be around, or whatever it is that distracts us from where we really need to center in life and for what is good for us.  We might practice charity in a myriad of ways, from simple kindness to donations to work for a cause or giving time to help others.  And prayer, as we know, may take on many beautiful forms and practices.   Today's reading gives us Jesus' cleansing of the temple, and this action is front and center in John's Gospel -- right after Jesus' first sign of turning the water to wine at the wedding in Cana.   This action by Christ not only reinforces the need to refocus our lives and practices around the purpose of worshiping God and what that means for our relationships with one another.  It also teaches us to put aside what distracts from that purpose and that central "good" and what is beneficial for our lives.  It's a vivid example, as we don't necessarily think of Christ creating such dynamic scenes as making a whip of cords, and driving people out of the temple -- quite a scene of physical action!  But that should serve its purpose for us to remind us of the importance of what it teaches.  This isn't simply a prelude or backdrop to Christ's conflicts with the religious leadership.  It is an important illustration of the repeated message by Christ in the Gospels that we need to take decisive action to root out the things that really do us no good, that lead us off the path of our focus and the enrichment of the act of loving God at all times.  When something else starts to shift us away from that love, and into a place where something else becomes a higher priority, we need to refocus, and maybe we need to cut out of our lives what distracts us from our best lives, our true help in life.  Jesus' zeal isn't just a matter of having a deep purpose to fulfill or even His deep love of the Father and His true desire for all of His people.  This zeal is in the right place, shown for us as a matter of dedicated purpose, and for us to follow in our own hearts.  It's not just a temporal dramatic action to show His deep commitment.  My study bible reminds us that each of our bodies is also a temple, and so we must care for ourselves -- and the whole of what it means to be ourselves -- as Christ cares for the temple, with the same zeal, the same need to clean out what is not helpful and good, and the same purposeful refocus on what is to our best benefit in life.  All of life works as an integrated whole, and one piece of our lives isn't separate from the rest.   Just as Christ says that His Father's house should not be a house of merchandise, so our lives as well should not merely be lives of "merchandise," a pure collection of material things.  Let us remember His zeal for us, and take it to heart at this time of preparation for commemoration.  Let us cleanse ourselves from what distracts from true wholeness of life.