Psalm 45; Psalm 47, 48; Deuteronomy 9.4-12; Hebrews 3.1-11; John 2.13-22
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” -John 2.13-17, NIV 2011
For most of my life I read this passage as a "Jesus loses his temper" moment. Sunday School teachers faithfully employed it as an example of Anger Without Sinning.
Was Jesus angry? He could have been, although the passage doesn't explicitly say he is. What it does say is that he was zealous. Zeal isn't anger; it's ardor, fervor, passion.
I don't think Jesus just lost it and grabbed whatever was handy; he took the time to make a whip. Maybe it didn't take him very long. Maybe there was a stack of them and all he had to do was gather them up into his hand. But this making an instrument specific to the task at hand looks to me like deliberation.
He had zeal for his Father's house. He had ardent passion. Passionate love is best expressed by deliberate action. Sometimes that means something spectacular and unexpected by the people around you, like turning over tables. Often it means offering healing and hope, whether eating a simple meal with an outcast or raising a dead child.
Ultimately, of course, it means sacrifice.
In today's reading from Henri Nouwen, he says this:
"Being born and growing up, leaving home and finding a career, being praised and being rejected, walking and resting, praying and playing, becoming ill and being healed-- yes, living and dying-- they all become expressions of that divine question: 'Do you love me?' And at every point of the journey there is the choice to say, 'Yes' and the choice to say, 'No.'"
How does it look to live out of zeal for God in your context?
What deliberate action are you taking?
What are some ways God is asking you, his beloved, "Do you love me?" How are you answering?
2 comments:
How does it look to live out of zeal for God in your context?
What deliberate action are you taking?
One of the things that requires deliberation here is zealously resting. Taking time with my cell phone put down to seek the Lord for his own sake.
Thank you for your emphasis on "zeal" in this passage. I had never heard it discussed from that perspective. It was quite refreshing. And, as I reflected on the connection between Jesus' zeal for His Father's house and the deliberate action he took to drive out the money-changers, who were degrading it; I drifted to Revelation 3:14-22, with particular emphasis on 3:19:
"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent." Jesus said this of course as a corrective to the "lukewarmness" of the Church of Laodicea (3:15-16).
The command to be zealous, as was Jesus, continues to challenge me in two main ways: 1) it exposes ambivalence in my faith - areas where I am lukewarm and where that feeling leads to in-action or partial action (going-through-the-motions); and even more so 2), the command "to be zealous" challenges me to focus on action, even if I don't "feel zealous." To me, "to be zealous" tells me to take action in love and obedience to the Lord, even if I don't "feel the zeal" towards Him. I find that when I do take action the feeling of passion, zeal for HIm follow. I want to grow to where I do this more consistently.
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