“Zeal for your house consumed me”. Today’s Gospel may strike us as odd because it seems to condone religious violence. Jesus enters the Temple and immediately flips tables and drives out the money-changers and vendors in short order. But the reason the evangelist gives us for Jesus’ violence is this: “zeal for your house consumed me”.
What does this mean?
In Jesus’ time, there was a movement called the “Zealots.” They traced their origins to the Maccabean revolt when Judas Maccabeus led devout Jews in fighting against their oppressive Greek rulers. The movement continued even into the Roman era to the point where the Zealots were identified as “terrorists” by the Romans, who succeeded the Greeks as rulers of Palestine. The Zealots believed they could restore the Davidic kingdom and be faithful to the covenant through violence.
And yet, this is not what John the Evangelist means when saying Jesus’ zeal consumed him. This short passage is the first part of Psalm 69:9: “Zeal for your house consumed me; the insults towards you fell on me.” Here, the psalmist is not doing violence; he is the one suffering from violence. The psalmist is the victim, not the perpetrator. And yet, out of his zeal, out of his love for the Lord, the God of Israel, he endures this suffering and shame.
Pope Benedict in Jesus of Nazareth Part II says that Jesus reveals what true zeal for God is: suffering love as self-gift. When the pharisees and scribes approach Jesus demanding by what authority he does this, Jesus simply says, “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Here, we see the connection. Jesus’ zeal for the Lord means that he willingly endures and bears the insults hurled towards his Father – the insults that are our sins. And he does so because he wants to bring us to the Father. He wants to show that the Father’s love can reach us no matter how far away we are from him with his death and resurrection, and for us to be zealous for the Lord with him.
To be zealous for the Lord means to make our whole lives a sacrifice to God. We offer our whole being to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, joining in Christ’s gift of self to the Father. Those little things which we abstain from during Lent, chocolate, soda, media, and so on, then, are not burdens, but sweet offerings to the Lord. They are ways for us to be zealous when we say “no, I cannot” when our friends or family members ask us if we want them. And if they ask, “why?” we can say: “because I want to love God; I want to be zealous for the Lord”.
Joseph Yuson – St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta
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