A few years ago I read about a woman in Galveston, Texas, who was cleaning some of the loose debris out of a birdcage with her vacuum cleaner when the phone rang. In reaching for the phone with one hand, while the other hand held the vacuum, the hose slipped a bit and — whoosh! — her pet parakeet got sucked into the bag. She opened the bag as fast as she could and managed to rescue the shocked bird. But after cleaning all the dust, hair, and lint off the bird and getting her back into her cage, she notice a profound change in her behavior. She thought the bird would get over it, but she never did. Weeks later she told a neighbor, “She doesn’t sing anymore, she just sits and stares.”

I imagine, after the whipping and the clearing out of the Temple, the disciples and the crowds in Jerusalem that day, must have, at least for a time, just sat and stared in wonder and awe.

I

The other three gospels locate the account of the cleansing of the Temple near the end, after Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem. But John, the gospel writer who always operates at two or more levels of meaning beneath the most obvious one, John places the story of the cleaning of the Temple near the beginning of his gospel. This, we can be sure, is more for theological reasons than for concerns about historical accuracy.

And something interesting about the placement of that story in John, is its location. The fierce Jesus, cleansing the Temple with “a whip of cords,” in the verses immediately prior to our lesson, had just a few days before been changing water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana. Remember the story?

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”¹_NRSV

Then comes our reading about the cleansing of the Temple, and after our reading, Jesus received the famous visit from the Pharisee Nicodemus inquiring as to his real character. It was Nicodemus who was first in all the world to hear the now famous, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...”

This is one of those frequent reminders that scripture was not meant to be read in half-dozen verse snippets, but in whole narratives, whole stories, entire gospels read aloud to listening people at one sitting. A proverb among preachers who have been through the trials of seminary goes, “A text without a context is a pretext.” Not wanting to be guilty of preaching on a pretext, I am happy to remind us that our short passage today stands right in the middle of a trio of lessons, and in many ways serves as the hinge that holds them together.

II

So before the Temple cleansing in John, came the wedding at Cana. There is a reason John placed them in this order.

Everyone loves a good time. Just say the word “party” and it’s easy to raise a crowd. The story of water into wine at Cana is well-loved, at least on one level, because it is about rescuing a good time from what could have been a social disaster. Everybody knows the story of the wedding at Cana; it has made its way into everything from cartoons in magazines to a million wedding homilies through the ages, and rightfully so. But part of what we usually miss about that wine story is the sheer quantity involved. The amount of water changed into wine by most reckonings was anywhere from 120 to 180 gallons. Beyond the fact that it seems like a large amount of water, what were they doing with so much of it on hand? We live in the hot tub generation, but in the 1st century desert climate of Palestine, 180 gallons of water would have been a tremendous amount to have on hand in a household.

John says that it was there for Jewish rites of purification. This meant that the water was there, as regulated by Jewish religious practice, as a means for purification for worship, when people come to the Temple or to the church to be present together in the Presence of God. The Old Testament declared that to do this, worshipers needed to go through ritual cleansing in order to get close to God, a reason similar to the ritual foot washing that Muslims practice before entering the mosque, or the ritual dip of a finger and touch on the forehead at the baptismal font at the door of the church that Roman Catholics often do as they enter the sanctuary. But how much water was needed? The tradition of the Jews written in the Talmud declared that a cup of water in that desert climate was enough for rites of purification for a hundred men.

The shocking detail of that Cana wedding story is that over 120 gallons of purification water standing by would have been so inconceivably much more than necessary, a ridiculously enormous overabundance of purification water. It would, it seems, have been enough to purify the whole world. If we haven’t gotten the point, it is even more plainly stated. It is no accident that all this purifying water is turned into wine, for in the space of three years, disciples will have begun breaking bread and pouring wine, symbolizing the body and blood of Jesus, as a new ritual expressing the proximity of God to his people.

While people in Cana found an incredible overabundance of provision for purification for something so simple as a wedding ceremony, what did Jesus discover at the Temple, the central worship place for Israel, the central worship place for all?

III

As he ran the money changers and the salespeople out of the Temple grounds along with their livestock, the disciples, John said, “remember that is was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’”² NRSV Verses from the Old Testament, when quoted in the New Testament, are meant to call to mind an entire passage, not just a random line.

Here, seeing the teacher, whom they have only just begun to follow, chasing animals and money changers from the temple precincts, the disciples recall a half-verse from Psalm 69. But they surely recalled the entire psalm, and we are meant to recall it too. It goes, in part, like this:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.
More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause;
many are those who would destroy me, my enemies who accuse me falsely.
What I did not steal must I now restore?
O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.
Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me,
O Lord GOD of hosts;
do not let those who seek you be dishonored because of me, O God of Israel.
It is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that shame has covered my face.
I have become a stranger to my kindred, an alien to my mother’s children.
It is zeal for your house that has consumed me;
the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.¹_NRSV

Part of what these words foreshadow in our minds, and the minds of the disciples, is the cross to come. It is Jesus’ uncompromising zeal that has done it. His zeal for the truth brings condemnation on him in the end. John quotes the phrase about zeal for the house of the Lord, as Paul quotes the second half of that verse in Romans 15:3, “For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’” Jesus stands in for God himself, to receive the insults that humanity daily heaps upon him.

A new and perfect sacrifice for the sake of the sins of all people had arrived at the Temple. There would be no further need for sacrificial animals. The foreshadowing of Psalm 69 shows that in the sacrifice of Jesus, the need for other ritual sacrifices came to an end. Matthew, Mark and Luke all place the temple cleansing at the end of Jesus’ ministry, while John places it here in the beginning. For John, the chronological timing is not so important as the self-sacrificing Messiah-implications that are wrapped up in each event of Jesus’ ministry. So, though it is reported early here, Jesus’ actions in the temple foreshadow the cross coming at the end as surely as zeal for the house of God will bring suffering at the hands of those who despise God and all who seek him.

It is interesting that among most Presbyterians, any time we begin to talk of zeal for our faith, or even the zeal of Christ, we will soon hear someone begin to say that it is the zealots that have caused all the trouble in the world, the fanatics who have so much commitment to their faith that they fail to take into account the rest of the world, the Jim Jones, all the cults of darkness that have consumed many people over the years.

About this I have two thoughts. One is that there is little danger among the Presbyterians I have had the pleasure of knowing that our zeal for their faith will carry us off very far from our good sense. Originating as we do from a tradition of common sense philosophy, we just don’t seem much in danger of wandering off with the Bagwan. The other thought, though, is this. Frightened as the prospect of a real and significant zeal for our faith might make us, it is this very sort of commitment which changes limp, moribund faith into faith that lives. Most young people do not despise the idea of giving their lives for something, it is giving their lives for something insignificant that they despise. If our faith is the most significant thing about us, then why can we not follow the Messiah, give our lives to it, body and soul, and hear the call to do something heroic, even zealous for our faith?

Copyright © 2005 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved.
Sermons are made available in print and on the web for readers only.
Any further publication or use of sermons must be with written permission of the author.

Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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NOTES

¹ - John 2:1-10 NRSV.
² - From Psalm 69:9 NRSV.
³ - From Psalm 69:9 NRSV.