A Passion for Worship
You can learn a lot about a person by what they get passionate about. There’s that one hobby that always causes your co-workers' eyes to light up if you ask about it. The favorite book that your family member is extra excited to tell you all about. The social cause that motivates your friend’s fervent involvement. Emotions are among the most telling indicators of what a person really values. Readers of John’s gospel gain significant insight into what is important to Jesus by seeing his passionate zeal in John 2:13–22.
Visiting the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus encounters a religious system that has monetized the worship of God. Opportunistic businessmen have turned the temple into a place where the items required for worship are now commodities and the experience of worship has become a transaction. But Jesus’ heart burns to preserve the sanctity of worship and to remove barriers to meeting with God. We read how he passionately, but deliberately, drives out those who have done such things to God’s house. But his behavior raises some eyes—the Jews are taken aback and ask if he has any credentials for what he’s doing. He gives them an answer which they don’t understand: that though the temple of his body will be destroyed, he will raise it up again in three days. Jesus has the authority to tell us how to worship because of his resurrection.
This Holy Week we prepare for a significant moment in the rhythms of our own worship—celebrating that the temple of Jesus’ body was destroyed for our sins, and raised again for our life. Though our ability to meet with God is no greater or lesser now than at other times, calling these days Holy Week reminds us of the unique significance of the acts of God that inform this week of worship. How might you passionately protect your worship this week? This week let us be zealous to find holy moments to meet with God. And yet, Jesus reminds us that our worship even during the holiest days can never be simply a commodity by which we earn God’s favor. Such religious attitudes are the very ones Jesus drove out with a whip. Instead, may we marvel at our savior who fought not just with a whip, but with a cross, to provide freely given, unearned access between us and God.
