Christ is Risen!

“What would Jesus do?” I remember that phrase that was popular a few years ago. I confess to being a bit amused by this fad of “easy religion.” One of the main reasons was that the life of Jesus is not easily categorized as the comfortable Jesus we moderns many times prefer. You know the Jesus I"m talking about, don’t you: the meek Jesus that pats everybody on the head and tells them that they"re OK “just the way you are,” or the Jesus of modern therapy that gets us in touch with our feelings… You know that Jesus that has all the little children come around and sit on His lap, and wouldn’t dare to tell anyone that they were wrong, unless, of course, He was telling those “mean,” judgmental people how wrong they were—that’s OK for the modern Jesus to scold and condemn those people.

We forget all too often that Jesus had times in His ministry where He was very un-Jesus-like, at least in our minds. We confront a Lord who cleans the temple of commerce, because they were encroaching on a section of the temple meant to be a place where even gentiles could learn of the God of the temple. His actions of that day showed the power of appropriate zeal to make an unmistakable point.

Look at our Gospel lesson today on this Bright Friday, in John 2:12-22:

At that time Jesus came to Capernaum with His mother and His brothers and His disciples, and there they stayed for a few days.

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all with the sheep and oxen out of the temple. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold pigeons, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Jews then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scriptures, and the word which Jesus had spoken.”

All right, the scene is set, the Lord and His family were in the city to attend the Passover liturgies of the temple, and there Jesus finds these businesses operating in that part of the temple that is called “The Court of the Gentiles”. This was a section of the temple grounds reserved for the strangers and non-Jews, so even those who weren’t part of the faith could get as close as they possibly could to learn of the faith from the temple actions. This was the place of hospitality to the strangers, that was enshrined in the teachings of the Law, and the faith had become so exclusive, and so ethnic, there had been … there became no room for the stranger in the Court of the Gentiles any more.

The Lord took great offense at this breech of hospitality, and He drove these people from this section of the temple mount. It was such a dramatic event that the disciples recalled the Scripture and the psalms that said “Zeal for your house will consume me.” It’s no mistake in our Divine Liturgy that there is a part of the preparation of the Holy Chalice at the Eucharist that has the priest pour hot water into the wine and the water of the Chalice with these words: “The zeal of faith, full of the Holy Spirit.” It is precisely the zeal of faith, that warm love and devotion to the faith that enlivens and fills the church with wise action and faithfulness.

How cold the faith is when it is practiced out of some mere habit, or some lingering nostalgia of how it used to be. No wonder that kind of cold faith just doesn’t survive in the hearts of the next generation. But that isn’t how it’s supposed to be, dear ones.  No, the faith is meant to be warm, inviting and alive, with the invigorating presence of Jesus in the middle of His Body, the Church. The faith is supposed to be practiced by those who are hot with the joy of new life in Christ. That’s normal Orthodoxy! That’s the kind of faith that survives from generation to generation, that’s the zeal that insists on purposeful faith and active participation, and that very zeal, tapered with the wisdom of centuries of sober living, best displays the power of Orthodoxy to perpetuate this faith for centuries.

Today, where is your zeal for the faith? Is your faith hot, or cold? Is the focused and living faith of the centuries at the top of your priority list, or is the faith cool enough, in some lesser place in your life? The Fathers tell us that it is only the coal that gets separated from the fire that goes cold and dark. But all we have to do to rekindle that warmth is to nudge the coal closer to the fire of God’s presence, and watch as it begins to glow again, with the warmth of faith.

Why not let the after-glow of precious Pascha that makes this Bright Week so wonderful, so precious, so warm, warm the faith of your heart to the point where your whole life is warmed by a renewed devotion and zeal for the Lord’s house. Before you know it, you’ll be Orthodox on purpose.