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March 7, 2021What is the Law to a Jew? One scholar calls it “a yoke that becomes a tree of life.” It is a demanding teacher from whom we could never draw an “A” but who taught us not only how to think but how to live. Jesus, being a devout Jew, loved the Law and lived it every moment of his life.
In today’s gospel Jesus acts on the Law’s first tenet. He finds the temple’s vendors and money changers making gods out of their businesses. Being Son of God with special rights in God’s house, he throws the infidels out. The act bursts the Jewish social structure. The priests see it as sheer insolence. They cannot tolerate its audacity and will plot to have him executed. How should we think of Jesus’ zeal? Uncompromising with the temple merchants, he would find our grasping for power, pleasure, fame, or fortune similarly intolerable. He asks us to put such pursuits away and give him our attention. We are to find God, our Father also, in doing Jesus’ will. That is, we are to live the Ten Commandments at the heart of the Law. Also, we are to love others as much as we love ourselves.
