Well, Yes, It Was Quite Tasty

Zeal for your house will consume me.

Heard it before? John 2:17, or Psalm 69:9. John takes the psalmist into a future tense though…

I think in the past I’ve been too metaphorical in how I’ve read this. Consume doesn’t actually mean ‘keep me interested’ or ‘be a priority’ or ‘occupy quite a large percentage of my attention’. It means ‘eat’.

It actually fits the context better to take it literally – in the psalm, and in John. Jesus’ concern for God’s house, for a meeting place between God and humanity, led him to the cross. On trumped up charges, of course, but they were based on what he said a mere two verses later.

He was consumed. And so the one who tabernacled amongst us became the one who was the temple, permanently.

 

Now, the really odd thing was how I was led to this thought by myself. Well, sort of. It was an accident. But something I wrote ten years ago (on this passage, without having understood this element properly) sent me off down the path less travelled, and it brought me out into a better place.

I can be a little slow sometimes.

Not My Greatest Idea...

...chiefly because it's not mine at all, but comes from an astute Bible study group member.

We've been working through Acts, and this week was ch. 8. It's a chapter I love for the last pericope - the way the Ethiopian eunuch finds a welcome at last in the good news of Jesus, having been shut out of everything that matters previously. He looks powerful, but knows his emptiness.

I made an observation that this is somewhat parallel to Simon Magus, earlier in the chapter - a reputed Great Power who is really an outsider, as a Samaritan, to true religion. And Isaiah 53 is a hugely appropriate starting point for a gospel presentation to someone in such a position as these two are, with its promise that the outsider can be valued by God and exalted.

I also suggested that it was no coincidence to find these two stories in a chapter that opens with a new persecution of the church: the very stories are encouraging to the church that has been recently ostracised.

But the nice idea was this: that ch. 8 leads up to Saul's conversion in the next chapter, as the chief of outsiders comes in from the cold, 'as one unnaturally born'.