A Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent
Jealousy. This is a term most of us probably think of as a bad thing, we would not want to be described as a jealous person. Yet God applies this quality to himself, “I am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5) in the first reading—in the section on the ten commandments no less! A place where we are told not to covet our neighbor’s property. This makes no sense; God can be jealous but not us? Yet God’s jealousy is on full display in the gospel reading today, and to better understand how Jesus acts we must come to terms with a “jealous God.”
The type of jealousy most of us are thinking of is the kind God warns against in the commandments. Do not envy your neighbor for their possessions, wishing for these things that do not belong to you. This is a sinful form of jealousy, desiring things that are not our own.
Yet like most sins, it is a twisted or fallen virtue and there is a proper form of “jealousy.” The key is the ownership of the object in question. The jealousy of God is a fierce and passionate love for the things that already belong to him. We are his children, we belong to him and not some other. When he is jealous for us it is a protective love, so powerful that it drives one to action. Jealous love leads a shepherd to leave his flock of ninety-nine to save the one sheep that is lost. Jealous love is a lioness protecting her cubs. God will go to all lengths to save those that he loves. It is a jealous love, an untamable love, that leads him to the greatest action of all in his death on the cross.
We can often be confused by the seeming difference of the “Old Testament God” and the “New Testament God.” It is the same jealous love we see in Exodus that drives Jesus in cleansing the temple. He is passionate. He is emotional. It is a fierce love for what belongs to him that drives him to act.
After the coming of the Holy Spirit, we are now God’s temple. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:19-20). We belong to God; how jealously will he pursue us?
