Christ and the temple in Jerusalem

Sermon for Coral Evensong at St Alphege Church
6.30pm on Sunday 31st January 2010 – Epiphany 4
(Presentation of Christ in the Temple)

Readings: Psalm 122 Haggai 2: 1-9 John 2: 18-22



Our psalm today, and both of our scripture readings concern Jerusalem and especially the temple in Jerusalem. The temple also features strongly in the Presentation of Christ which we remember today. So I thought it might be useful to use this sermon to reflect on the temple and on its history in particular.
Israel first got seriously involved with Jerusalem round about 1000BC when King David, seemingly against all odds, captured the stronghold of Mount Zion from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5). David started to build a town there called the City of David, and he established it as the capital city of Israel. God granted David many military successes and his kingdom grew bigger and stronger. The City of David grew down the hill into Jerusalem. There was a particularly significant moment ( 2 Samuel 6) when David brought into Jerusalem the ark of God, which Moses had made during the exodus. This was a moment of great rejoicing because the ark represented the presence of God, and the people were delighted to have God present with them in Jerusalem.
The ark of God lived in a tent in Jerusalem, just as it had done in the wilderness, in time of Moses. But David was keen to build a house for the Lord to live in (2 Samuel 7, Ps 132) but the Lord spoke to David through the prophet Nathan. He said “No, you David are not to build me a house; your son will do that. But rather I the Lord will make you David into a house. I shall raise up from your offspring one who will have an everlasting kingdom, your throne will be established for ever.” Of course we think of these words being fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.
So King David never built the temple in Jerusalem, but his son Solomon did (1 Kings 6). With the wise King Solomon at the helm the kingdom is Israel really flourished. Solomon became extremely wealthily, and he spared no expense in the construction of the temple. Solomon’s temple was huge and incredibly richly decorated. There was another profoundly significant moment (1 Kings 8) when the temple had been completed. Solomon told the priests to move the Ark of God into the temple. The priests moved it, complete with its tent and all its artefacts into the inner sanctuary of the temple. And a cloud filled the temple and the glory of the Lord filled the house, and the priests could not even stand to minister there. Solomon made a long prayer dedicating the temple to the Lord, and the Lord appeared to Solomon saying, “I have consecrated this house that you have built and put my name there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (1 Kings 9: 3). So it was that the Lord established the temple of Jerusalem as his resting place for ever (Ps 132: 13-14).
The temple became the central to the Jewish religion. Three or four times each year the Jews would all travel up to Jerusalem to celebrate the big religious festivals. Jerusalem is about 700m above sea level, so you do literally go up to Jerusalem. And this is the experience that Psalm 122 speaks of. There is some religious festival and with great gladness the tribes of Israel all go up to Jerusalem, to the seat of the house of David. And then they enter the temple, the house of the Lord, to witness to their identity as the people of Israel, God’s chosen nation.
King Solomon’s reign was Israel’s golden age as a wealthy and powerful independent state. Towards the end of Solomon’s reign, however, and in the centuries that followed, there were persistent problems with kings and people straying from God. The kingdom became divided, and the northern Kingdom was lost to the Assyrians. However the most terrible shock came 597 BC when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. Then, about ten years later, the unthinkable happened. The Babylonians utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the temple with it. They take most of the educated Judeans away into exile, and caused the rest of the people to flee, many of them to Samaria.
The exile was a grim period for the Judeans, but it suddenly ended in about 535 BC when the Persians conquered the Babylonians. The Jews were encouraged to go back to Jerusalem, and little by little they go back, rebuilding first the city walls, then the houses and finally, encouraged by the prophet Haggai, they rebuild the temple itself. Our first reading came from this period in the history of the temple. The rebuilt temple seems to be but a poor shadow of the temple of Solomon, but through Haggai God tells the people not to be discouraged. God will shale the nations so that their treasure will come to the temple and make it rich once more. Its new splendour will be greater than the splendour it had of old.
Over the centuries that followed the Jews continue to invest in the temple. In particular, in the thirty years or so before the birth of Jesus, King Herod the Great greatly increased the size and splendour of the temple. Herod was a puppet king, ruling the Jews under the auspices of the Roman Empire. His collaboration with Rome meant he was always under pressure from the Jews to prove his Jewish credentials, and he sought to do this by investing in the temple. By the time of Jesus the second temple was bigger and grander than ever; the glory of Solomon’s temple really had been surpassed.
This morning in church we celebrated the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Malachi’s prophecies about the Lord suddenly coming to his temple came to fulfilment. We heard the words of Simeon, which we always have at evensong in the Nunc Dimittis. Simeon described Jesus as light … and the glory of his people Israel. It seems like a reminder of the glory of God which filled the temple at its dedication by Solomon.
Jesus has an interesting relationship with the temple. As a 12 year old his parents lose him there, but he describes it as his Father’s house. Later in his ministry he spends a lot of time there and often preaches there. He appears to resent paying the temple tax because he knows that as “Son of God” the temple exists for him (Matt 17: 24ff). The passage of scripture that we heard in our second reading today comes just after the moment when Jesus drove the traders out the temple, upsetting the tables of the moneychangers. The Jews question his authority for this, and ask for a sign. Jesus says he will “destroy this temple and in three days raise it up”. This makes no sense to the Jews who know that building the temple is a long slow business, but of course Jesus is speaking of his own body; the crucifixion and resurrection.
This link that Jesus makes between his own body and the temple is profound and mysterious. The Church too is the body of Christ. The Church too passes through death and resurrection cycles. The book of Revelation (21) talks of the wedding feast of the lamb, when the Church comes to dwell in a New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is splendid and perfect but it has no temple because “its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the lamb”.
And as for the temple in Jerusalem, well it was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD and has been more or less off limits to the Jews ever since. The temple mound has been completely restored but since the year 691 it has been dominated by Islamic sites such as the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Moque.
When we look at Jerusalem today we see an extraordinary complex situation. God’s chosen place is now sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews. The tensions felt in Jerusalem are profoundly linked to the tensions felt throughout the Middle East about the state of Israel and its security. There is a sense of waiting and of expectation. What on earth will God do next in this place? And it seems to me that the important thing for us to do is to trust God who is the Lord of history. Certainly terrible things can happen and much can be destroyed, but we must never lose trust in God and in his capacity to raise things up anew.