What Happened to the Temple? By The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
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Sermon Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Easter 6, May 5, 2013 by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
“What Happened to the Temple?”
Rev. 21:10, 22 – 22:5
As we enter the final two weeks of Eastertide today, our scriptures begin to prepare us for that time when Jesus will no longer be among us even in his resurrected state. Reminding his followers that he will send the Holy Spirit to guide them after he leaves, he reassures them with the wonderful words, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
This sending of the Spirit, which we will celebrate in just two weeks, is considered the birthday of the church – what makes the church a sacramental body: Christ working in and through the church through the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit. What the disciples didn’t realize at the time was that Jesus was promising a very different world than the one they were used to. And that celebration of the Spirit will wait for Pentecost Sunday to arrive.
For today, I would like to focus on the preview of that world that Jesus’ earliest followers were to face as it is described in the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation. The passage we heard this morning brings us to a mountaintop experience as God reveals to the writer a vision of what the new world order is to be. And as mountaintop experiences often do, this one is as surprising as it is stunning.
The vision is one of the new City of Jerusalem – a restored City of Jerusalem – coming down out of the heavens. Now a little history is important to fully appreciate this image: The Revelation to John was written in about the year 95, some 40 years after most of Paul’s epistles and slightly after or contemporaneous with the Gospels. Jerusalem with its Temple had been the center of Judaism. But the Temple had been destroyed along with the rest of the city when it was overrun by the Romans back around the year 70. The central place of worship – the place that was thought to contain the very presence of God himself in the Holy of Holies was no more. And so the Judaism became dispersed, longing for the reconstruction of the Temple.
So it is especially stunning when in the vision of the new world order, the New City of Jerusalem that God reveals to the author has no temple. In the new reality that Jesus is revealing to John, there is no central worship space. Instead, the author writes, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb – who is Jesus himself. In the new world order which is promised by Jesus, Jesus himself is the centerpiece of God’s mission.
A review of other New Testament passages helps us to understand the idea of Jerusalem without a temple.
In Matthew chapter 12 is written, 6I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”, you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.’ Mt 12
Luke writes in chapter 21 of his Gospel, 5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’
In the Gospel of John we read in chapter 18, 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. John 18
St. Paul writes in chapter 3 of his first letter to the Corinthians,
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?* 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. 1 Cor 3:16-17
Later in that same letter he writes, 19Or 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? 20For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body. 1 Cor 6
In the second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, 16What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we* are the temple of the living God; as God said,
‘I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people. 2 Cor 6:16
And as a final example, in the letter to the church in Ephesus Paul writes, 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.* 21In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22in whom you also are built together spiritually* into a dwelling-place for God. Ephesians 2:19-22
It is clear that the teachings of Jesus and Paul about the Temple point in only one direction: That is, to new understandings of worship, to new understandings of what is holy or sacred, and to new understandings of who we are. The old Temple was the religious center for faithful generations, considered to be a man-made building that was the dwelling place of God; now God alone, in Jesus the Lamb, is the Temple. This new City is a place where everyone is welcome – its gates are never closed to the outside world. It is a place of healing – running through it are the life-giving waters of the river, and on either side of the river, the Tree of Life with its 12 different fruits and its leaves which “are for the healing of the nations.” And the river itself contains the water of life, reminding us of our own rebirth into God’s family through the waters of baptism and in our Christian faith, hope for new life in the resurrected Christ.
John’s vision reveals to us yet another understanding of what it is to “practice Resurrection.” In its closing verses, we see that in the new world order that Jesus has introduced, “church” is not a place, and it is even more than something we do – it is who and what we are. God is the Temple, and through our baptism, so are we. May our lives be true to that awesome calling. AMEN.