The temple complex where Jesus cast out purveyors of sacrificial animals and turned the tables on the money changers was the second one since the first splendid edifice erected by King Solomon. Having foreign powers overrun your small nation and send your people into exile can be hard on the architecture. The plans for this one must have been ambitious too, for at this point it is decades into its construction, and it’s not finished.
The temple leaders did not throw Jesus out after his scene. But they sure had a few questions for him.
“‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The leaders then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”
It’s an audacious challenge Jesus lays down – and a safe bet, as there’s no way they would have risked harming the temple. (Within forty or so years, the Romans would demolish it.) The leaders take his words literally – “You’re going to raise it up in three days?” But our narrator tells us what Jesus apparently does not tell the authorities – that he’s not talking about the bricks and mortar in which God was said to dwell on earth. He is talking about the fullest revelation of God on earth – himself, the Son of God, made human flesh and yet containing the fullness of the Godhead.
During his time on this earth, Jesus was this living temple, Emmanu-el, God with us, who mediated the presence of God to those who drew near. That’s where his power to heal, and teach, and forgive came from, God within him. That’s why he was so threatening to those who held power. They couldn’t put their finger on why he was so unsettling – it was God in him. That’s a pretty scary thing.
But God’s plan is scarier still. After Jesus’ ascension, he said, God would send his Holy Spirit upon all flesh. Now everyone who believes that Jesus is Lord can become a temple in which God’s presence is made known to the world. Not little “gods,” but vessels of the one true God. That’s why Paul exhorts us to honor our bodies and treat them with holy reverence – because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Wow.
Okay, you might ask, why doesn’t it feel like God’s presence is so powerfully present in me? Why don’t I feel like a temple? Well, I don’t know about you, but I forget, all the time, that that’s what I am. And we are also vessels of accumulated detritus that has nothing holy about it, that in fact can obscure the holy in us. The work of the spiritual life is to become aware of, name, and transform everything in us that is not holy, and to become aware of, name and lift up all that is. Gradually the God-Life in us becomes more and more apparent and the natural, passing-away life dims.
How might we become more conscious of our “temple-dom?” Like any spiritual practice, we can develop this with, yes, practice. Sow reminders into your day – when you eat something healthy, when you take a rest, when you stop and pray, when you offer a kind word. “Oh yeah – I am being God’s temple.” And we can also remind each other, when we make choices that are destructive or not life-giving – “Hey, remember, the Spirit of God wants to hang out in you.”
There are those who await a third temple to be built, as a sign of God’s reign breaking out.
For Christ-followers, we see that third temple every time we look at one another, for God’s reign has broken out and we’re helping it spread.
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