There is something quite unnerving about the actions of Jesus that day in the Temple we just heard about; something even disturbing. There is an intense wildness in the Lord’s behaviour that does not sit comfortably with our images of gentleness and tenderness we hold about him. To have witnessed this without understanding, we might think of it as a terrifying action. ‘Jesus meek and mild’ had not come to the Temple that day.
But what was it that Jesus had come to do that day? Was it to rail against the misuse of a building in all its splendour and history? Was it a protest against the commercialised religiosity that had overrun the place? Both of these might have played a part in the righteous anger that had caught fire in Jesus.
But there is a far deeper foundation to the cause that Jesus had taken up. The Temple – for all its beauty and religious heritage – was fundamentally the symbolic home of God among His people. To come to this place was to come into the presence of the living God. For Jesus, son of the Father, there was no other place on earth as significant for him. He had come home, at least as much a home as it could be in an earthly manifestation.
And in coming to his earthly home, Jesus knew that it would be his own body that would manifest the real presence of God, and not just a symbolic presence. The temple of bricks and mortar was to be superseded by the Temple of flesh and blood. In dislodging the signs of commerce and unholy activities, Jesus was clearing the way for his Body to become the location for the true worship of God; a place of sanctuary for everyone, everywhere.
What Jesus did in the Temple of Jerusalem he also spoke of at a well with a Samaritan woman, saying to her:
Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain not in Jerusalem… The hour will come – in fact it is here already – when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
When we gather in our Church buildings each Sunday, we do so to offer this worship in spirit and truth, and rightly so. We are ourselves flesh and blood, and we need to locate ourselves among each other. But it is the gathering of God’s people that matters. Our place for gathering takes on its value accordingly, as the gathering place of God’s People – not the other way around. This is why we can gather as Christians anywhere. There is no Temple towards which each synagogue might look in hope. There is no Mecca towards which each mosque is oriented. The Church is a Body, and it is located wherever that Body gathers.
We believe in a Temple destroyed and rebuilt in three days. We preach of a Body broken and given for us. We proclaim a crucified Christ, scandalous to some and foolishness to others, but for us it is the strength and wisdom of God.
Image: Expulsion of the Money changers from the Temple by Giotto Scrovegni
