Sunday 33 C (2010)
Jesus’ earthly journey is drawing to a close.
Back in Chapter 9, Luke said
as the time drew near for him to be taken up into heaven,
Jesus resolutely took the road to Jerusalem.
Now, He has arrived,
He came in on a donkey,
accompanied by a chant with messianic connotations,
He created a big scene in the Temple,
Turning over tables, making a whip, driving people out.
He disputes with the various authorities –
one of these was the gospel last week:
a dispute with the Sadducees,
who seem to have been a kind of aristocracy.
He is a marked man,
a coalition of forces is out to get him,
but he is too popular just to seize in public.
Luke’s Gospel is just about to move on,
in its next chapter,
to the events
that we solemnly recall in Holy Week:
Judas’ betrayal,
the Last Supper,
the capture and trial,
the crucifixion,
the resurrection.
We are close to the focal point of human history.
Today’s reading,
and the whole of the chapter it comes from,
has that broad sweep in mind.
It is for every time
and about all time.
The reading starts with an innocent comment on the attractive decoration in the Temple.
With someone
‘remarking how it was adorned with fine stone work and votive offerings’
Herod the Great,
he was the one who reigned in the 40 years up to Jesus’ birth,
Was a big builder,
One of the things he did was to
restore and remodel the Temple proper:
apparently this didn’t count as a new temple
since worship continued there throughout the building work,
but in terms of the building it was.
The Temple proper was on top of a hill,
Herod also initiated extending the top of the hill,
filling in around it
doubling its size
in a massive building project,
resulting in what is now the Temple Mount in Jerusalem,
to provide an enormous walled enclosure,
of about 35 acres,
around the temple proper.
The project was basically complete at the time of Jesus’ ministry,
though finishing touches continued until 30 years after Jesus’ death,
only a few years before it was destroyed.
The whole thing was a monumental achievement,
and was undoubtedly immensely impressive,
and today’s reading tells us it was well-appointed too.
Expressions of wonder at its appearance must have been commonplace
and it surely stimulated pride and confidence in the Jewish people when they were visiting.
So remarking on the stonework and the decoration seems quite natural.
Jesus reaction is disturbing.
All these things you are staring at now –
the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another: everything will be destroyed.
We can hear this as a simple and rather superficial prediction.
The Temple will be destroyed one day ……
On a secular view this prediction only requires a little historical common-sense,
and surely isn’t the main message we should hear today.
True to the prophetic tradition in Judaism
Jesus is challenging some of the certainties of religious practice.
He is challenging the idea of a holy place,
and the reassuring certainties that can surround such a notion.
Do we have any such tendencies today?
I have been worshipping in this Church,
which was rebuilt and reordered 40 years ago,
for just over 30 years.
I am very attached to it.
Yes we certainly have these tendencies,
but
in the new covenant,
God presence is shown not in a Holy place,
the Temple,
but in a Holy Person, Jesus,
and in a Holy People,
his followers down through the ages.
And, as we heard at the end of today’s gospel,
those followers can expect to be badly treated:
Hated
Betrayed by those they are closest too on a human level
Seized and persecuted
Brought before kings and governors
Some put to death
Throughout the centuries since Jesus
these experiences have been a persistent feature
in the Christian Church, and they remain so today in places
But they are not my experience
they seem very distant from my everyday life
so maybe my ‘Temple’ is not so much a place
as a situation
being in a comfortable social and political framework
in which serious persecution seems implausible.
Yet, on Remembrance Sunday,
I am conscious of the human capacity
to make war on a scale that almost defies the imagination
and that can completely disrupt civilization
and
I am also conscious of individuals’ capacity for nobility, courage and self-sacrifice
in appalling situations.
Today Jesus asks us to make the effort
to see past the accidental trappings of our lives
to see the bigger picture,
and what really matters in it.
As we share our weekly Eucharist,
We allow ourselves to be fed and formed
by Jesus’ leadership,
as he embraced what his followers may face.