The Bloody Red Thread
At the time of Jesus, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was the
largest manmade structure on the planet. Its walls stood some 300 feet high.
Individual stone blocks used in its construction weighed up to 160,000 pounds. The
scale of it is almost inconceivable in a time before engines, electricity, or
hydraulics. It would’ve been a place of constant activity, with thousands of
Jews, proselytes, and God-fearers from throughout the Middle East and Roman
Empire constantly streaming in to pray, to study, and to sacrifice. Smoke from
burnt offerings would billow up, day and night, like a great industrial
chimney, raising the petitions and thanksgivings of faithful, the world over,
up to God in Heaven. You could see the Temple rising up from miles away,
towering over the seven hills of Jerusalem in this rocky, mountainous landscape.
It wasn’t just physically gargantuan but historically giant
as well. By the time of Jesus, the Temple had a history stretching back over
1,000 years and more. You see, the Israelites had always had some funny ideas
about the One True God. Unlike the pagan gods worshipped by the nations around
them, Israel believed in a God Who was everywhere, Who could do anything, and
Who was perfectly good and just. While the pagan myths said that the gods were
born from Nature, the Bible proclaimed that Nature was created from out of
nothingness by God. This great, Most High God had no image, no home, no
physical body. He was everywhere and nowhere all at once, invisible yet unmistakable
in the glories of Creation. He was completely unlike any other deity worshipped
by humankind.
And yet—when He chose for himself a special people, when God
picked the family of Abraham to be a nation set apart for the blessing of the
entire world, God promised to be with His people in a very concrete and unique
way. When God sent Moses to free Israel from slavery, a column of fire and
smoke displayed the special presence of God amongst the people. When the
Israelites built a box, the holy Ark, to carry the 10 Commandments of God, God
Himself proclaimed that this Ark would be His footstool, stretching up from
earth into Heaven. Wherever the Ark went, God was right there amidst His
people.
After the Israelites settled in the Promised Land of their
ancestors and became a true nation, King Solomon, wisest and most prosperous of
all the kings of old, built a holy Temple to house the Ark, according to divine
specifications. This was to be the only
Temple in the world, you understand. Just as One God had chosen one people,
so He would accept their offerings in one holy place. Yes, God was everywhere,
and His people could to pray to Him from any spot in the universe and know that
they were heard, yet this spot, this
Temple, was special, was unique. It was the House of God on earth, where Heaven
itself entered our world.
When God’s people clung to Him in love—when they acted with
justice and love towards their neighbors, caring for the poor, the orphan, the
widow and the foreigner—God defended His Temple with a mighty arm. No power on
earth could shake it. Yet when God’s people ignored His concerns for mercy,
generosity, justice, truth, and compassion—when they, in short, rejected God in
every way that mattered—then God would send prophets to reveal their sins. All
the pomp and circumstance of Temple worship, all the sacrifices raising flames
up to Heaven, meant nothing, meant bupkiss, sayeth the Lord, if the people do
not first act with humility and generosity, loving God by loving the poor.
There were times when God outright rejected the Temple
services because of injustice throughout the land. There were times when God
refused to defend a Temple whose priests defrauded the vulnerable and cared not
for the weak. There even came a time when the perfidy of God’s people caused
God to abandon His home amongst them so that the Temple was laid ruin and the
people driven from their land. When the people turned from God, God turned from
His Temple. Yet God followed them lovingly into Exile; when they were homeless, God was homeless. And when they returned
to Him, when they begged His forgiveness, God cleansed them of their sins and
gathered them home again. And having righted their lives, they rebuilt the
Temple in Jerusalem.
The Temple was everything to the people of Israel. It was
their White House, their cathedral, and their World Trade Center all wrapped
into one. It was the symbol of who they were: God’s special people, the one
nation under Heaven in which God chose to dwell amongst mankind. It was even
designed on the inside to look like the Garden of Eden, harkening back to the
days before sin and death entered the world—back to the time when God walked
with Adam and Eve, and Heaven dwelt on earth.
And so in our Gospel this morning we can understand, can’t
we, how Jesus’ disciples, coming to Jerusalem, would marvel at the mighty stones
of the Temple Mount and at the beautiful gifts donated by kings and Israelites
from around the world, all for the greater glory of God. People still marvel at
Jerusalem to this day. But Jesus says, shockingly, “As for these things that
you see, the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another. All
will be thrown down.” All thrown down? How could Jesus say such a thing! Forget
the fact that these stones weigh 20, 50, 80 tons apiece. How could we think of
losing the Temple now, at the time of Jesus, the time when all the prophets say
that God’s Messiah shall arise?
It’s true. At the time of Jesus, everyone, Jew and Roman
alike, seethed with Messianic expectation. Indeed, many people before and after
Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Anointed One sent by God to fulfill Israel’s
destiny as a blessing for the entire world. Most thought this would be done in
great military victories. But Jesus warns us that God doesn’t work like that.
God will not send armies from Heaven, but rather a Suffering Servant Who dies
for the sins of the world. “These false and bloody-minded messiahs will come
and go,” Jesus warns. “They will cause wars and sufferings, and they will fail.
They will even cause the destruction of Jerusalem within this generation! Do
not follow their way of violence, nor fear when war comes to you. I promise: not
one hair on your head shall be harmed.”
You probably know the rest of the story. Jesus is arrested
by a combination of Roman and Israelite treachery. He is accused of being the
Messiah, even the very Son of God—which of course He is—but they refuse to
believe that God would come as a Suffering Servant, a humble Christ, a Prince
of Peace. And so they crucify Him. At the Crucifixion there is a great
earthquake, and a fissure stretches from Golgotha right into the heart of the
Temple, the Holiest of Holies, tearing the Temple curtain in two. From now on,
God will not be found in the Temple. The sacrifices will be rejected, for Christ
sacrificed once for us all. Nor will the Temple be the House of God, for the
place where God dwells on earth is now and forever the Body of Jesus Christ. He
is God’s true Temple, torn down and raised up in three days.
Within the prophesied 40 years—one biblical generation—bloodthirsty
Zealots would provoke war with Rome, believing that their violence would force
God’s hand and bring about the arrival of a warlord messiah. They were wrong.
And all Jerusalem paid for their sins. The might of Rome crushed city and
Temple alike, leaving not one stone atop another. All fell, as Jesus prophesied
it would. The Christians, however, were spared. When the Zealots arose and the
war came, the followers of Jesus knew that the Messiah would not be some
general on a heavenly horse. Rather, they knew that the Messiah had come and
died and risen again for the Redemption of the entire world. The Christians
fled Jerusalem, to the city of Pella, and survived the destruction about which
we had been warned.
There is a story found in the Talmud and Zohar, holy
books of Judaism, that every year, when the High Priest made atonement for the
sins of God’s people, a red thread was hung on the Temple door. And that thread
would miraculously turn white to show Israel that God had accepted the
sacrifice and forgiven their sins. The Rabbis record that for the 40 years
leading up to the Temple’s destruction—that is, the 40 years after Jesus’
Crucifixion—that red thread never turned white. The time of the Temple in
Jerusalem was over. The time of the Messiah had begun.
2,000 years after the fall of the Temple, its shadow still
hangs over God’s people. What does this mean for us, living so long after the
fall of Jerusalem? Certainly we must remember, as did our forebears 3,000 years
ago, that God promises to meet us here, in this place, in our worship. But this
worship must lead us to lives of love. Without justice, without mercy, without
love towards God and neighbor, nothing we do here means anything. Buildings are
important. Ceremony is important. Truly, God dwells with us in these things!
But they must live in tandem with everyday righteousness—or this building is
just another empty Temple waiting to fall. But let us also remember that Christ
is our true Temple now, the true place where God promises to live amongst us.
He has sacrificed once for us all, and He shall dwell with us forever. It is Jesus
Himself Who makes this place Heaven on earth.
Thanks be to Christ, our Temple, Messiah, and God. In Jesus’
Name. AMEN.
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