Who does he think he is?
Today, we are keeping the feast of Candlemas otherwise known as the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This morning, we heard the story of Jesus being taken to the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth - we're anticipating the festival slightly to keep it on a Sunday; 40 days after Christmas isn't actually until Tuesday, 2nd February.
Now Jesus is grown up and back in Jerusalem. This time it's the Passover. He's performed his first miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee, as we heard a couple of weeks ago at the Eucharist, but he's not well known in Jerusalem. It's the big festival of the year and a stranger comes into the Temple and causes havoc. He makes a whip out of cords and drives out the dove sellers and money changers and turns the tables over.
Is it any surprise that his fellow Jews want to know where he gets the authority to do this?
Jesus' answer to this is unusual to say the least:
'Destroy this Temple and I will raise it again in three days'
The Temple was central to Judaism; it contains the tabernacle, God's dwelling place with his people. The first Temple had been built by Solomon, King David's son, but destroyed at the Babylonian exile. But when the exiles returned to Jerusalem, Haggai the prophet exorts them to rebuild the Temple. We heard part of this message tonight as our Old Testament reading. Through Haggai the Lord promises that he is with them and calls them to be strong despite the contrast between this house (the Temple) in its former glory and its current state.
He reminds them of the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. The passage ends with a promise of great glory, the arrival of 'the desired of all nations' and the granting of peace.
This is the traditon to which Jesus belonged and the context in which he was speaking. In cleansing the Temple, he had affirmed it as his Father's house. But when challenged he replies:
'Destroy this Temple and I will raise it again in three days'
His hearers are astonished; they know it has taken many men 46 years to build the current Temple. How can one man rebuild it in three days? And why would they want to destroy the Temple anyway? Their enemies might want to do this, but its the dwelling place of God with them.
But John, writing his gospel, has the benefit of knowing what is going to happen: the Jewish authorities never accept his authority and arrest, try and execute Jesus in collaboration with the secular Roman authorities. But this will not be the end of the story; God will vindicate him and raise him from the dead after three days. The disciples reflecting on his teaching after this realise that the Temple to which he was referring was his body.
John, in his famous prologue which we heard 40 days ago at Christmas, tells us :
'the Word became Flesh and tabernacled among us
Rather than dwelling with his people in the tabernacle in the Temple, he comes to dwell as one of us.
We fail to cope with this: God in a box in a central place where can control him and the purity of those who come before him, for example by selling pure doves and other sacrificial animals and changing foreign tyrants' money into clean temple money, is one thing. God in the flesh, breaking out of our neat systems - being 'the desired of all nations' and 'the light to lighten the nations' as well as 'the glory of his people Israel' - is quite another. So we killed him and put him back into a box - the tomb in Gethsamane.
But, God knew that this would happen and uses it for our benefit. He becomes the sacrifice once and for all replacing the temple sacrifices and in doing so he destroys death. He rises again after three days, bursting from the tomb, and ascends into heaven and sends his Spirit to be with us for evermore as Haggai had said.
Unfortunately, being human, we keep trying to put God back into the box where he can be on our side without challenging us to be more loving and forgive our enemies and other such inconvenient things. We often seem to want God to live at church where we can visit him on Sundays and know that he is with us, for a nice aesthetic experience. Not that aesthetic worship can't bring us closer to God, but the challenge is what happens then. We sometimes pray after the Eucharist that we may be sent out as living sacrifices. Are we ready for to go out of here (taking God with us) to be witnesses to the light to lighten the Gentiles?
I've tried to reconstruct what I actually said for the final paragraph as I was happier with how I expressed it in the end. Other bits changed a bit as I preached too (especially one rather Pauline sentence!)