“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”
say Jesus’ disciples, in awe at the sheer scale of the walls of the Temple in
Jerusalem.
This morning at our All Age Worship we thought about walls,
and what they mean to us. I told some Biblical “wall” stories. There were stories
about walls coming down – the walls
of Jericho tumbling at the blast of the trumpets and the shouts of the
Israelites. And there were stories of walls being built up – Nehemiah building the walls of
Jerusalem after the exile, struggling for every cubit against those who didn’t
want to see Jerusalem fortified again, eventually telling the people to build
with one hand and hold a sword in the other to fight off their attackers.
 | ||
| We also did some building up... |
Walls can be wonderful, protecting and sheltering,
or they can be obstacles, things that cut us off from one another. The Temple
walls were no different. There had been a Temple in Jerusalem from the time of
King Solomon – before that they had worshipped God in a tent, and God had been
quite happy with that. But that didn’t seem right to the great and good of
Jerusalem, so a Temple it had to be,
built of stone and cedar wood, and a very fine Temple it was too.
 | ||
| ...and some knocking down |
Solomon’s Temple stood until the Babylonians destroyed
Jerusalem in 587 BC, but after the exile a new Temple was built. It wasn’t
as splendid as the old one, though.
There weren’t the resources to rebuild as Solomon had done, so around the time
of Jesus’ birth, plans were afoot to extend it and beautify it. Those plans
were the brainchild of King Herod the Great – the same man who ordered the
massacre of the children of Bethlehem – and frankly it was more of a vanity
project than a genuine spiritual enterprise. He was a paranoid megalomaniac,
who had murdered some of his own family to prevent them dethroning him, and he
wasn’t even considered properly Jewish – he came from a neighbouring tribe
which had converted to Judaism out of convenience, and he’d been put on the
throne by the Romans. So he needed to curry all the favour he could, and what
better way than by starting a great big, glitzy building project. Unfortunately
the building works over ran by several decades, and it was only just finished
by the time Jesus spoke these words to his disciples.
As you can imagine then, the idea that this grand new
building was going to be thrown down, didn’t exactly go down well with those
who overheard him saying it. In fact it was one of the things that got him
crucified.
He was quite right though. Herod’s Temple was reduced to
rubble by the Romans in AD 70 – only part of the Western Wall remains, a place
of prayer for Jewish people to this day. But Jesus wasn’t really just talking about
the physical building when he said these words. It was the whole system of
Temple worship which he could see coming to an end.
The thing about the Temple was that it walls had become a bit of an obsession among those who built in and ran it, in a way that wasn’t always helpful at all. As I said
earlier walls can make a home, providing shelter and protection. Or they can be
obstacles across our way. The Temple was constructed as a series of courtyards,
one inside the others. At the very centre was the Holy of Holies, where only
the High Priest could go and then only once a year, screened off behind a
curtain. Beyond that was the court of the priests, then one for Jewish men,
then one for women, then one for Gentiles. Some people – those who were
ritually unclean – couldn’t enter it at all. That included people with
disabilities and diseases. The Temple was the place where you went to encounter
God, so the walls which kept people in their place – or excluded them
completely – also cut them off from God. Gentiles were forbidden, on pain of
death, from going any further in than their own court, and stones
etched with the warning have been found by Archaeologists in Jerusalem.
It may have been an impressive building, but for many people
– especially those who were already marginalised – it’s walls were more of an
obstacle than a home.
Jesus’ words here, though, pointed forward to something the
early Christians were keen to bear witness to. They had found a new Temple, a
new way of encountering God. They had found it in Jesus himself, and they found
it in one another as they gathered together in the Christian community. They
were living stones in a new Temple, one in which there were no dividing walls.
The walls of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, men and women had been broken
down. The sick, the poor, the sinners – those who had been excluded from the
old Temple – were explicitly included here. All could have “confidence to
enter the sanctuary by …the new and living way that he opened”. All could
find within the walls of God’s love the safety and warmth they needed, a home
in God’s heart.
Tonight in the silence let’s think about the walls in our
lives; the walls that are obstacles to us and to others, blocking the way,
cutting us off from one another, and the walls we long for, welcoming,
protecting walls that give us the shelter we all need. Let’s pray for all who
need strong walls around them at this time – those who are homeless or refugees,
those in Paris who are feeling terrified and unprotected at the moment, and
those in the Middle East who live with that vulnerability all the time. And let’s
pray that those of us who call ourselves Christian, part of God’s living
temple, would always build walls which make homes, not barriers to others.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment