Ye are the Temple of God: The Second Sunday in Lent (March 5, 2023)

May the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Our parish in Virginia met in a storefront. We made it look really beautiful but the building that we occupied got sold around 2015 and we had to find a new space. For a few months, we had to do “Church in a box” in the community room in our parish neighborhood. Every Sunday, we had to put up the altar, put chairs in rows, set up all the liturgical equipment we used, and all the other headaches that come with doing Church in a box. And what happened after our service concluded? We had to break everything down and do it all over again. This was exhausting and created some instability in parish life: many people didn’t come as regularly as we would’ve liked during this season because we were nomadic. During that experience, I remember thinking that we were kind of like Israel during their wilderness wandering before they arrived in the Promise Land.

Israel was a nation with history of being nomadic people. Abraham left his family and wandered until God led him to the land of Canaan. His great grandchildren had to journey to Egypt where they resided for a few generations until God delivered them from slavery. But then they wandered the wilderness for 40 years until they finally reached the Promise Land where they had to fight tooth and nail to posses the land God had for them. If you’ve moved a lot, you know that there’s something about the transience of it that makes stability very difficult to achieve. For Israel, we can imagine that this was a hard life, especially from a religious perspective. The people had a tabernacle that moved with them, reminding them of God’s presence among them during their wilderness perspective. But still, imagine having to deconstruct and reconstruct that tabernacle constantly. Even once they entered the land, Israel’s worship was decentralized and, at times, disorganized and chaotic.

So you can imagine the monumental significance of the Temple when God finally allowed King Solomon to build it. Here was a building that would centralize their worship. It would be significant not only in terms of liturgy but as a symbol. Further, the Temple brought a certain stability to the sacrificial system. They could offer the sacrifice in the same place year after year. The Temple also brought a sense of social cohesion. It was a center of cultic worship for sure, but Israel’s worship was tied very closely to their ethnicity. So, the Temple was a great triumph not only of Judaism but of the Jewish people. Most importantly, however, the Temple was a constant reminder that God dwells among humanity. Of course, we know that God can’t be contained in a building, but we also know he condescended to be specially, or maybe even sacramentally, present with the people in his Temple. During the dedication liturgy we see the presence of God, “the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God” (I Kings 8:11).

Our Old Testament reading this morning is from the Temple’s dedication liturgy. The Israelites processed the Ark of the Covenant into the Temple. Solomon then blesses the Lord, before going before the altar where he spread his hands toward heaven, and prays a prayer of consecration over the space. This is where verses 37-43 come from.

These verses have two parts: the first part is that Solomon prays for the Temple to be a place of comfort for the Israelites: “If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own heart and stretching out his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways.” The Temple was supposed to be an anchor for the Israelite religion. A place where they could go to plea to God, seek forgiveness, and learn to conform their lives to God’s Law.

The second part of the prayer is for the Temple to be a missional attraction, drawing foreigners to worship the one true God. “when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name’s sake (for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.” This always what Israel was supposed to be about. They were not an ethnic enclave aimed at being disconnected from the word. No, “All the nations of the world will be blessed through you,” God promised Abraham. Israel was a peculiar people who worshipped differently from the heathen nations that surrounded them, who kept a distinctive sacrificial system, and a distinctive law that included circumcision, kosher, and a number of other unique features. Israel was a priestly nation meaning they represented and brought God to the nations while also offering their sacrifices to God not only for their nation but for the whole world. And so Solomon places the Temple squarely in Israel’s evangelical mission: as the center of Israel’s liturgical life, the nations could hear of the Lord’s great name, his salvific actions, and strength. As a result, Solomon sees a day when those foreigners would come to this Temple to call on him.

So what do we as Christians do with the Temple? I mean we don’t go worship at the Jewish Temple. In fact, even before the Temple was destroyed, the early Christians were critical of Jewish Temple theology. St. Stephen in Acts 7:48: “The most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” St. Paul reiterates the point in his Mars Hill address to the Greek philosophers: “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” While we do have a Tabernacle above the Altar where Jesus is, we still don’t have this kind of central Temple imagery. And why is that? Well the answer is that in the New Covenant, there are three temples, three places where God dwells with us: the person of Jesus Christ, the Church, and the individual soul.

Jesus is the real Temple. The building was a beautiful foreshadowing of the greater reality to come. Remember, the Temple was the place where God dwelt among humanity. St. Matthew gives Jesus the title Emmanuel which means God is with us. In the prologue of John, the Evangelist tells us that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt [tabernacled] among us.” Jesus himself makes this connection when he tells the Pharisees, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, his interlocutors mistakenly think he’s talking about the physical Temple, but John clarifies “he spake of the temple of his body.” In Hebrews 9, the author describes the Temple and its function but concludes that “Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” The new and better Temple is here and it’s not a building, it’s a person.

Those of us who have been baptized are made part of the Body of Christ, meaning that we are temples. St. Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 3:9: “Ye are God’s building.” A few chapters later, he exhorts the Corinthians by reminding them that “your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.” In the Church, the company of all faithful people, we receive the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice which has rendered the Old Testament sacrifices obsolete. In the Church, the Temple of God, we are reminded of God’s enduring presence through the Real Presence of his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. In the Body of Christ, we are continually reminded that God is present through the indwelling Spirit in ourselves and those we are joined to by virtue of baptism.

This has serious bearing on our self-understanding as Christians. Seasons like Lent present us an opportunity to dedicate ourselves—or rededicate ourselves, as the case may be—to our mission. Just like the Temple was for the good of Israel and the nations, so the Church is there for our good and the good of the world. We are a nation of priests like Israel was.

This means that just as the Temple was the place where the Israelites could make their confessions and receive forgiveness through the Day of Atonement, so we can experience that forgiveness through the Church’s ministry of reconciliation.

But even more than that, it means that we, as the Church, must look outward. The Temple was to be a unique place that would draw the nations to God. Similarly, we the Church, through our corporate worship, through the proclamation of the Gospel, and through our lives and deeds should be bringing God out into the world and thereby bring people to him. Ye are the Temple of God. Live as becomes it.

Hugh of Saint Victor: “Enter your own inmost heart, and make a dwelling-place for God. Make Him a temple, make Him a house, make Him a pavilion. Make Him an ark of the covenant, make Him an ark of the flood; no matter what you call it, it is all one house of Go. Int he temple let the creature adore the Creator, in the house let the son revere the Father, in the pavilion let the knight adore the King. Under the covenant, let the disciple listen to the Teacher. In the flood, let him that is shipwrecked beseech Him who guides the helm.”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.