Destroy This Temple

Destroy This Temple

Second Sunday of Lent

John 2: 13 – 25

Today is the third Sunday of Lent. Today’s Gospel reading is about Jesus who went to the temple and there found people selling all sorts of things like cattle, sheep and doves. Jesus also found money changers who were seated at their tables.  The Passover, which was an important Jewish feast, was near and one could imagine the multitude of people heading to the temple. Then in the midst of so many people, Jesus does the unthinkable. He makes a whip and starts driving all the cattle, sheep and doves out of the temple and pours out the coins of the money changers and overturns their tables.  Amidst this commotion he gives out this stern command: “ Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market place!”

Some of those present must have been quite surprised and began to question Jesus’ own authority in doing this by asking him: “ What sign can you show us for doing this?”  Jesus’ reply caused an even greater bewilderment when he said : “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  Clearly, people didn’t understand what he meant.  The temple was built for forty-six years and there was no way it was going to be rebuilt in three days.

The origins of the temple date back to the time when Israel was in the desert. In the desert God commanded Moses to make a portable tent so God could live there and be there with his people while they roamed and moved about in the desert (Exodus 23:8). Centuries later Solomon would build a temple in Jerusalem which was patterned after the portable tent that Moses built (1 Kings 8).

 While the tent and the temple were built by human hands, they were meant to manifest the divine by keeping them clean, undefiled and untainted by anything that was considered impure.  This was in accordance with what God himself prescribed in the books of Exodus and Leviticus which contained  elaborate laws on ritual purity. The idea of cleanliness and purity was to be the outward manifestation of God’s holiness.  This is the reason why Jesus reacted so strongly when he saw the temple turned into a marketplace. God’s temple cannot be defiled for it was here where God, the most holy one, dwelt.

Meanwhile, Jesus’ enigmatic claim that he was going to rebuild a destroyed temple in three days, left many confounded. Here, John the evangelist, the author of this gospel, provides an explanation of what Jesus meant. John explains: “ he was speaking of the temple of his body.“ 

In comparing the temple to his own body, Jesus makes this incredible shift in our understanding of the temple. The temple was God’s dwelling place. But since the fullness of God resided in Jesus, Jesus now becomes God’s temple. This meant that God was no longer confined to dwell in a temple made of stones but now resides and makes his indwelling in a living temple, a body, such as Jesus’ own body. And even if this living temple were to be destroyed, it could be rebuilt again in three days, through the power of Jesus’ own resurrection.

We can then, like Jesus, also claim that our bodies have become temples where God dwells. St. Paul re-echoes this when he tells the Christians of Corinth that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, a place where the divine dwells (1 Corinthians 6: 9). Long ago, and perhaps even today, people believe that God dwells up there in the heavens and that he lives remotely from all of us, unaffected and unconcerned by what happens to us in this world. This gospel today refutes that. God does not live up there. He lives right here in my soul, because he has made my body his dwelling place.

The reason why God wanted to have a tent or a temple built is because he wanted to be with his people. Similarly, Jesus’ assertion that God dwells in the temple of our bodies reinforces the idea that God wants to be with us. He lives within us, he is concerned with what concerns us. He gets affected with what affects us. And should any harm come to our bodies, like for example, death itself, God is going to restore our bodies once again, just as he restored Jesus’ body on the third day.  

Long ago, the prophet Isaiah once said that no harm shall come upon Jerusalem because God dwells in Jerusalem (Isaiah 31: 4 -5). We too, like Isaiah can lay claim to this wonderful reality that no harm shall come to us because God dwells within us. Amen.  

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

God is in the midst of the city, it shall not be moved.” (Psalm 46:4 -5)