Building up, or tearing down, the Temple
Isaiah 62.1-5, John 2.13-22
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 14th January 2007

It is not unusual for preachers or religious leaders to see progress in terms of bigger churches and more members. One budding Australian TV preacher claimed to have built his church up until, with all the ancillary buildings and sub congregations included, he was ministering “2&1/2 acres of souls for the Lord”, almost as if they were cabbages he was farming in neat rows. An American  TV preacher is even now now building a worship space to seat 100,000 people, a church with the capacity of the MCG!

I respect what these churches are doing although I’m not sure I’d feel at home in them. I agree with those early Baptists who believed that “a church ought not consist of such an multitude as cannot have practical knowledge one of another” – and their churches were much smaller than ours! 

Yet the history of the church knows many seasons when growth came not through the extension of what the church had been, but through the cutting off of the old and the resurgence of new forms. Sometimes this happened suddenly and violently: On 11 June 1559 John Knox, the Scottish reformer preached a sermon in St Andrews parish church that so aroused the congregation they immediately went to the nearby cathedral and destroyed the splendid fittings and furnishings associated by the reformers with "popery". The attacks marked the end of St Andrews Cathedral as a functioning place of worship.

Less violently, some contemporary Christian thinkers are looking towards ‘the emerging church’, new expressions of faith and worship that will be the shape of the future for the people of God.

How does the church ‘grow’?  Is it by the kind of planning and building of the megachurches of today with their outreach, campaigns to bring people to faith? Is it through the steady continuity of institutions and the smooth development of tradition?  Or is it through change, the emergence of new forms of community for the people of God? As we reflect on Jesus being presented to the nations and the gathering of people to God, what does the hope of Jesus being revealed to the world mean for us?

Our texts inform such questions. The Isaiah passage comes from a time of great difficulty for Israel. Towards the end of their Exile in Babylon, in the sixth century BCE, the prophet we know as Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) confidently proclaimed that God was about to bring his people home and establish them in their country Israel and their capital Jerusalem. The fortieth and following chapters of Isaiah declare this confidently and powerfully: “Comfort, comfort my people! …” 

In 538 BCE, Cyrus King of Persia issued the edict for the return of the people and the rebuilding of the Temple. Expectations were high, but progress was slow. It took many years to build and consecrate the Temple, but the economic and social situation of Israel did not improve. During this period the prophets Haggai and Zechariah were active, promising that good fortune and economic blessing would follow the restoration of the Temple and the diligent worship of the people. But it was not to be. The affairs of Israel languished.  It was not until nearly one hundred years after Cyrus’ edict, in 445 BCE that Nehemiah and Ezra began the final completion of the Temple and the social and political reconstruction of the nation.

It was in this window of disappointed hopes and little progress, of great expectation and limited achievement that the prophet we know as third Isaiah was at work. Like his predecessor, second Isaiah, he was sure that salvation would come and he was determined to help bring it about: ‘For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest until her vindication shines out like the dawn and her salvation like a burning torch’ (Is 62.1). He is certain that things are going to turn around and he won’t shut-up until they do. A little further down the chapter he tries to recruit others to help: ‘You who remind the Lord, take no rest, and give him no rest, until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned throughout the earth’ (Is 62.6b-7).

This is prophecy in the lean times, the hard place. If you want confirmation look no further than verse four where the names now appropriate to the people are to be taken away and new names given: ‘For you shall no longer be termed Forsaken, and your land will no longer be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight is in Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married.’ (Is 62.4)

The prophecies of Second Isaiah came out of a period of great struggle when the future of the people of God was by no means clear. The key chapters of 60 (from which last week’s OT text came), 61 and 62 are full of announcement of salvation, but they are framed by chapters 59 and 63 which are the laments of the community expressing its sadness and depression. Into that context of profound struggle and great risk the prophet brought a message of hope, a hope that is a ‘big picture’ vision of the fortunes of God’s people. He does not announce Israel’s advance and prospering while her neighbours are judged and punished. All the nations will see and delight in her blessing, and will even participate in it. Unlike Haggai and Zechariah, there is little mention of the Temple or of worship. The narrow confines of institutional faith, of restored tradition, is not enough for Third Isaiah. The salvation and blessing of God is promised to the whole land, and the world will participate in it. It will overspill the little world of the temple and its devotees and touch all of life!

The gospel reading presents another encounter with the Temple and the dynamic of continuity and discontinuity. Jesus ‘cleansing’ the temple is one of the best known stories in the gospels. For Matthew, Mark and Luke it comes in the climactic final week of Jesus’ life. John however, in his telling of the Jesus story, places it near the outset, in chapter 2, a clear symbol of what Jesus ministry is to mean and where he stands with regard to the traditions of the Jews. In all four gospels his actions call forth a challenge that he justify his authority for such acts and such teaching, and in all four gospels the priests and scribes start plotting against him. In the Synoptics Jesus responds to the challenge to justify his authority with a question to the Jewish leaders about John the Baptist – a question looking back to the one who prepared the way. In John’s gospel he looks forward, and gives the enigmatic sign, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up!”

The Jews instantly think back to the time of Haggai and Zechariah and third Isaiah and all the trouble and effort in a time of great hardship to build that temple over 46 years. That Temple had been the focus of their hopes for 400 years. They were so familiar with it, so committed to it. Its infrastructure, its great stones and liturgies and tribes of priests, were the resources and the tools of tomorrow’s hope. Is Jesus going to replace it in three days?

Jesus is already thinking quite differently. It’s in him and his teaching, in the relationships he has with his followers and they have with him, that the hope of the future lies. Jesus was bringing in a faith for people in their day to day lives – a faith taught in parables from everyday life, lived out in acts of love and forgiveness between ordinary people. There’s a dynamic at work that is really opposed to any form of temple worship, with its rules and its liturgies. There is something profoundly new in what Jesus was doing.

His disciples, thinking back on it after the events of his trial and death, remembered what he had said and started to piece things together. In some ways much of the New Testament is about the struggle the church experienced between staying loyal to the Temple and setting out on its own direction. It is centre-stage in Paul and his establishment of the Gentile mission – to those who had no ‘temple’. It is there in the gospels grappling with the sacking of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. And it seems to roll on through the history of the church, a tension between a hope focused in the traditions and institutions built up around Jesus, and a dynamic of inclusion for the outcasts and justice for the poor and oppressed. 

In the Resurrection the church was empowered it to be a living thing, a dynamic force. The community of the Cross and Resurrection would eventually spread around the world, adapting and changing, growing and serving. But despite all the fine churches it has built it is characterized not by buildings and structures but by commitment to Jesus, the source of its life, and a vital concern for those who are judged and suffer the fate of their Lord. The church is passionate about the prisoners and outcastes, the poor and the vulnerable. It is open to the world in the name of Jesus and not confined within the walls of a temple or within the rhythms of its liturgy.

One of my favourite church buildings is Durham Cathedral, partly because of its connection with Northumbrian monasticism. It includes the shrine of St Cuthbert at the head of the church and the grave of the Venerable Bede in the little chapel at its foot.  But there are two architectural details that make Durham a treasure for me. On the one hand there is the internal damage to the stone work that is found in parts of the building but only as high as a man can reach. This done during the English Civil War when 3000 Scottish Prisoners of War were imprisoned in the Cathedral. Perhaps the same Scottish ardour tapped by John Knox a century before at St Andrews was still at work. Whatever the reason, those Scots took offence at the grandeur of the Temple in which they were confined and attacked it, to simplify it and bring it more into keeping with the plain chapels of their Presbyterian traditions.

The second architectural treasure is the Sanctuary Knocker on the door of the church. This door knocker provided for the protection of the refugee and the fugitive from the law. If you could get to the cathedral and lay hold of that brass door knocker, you were safe: safe from the law, safe from your debtors. You handed over your clothes and possessions, were clothed by the monks in the dress of a pilgrim and given safe conduct to the nearest sea port and a ticket to France and freedom!

What a picture of the church - a place that confines within its walls the pressures and struggles of its own community, all the forces that vie to build up or tear down the Temple, to extend or transform the tradition, yet has its door always ready to receive and protect the vulnerable!