Temples, bodies, sacrifice & encounter: A Lent sermon

 Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster. Gospel text John 2.13-22.

 

‘[Jesus] was speaking of the temple of his body’ John 2.21

 

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For centuries the temple in Jerusalem sat at the heart of Israelite religion.

 

The temple was the place of sacrifice and of encounter with the presence of God in all his holiness.

 

Housing the Ark of the Covenant, the very presence of God, the temple’s roots are deep in the story of God’s people.

 

Early on, in the account of the Exodus it is as a roving sanctuary, resting on the journey as the people of Israel moved through the wilderness before entering the Promised Land.

 

Eventually, brought by King David, God’s presence in the Ark came to rest on Mount Zion and his son, Solomon, began the work of building the temple to house God’s presence.

 

Solomon’s temple fell into disrepair when Israel was captive in exile in Babylon. Yet under the priests Ezra and Nehemiah it was restored, and by Jesus’ day it had recently been rebuilt by Herod the Great, taking some 46 years.

 

That brings us to this visit of Jesus to the Temple, as recorded in all four gospels (Matthew 21.12-17; Mark 11.15-19; Luke 19.45-48).

 

Indignant at what he finds Jesus sweeps away the buying and selling which is a spin off from the necessity to have animals to sacrifice in the temple.

 

Some see this as an example of Jesus’ anger, an example of his humanity. On one level that is right - Jesus has assumed our humanity - but it’s not that Jesus is ‘losing his rag’. As the disciples later remembered, it is ‘zeal for God’s house’ that has consumed him: it’s zeal; it’s passion.

 

Re-read today’s gospel and we see that what Jesus is doing, in the tradition of the prophets, is a purposeful, intentional act of resetting the Temple to its original purpose: sacrifice to God is not about trading animals; encountering God is not a commercial transaction.

 

The temple is to be a house of prayer, a place of encounter with the Living God.

 

What is new, and different from the prophets, is that this is a divine visitation on an institution that had become all too human: as the prophet Malachi had said, ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’ (Malachi 3.1).

 

The stone-built temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, some forty years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. So where is the temple now? So where is the place of sacrifice now? Where is the place of encounter now?

 

The clear statement of our gospel today is that the temple is a temple of flesh: the temple of Jesus’ body. So, that’s the place of sacrifice; that’s the place of encounter with the living God. The Body of Christ is of course profoundly what the church is: you and me together, who feed on the Body of Christ in the sacrament.

 

This is the place of sacrifice, Jesus Christ gives his life that we might live. Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrificial victim: ‘worthy is the Lamb once slain’ (Revelation 5.12), not a lamb traded in the temple precinct, but the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

 

The temple is not abolished by Jesus but transformed and relocated in his flesh.

 

Read the letter to the Hebrews and the Revelation to John and you see that the temple, recast by Christ, feeds the Christian life and imagination.

 

In its cleansing, the liturgical life of the temple - its rituals, customs, sacrifices and services - are transformed by Jesus and embraced by the church, not to exploit God’s people but to feed them.

 

So, then, where sacrifice and encounter with God take place there is the temple. In Christ this is a temple cleansed and fit for worship.

 

So as Christians when we speak of the temple we speak of Jesus Christ, we speak of our church building and we speak of ourselves.

 

Our church is a temple, a place of sacrifice – where lives are offered and life is received – and this holy place is a place of encounter.

 

And you are too.

 

As St Paul says, ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?... God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple’. (1 Corinthians 3.16,17).

 

Christ’s Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is the pioneer of this reality. The power of the Most High dwelt in her body, she gave her body – her human body, her woman’s body - as the Lord’s temple; her life was opened to receive his life.

 

This all points to the reverence and honour we have for the body as Christians: we believe in the resurrection of the body, the ultimate statement of optimism about human bodies.

 

So we reject the separation of body and soul, the ancient heresy of Manicheism, which sees the soul as too good or pure for one’s body; the body is seen as a terrible encumbrance on a free spirit, and it means life is only lived through the body and physical gratification. That is the path to self-loathing. It afflicts many in our culture today.

 

We are body and soul together.

 

Christ visits the temple of our bodies and as we pray in Lent, ‘wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin’ (Psalm 51.2). That is a prayer that Christ might purge us, turn over some tables and upset some of our cosy bargains with God, so that we can become more truly people of sacrifice, offering our lives to Christ, the Lamb of God, that he might give us life in this bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist.

 

Let us pray that we might be worthy temples of the Holy Spirit, a worthiness which is not earned but is Christ’s gift, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer:

 

We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that all we, who are partakers of this holy Communion, may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction. (Book of Common Prayer, Order for Holy Communion)