The Temple of the Body

Daniel 12.1-3 Some will wake to everlasting life, some to shame and disgrace

Hebrews 10.11-14 When all sins have been forgiven, there can be no more sin-offerings

Mark 13.1-8 Jesus said to them, “See that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.

 

‘There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.’

(Mark 13.2)

 

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Today’s gospel reading is dramatic and unnerving.

 

Jesus foretells the destruction of the Temple and speaks of the signs of the end of the age.

 

It sounds chaotic, destructive and frightening: we might well ask, ‘where is the Gospel, the Good News – in all of that?

 

Today is the annual ‘Safeguarding Sunday’.

 

Safeguarding is tremendously important to me and a priority as Vicar.

 

To my shame ‘Safeguarding Sunday’ is not something I have ever emphasised in the life of the churches in my care.

 

All that went on last week, and what led to it, resulting in the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, shows that safeguarding is not for one Sunday year.

 

Safeguarding is not an inconvenience, a bureaucratic exercise or something to sigh and shrug our shoulders about: it is about creating a culture across the church where the voices of victims and survivors of abuse of body, mind or spirit are heard and all who are vulnerable, not least the young, are safe.

 

The Church has not always been that place of safety; we have not always modelled the life of faith and hope and love we espouse.

 

So what might the gospel today speak into that bleak scenario?

 

One way in is to consider the Temple: the physical Temple in Jerusalem; the Temple of Creation; the Temple of the body.

 

The Temple of which Jesus foretells destruction is the Temple in Jerusalem.

 

As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” (Mark 13.1)

 

We construct edifices of great beauty and power.

 

That’s true of the Church of England, but for too long those at the heart of the Church of England have stood gazing at the Church and thought ‘how wonderful’ and, in doing so, have gazed on their own grandeur and glory and worried about ‘reputational damage’, as if their wonderful stones, what they have built and lived in, will be pulled down.

 

‘Yes, it will’, says Jesus, ‘When you build to your own glory and not to God’s, then the edifice will crumble’.

 

Furthermore, the Church of England, through her Bishops and Synods, has for too long sought the approval of society, protecting a worldly reputation and not being right with God.

 

All we see of God in the face of Jesus Christ is compassion for the victim, for He Himself becomes the Victim without blame, the Spotless Lamb, who is one with every victim of violence and abuse, in a way the powers -that-be in the Church of England have not been.

 

To see the Cross at the heart of our faith is to see the association of Christ with the innocent victim and nothing of worldly reputation.

 

This moves us to the Temple of the Creation, because the Temple in Jerusalem was conceived by God to be a microcosm of the Creation, the meeting point of divinity and humanity, where right worship is offered.

 

At the heart of the Temple in Jerusalem was the representation of the Garden of Eden – creation as God intended it - before the whispers of sin, through the wiles of the Enemy were heard and acted on, taking humanity away from God and in need of rescuing, salvation and redemption.

 

Sin is the corrosive force that attacks the Creation itself, yet even then God’s redeeming power is at work.

 

In nature and human society, we see destruction and war, and our natural instinct is despair: but our instinct  as disciples of Christ must be hope: hope, not that we can save ourselves, but that we have a saviour.

 

God’s capacity - repeatedly demonstrated in the scriptures - is to turn our destructive ways into the ‘birth pangs’ (Mark 13.8c) of a new age, the pain of the close of an old age.

 

What does that look like on ‘Safeguarding Sunday’?

 

The Church of England is at the close, we pray, of a former age.

 

It’s painful for we who live through it but, as the new child knows, from the safety, warmth and security of the womb delivery into the world is traumatic, yet ultimately about life, new life, abundant life.

 

What we live through now will, by God’s grace, deliver us into the life of the New Creation.

 

All this is a reminder of the spiritual wisdom - expressed in the service of Holy Baptism - that we die to sin, to live with Christ.

 

This takes us to the Temple of the body.

 

In St John’s Gospel Jesus says that the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem -  to which we might add, the Temple of the Creation - is a sign fulfilled in the destruction of his body on the cross, which will be raised after three days.

 

St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians extends this Temple imagery saying,

 

…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6.19,20)

 

For those who say Christianity is anti-the-body, re-read that passage!

 

It tells us that the body is precious, to be cherished, not to be abused, hurt or destroyed.

 

That has a bearing on the body of the unborn, the terminally ill body, the marred body, the pained body, the tired body, the elderly body.

 

Every body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, a gift from God.

 

That is why abuse of another person’s body is so wicked, it is a blasphemous destruction and violation of the sacred ground of another person’s precious body.

 

And so too is psychological or spiritual abuse that assaults the God-given human spirit within.

 

‘Safeguarding Sunday’: it might sound like a niche cause, or theme enforced on the Church, but I hope we see on this Sunday, and every day, that safeguarding is integral to the protection of the human body, which is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, the meeting place of divinity and humanity in God’s good creation.

 

And may the Church, which is Christ’s own body, honour her call to be compassionate, loving, kindly and gracious, and purge away the sin that clings so closely, but over which Christ, the High Priest, has triumphed.