This will be the last sermon posted until mid-September as I head off on sabbatical.
I was told this week that there’s a lot of pressure on me
with today’s sermon, because it’s the last thing people will remember before I go
off into the wilderness and get eaten by a bear. So, there’s that.
Also,
thanks to the lectionary, I’m stuck preaching on a story about church buildings
when I’m getting increasingly excited about getting out of the building, so to
speak. At first, I thought this was a bit jarring. Then, I thought, maybe I
should actually read the scripture (which is a novel thought, I know), and once
I got through Hebrews 9 I had a bit of an epiphany. This is about something
that might actually play very well with where I’m going, because this is
scripture about Jesus taking us through the walls of right practice and dogma
and the sacredness of the buildings we’ve erected and opening the doors to
something better further in.
This is a
story of how Jesus takes a church that is all about walls and whispers, very
quietly, only for those who are listening, “There are no walls anymore.”
First, a
little bit of history about the temple in Jerusalem. When you imagine the
temple, if you’re like me you probably first go to an image of a single,
immense building like the National Cathedral or Notre Dame. But that’s not
exactly right. Neither the original Temple of Solomon nor the second temple
under Herod was a big, monolithic building. In Jesus’ day, that temple of Herod
consisted of the temple precinct, which was basically the neighborhood. It may
have been as much as a mile wide. Then there was the Court of Women. That’s
where you who were born with two X chromosomes could go. Further in was the
Court of the Israelites, which was where Jewish men could go. Then, the Court
of the Priests, then the Temple Court, which was where the offerings were taken
to the altar and at this point you were finally entering the temple building
itself. Then, the temple vestibule or porch, the temple sanctuary, and finally
the Holy of Holies.
The temple
was an onion that you peel back to find another layer, and each layer was
separated by another wall. Walls upon walls upon walls. And in those walls were
religious people doing religious things. What’s not to like? Well, according to
Jesus, perhaps a lot.
Hebrews
9:9-10 explains, saying, “This is a symbol of the present time, during which
gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the
worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various baptisms, regulations
for the body imposed until the time comes to set things right.”
The temple
made religion into a series of doors we are supposed to open as we move toward
holiness, and the history of history ever since is littered with thinking that
has imagined Jesus Christ wants us to open a series of doors—that we should
move in the metaphorical temple of our lives from the outer gate further up and
further in and that we might, with Jesus’ help of course, finally one day enter
the holy of holies. Heaven is what we might call it.
This vision
is as attractive as it is wrong. That’s the symbol, says Hebrews, of the present time. In other words, this is
how we live our lives—trying to perfect ourselves, thinking we’ll get better,
praying (with Jesus’ help, of course) that we will one day see God when we’re
ready, but that’s not how life works. We have made the understandable mistake
of assuming that the religion of the temple is the thing that will save us.
I come back to that line at the end
of Hebrews 9:10 where it says, “…regulations for the body imposed until the
time comes to set things right.”
We create
rules not in order to make things right, but because we cannot make things right. It is not the temple that brings us
closer to God; it is Jesus working through and around our practices, which
continue to be our practices.
We do have
to be careful about one point, though. The temple is not the same thing as the
church. The temple is a building of inner and outer walls, while the church is
the people. The temple involves moving inward, the church moves outward—from this
gathering place out into the world. And it works the same way within us. The
temple ethic suggests our heart is guarded by walls and if only we can be a
little better, teach our children to be a little wiser, and help others see the
way, then perhaps we can be a little more like God. But with Jesus we are not
called further into ourselves but further outside of ourselves into loving God
and our neighbor.
Instead, we
await a God who destroyed the temple. That was Jesus’ promise in the Gospel of
John: I will destroy this temple… and in
three days raise it again, he said (cf. John 2:19). Of course, Jesus wasn’t
talking about the building, was he? He was talking about his body, which should
make us pause, because it calls into question something we’ve heard a million
times. How often have you heard this: Your body is a temple? Usually, it’s some
well-meaning person trying to get you to eat healthier or to refrain from
drugs, or alcohol, or sex. This has been a big purity culture thing, especially
for young women. Your body is a temple, we say. But here’s the thing about
that: The temple isn’t going to make you holy. You cannot tame it. In fact, you
cannot make it the slightest bit more holy, since the body is the thing you
must leave behind. It’s the temple in the sense that it is the thing that will
decay to dust, while Jesus is raising you to something new.
So,
everything you love about your body, and everything you hate about it, will not
save you and will not condemn you. I think we need to shout that from the
rooftops, to be honest. We are embodied creatures, and we can love our bodies
for the beauty that they can be—just as we can admire the church building or
the temple mount—but our bodies will not be perfected by our own doing.
The temple
is not the thing any longer. It is the church, which is you and me, embodied
and not. And all of this is for the glory of God…
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