While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, “All that you see here–the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” Then they asked him, “Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?” He answered, “See that you are not deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am here, and ‘The time has come.’ Therefore, don’t follow them.” (Luke 21.5-8)
When King David decided to build a temple in Jerusalem, the Lord God was not a fan of the idea. In fact, he sent the prophet Nathan to inform the king of his uninterest in having a temple. He said to him, “Go and tell David my servant, ‘Thus says the Lord–is it you who would build me a house to dwell in? I have never dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up from Egypt to this day, but I have been going about in a tent or a tabernacle. As long as I have wandered about among the Israelites, did I ever say a word to any of the judges whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’” (2 Samuel 7.4-7) David never got around to building a temple, but his son Solomon did, David’s dream postponed a generation.
So why didn’t the Lord God want a temple in his honor in Jerusalem? Based on what he tells Nathan, he doesn’t want to be corralled into a place like some animal, instead preferring to be a “free-range” God. He’s not being persnickety here. He doesn’t want the Israelites to associate him with a singular place, wrongly thinking that he could be found only in a building atop the highest hill in Jerusalem. After all, he had traveled with them from Egypt through the Sinai Desert into the Promised Land, making it perfectly clear he had mobility.
Further, the “other nations,” as peoples outside Judaism were called, had temples to their gods, and the God of Israel had made it clear he didn’t like to be confused with these other gods. A temple to him was putting him on a level with these foreign gods, his distinctiveness easily lost or overlooked as the Israelites drew a logical comparison between their temple and the temples of the other nations.
Another point not to be overlooked–which the Lord God surely did not–was that David’s intentions were not pure. While he may have wanted to give glory to the Most High, he also wanted to consolidate his own power, and what better way to bring the twelve tribes of Israel together under one ruler than to have one particular place of worship prescribed for all of the people, a place that just happened to be the seat of David’s power–Jerusalem. In this way, David buttressed his political power by way of a religious amalgamation, the two–politics and religion–joined at the hip in a temple.
As noted, David’s dream was deferred to his son Solomon, who built what became known as the First Temple, its very name already telling us that it didn’t survive. When Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians in the 6th century B.C., the First Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the people of Jerusalem were shipped to Babylon.
A few generations later, after the Babylonians had been routed by the Persians, the Jerusalemites were allowed to return home by Cyrus the Great, who supported a rebuilding of the Temple, so long as the people remembered he was still in charge. This so-called Second Temple–a modest structure in comparison to Solomon’s showplace–survived in place until King Herod–a Roman appointee–decided to upgrade, tearing down the present structure and erecting a much more impressive building.
Herod prided himself on being a builder–perhaps the only good thing to be said of him–and so the Third Temple ended up being quite the sight. Begun in 20 B.C., Herod’s Temple–which he did not live to see completed–was under construction for decades, not completed until 63 A.D. By all accounts, it was worth the wait, intended more as a tribute to Herod than a tribute to the Most High God.
Prominent in its placement on a hill and visible from far away, it was as high as a fifteen story building. A massive building, it was covered on all sides with plates of gold–if Josephus the Jewish historian is to be believed. When the sun rose, its rays hit the gold, radiating in all directions, the flash of bright light blinding anyone who looked in that direction, forcing them to turn away their faces–not a bad thing in itself when gazing upon the presence of the Most High God.
Unfortunately, the lessons of history had not been learned and in less than a decade of its completion Herod’s Temple also ended up being a pile of rubble and the precious vessels were hauled away to Rome as booty by Titus, who had orchestrated the brutal but successful military effort, ensuring his becoming emperor in a short while. When bulldozed to the ground, all that remained of the former monument to Herod’s ego was a small part of a foundational wall, which has survived to the present day and carries the appropriate title, “The Wailing Wall.”
This is the background to the scene that Luke gives us today and is important to our understanding of Rabbi Jesus’ words to his followers, a warning that he issues as he stands within the walls of Herod’s grand Temple. He says to them, “As for these things which you see, the days will come, in which there will not be left here one stone on another that will not be thrown down.”
Of course, the fact of the matter is that when Luke wrote his gospel in 85 A.D. the destruction of the Temple was already a fait accompli, making Rabbi Jesus’ words spoken a half-century earlier prescient for sure, words that understandably brought upon him the wrath of the religious leaders of Jerusalem whose forward vision was not as clear-sighted as his own. His subsequent crucifixion–just a matter of days away at this point–was in no small part owed to this prediction, a threat that the local politicians and the religious elites viewed as incendiary and insurrectional.
As we see, Luke borrows Rabbi Jesus’ words to offer counsel to his disciples living decades after, the context being their own persecution and bullying by the powers that be who again are threatened by a way of life that challenges the way of the world, the powerful comfortable with the way things are and not happy with people who tell them this isn’t the way God wants things to be.
So, Luke has Rabbi Jesus say these words, “They will seize you and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name.” Doubtless, Rabbi Jesus saw where things were going for him, his adversaries already gathering in backrooms and plotting his demise, their animosity increasing as the days went by, awaiting the right time to grab him and haul him away. And if it happened to him, he was sure it would happen to his followers. Again, he was prescient–or just being sensible.
But the warning that the Rabbi offers his followers concerns not only their being persecuted by the powerful and alienated from society by forces both political and religious, but also brings to the moment the long history of the temple in Jerusalem, a less-than-subtle reminder of who the Most High God is and where he dwells, lessons about his identity that he already tried to make clear to David the King by way of Nathan the prophet, lessons more often than not forgotten by the kings of Israel and ignored by the people of Judah, but important to call to mind yet one more time if his followers are to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Much the same as Jeremiah the prophet who offered his own warning to the people, Rabbi Jesus wants to remind his listeners that the presence of the Most High God is neither promised nor insured by the presence of any building, however majestic or magnificent. Already in the 6th century B.C., Jeremiah had been instructed by the Lord God to stand at the gate of the temple and announce a stark warning to the people entering through the gates:
Jeremiah said, “Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord! Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Reform your ways and your deeds so that I may dwell with you in this place. Do not put your trust in these deceptive words: ‘The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!’ Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds, if each of you deals justly with your neighbor; if you no longer oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow after other gods to your own harm, only then will I let you continue to dwell in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors long ago and forever.” (Jer 7.1-7)
Anything less and he wants nothing to do with it. Another prophet of Israel, Amos, also speaking for the Most High, this one two centuries before Jeremiah, spared no sensibilities when he said, “I hate, I despise your feasts. I take no pleasure in your solemnities. Even though you bring me your burnt offering and grain offerings I will not accept them. Your stall-fed communion offers, I will not look upon them. Take away from me your noisy songs; the melodies of your harps, I will not listen to them. Rather let justice surge like waters and righteousness like an unfailing stream.” (Amos 5.21-24)
Centuries later, once more, another handpicked messenger of the Most High God stands at the gates of the temple and utters the same warning. This time it is Rabbi Jesus who tells the people that the Lord God, whom he calls his Father, is not interested in buildings adorned with costly stones and votive offerings. The Lord of the heavens isn’t bribed by opulence or blinded by affluence. Instead, he is moved by justice and by charity. He makes his home where the hungry are fed, where the sick are healed, and where the dead are brought back to life.
The continuity of the message of the prophets is crystal clear, standing in contrast to the construction of three different temples through the centuries, prophet and priest almost always at odds with each other. Whereas those who constructed the temples saw them as citadels of divine presence and a defense against foreign powers, the prophets saw them as wrongheaded efforts to weaken the wants of the Most High God. “What does the Lord require of you?” the prophet Micah posed to the people, answering the question in this way: “To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Nowhere, as we can see, is any reference to worship in buildings made of stone and mortar, gilded in gold and filled with incense.
If there is any doubt as to what Rabbi Jesus intended as he spoke of a temple that was doomed to lie in the dust, all we have to remember is that he offers his thoughts immediately after watching a poor widow put two pennies into the temple treasury. Turning to his followers he says to them, “I tell you, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”
He leaves no question as to which one the Most High God favors as he stands and walks out of the temple.
–Jeremy Myers
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