Such great stones

The Western Wall in Jerusalem, sometimes called the Wailing Wall, is pretty much all that’s left of the great temple built by Herod the Great. But even though all that remains is the retaining wall of the platform on which the temple was built in about 20 BC, you can still get an idea of the immensity of the original. Visitors will see the huge blocks of white stone, superbly cut and precisely fitted. Some of the stones of the temple itself were more than 60 feet long, and higher than the tallest man. It was a building project so big that the temple was still not entirely complete when Jesus and his disciples were there to see it.

But just a few years later all that mighty building lay in ruins, along with the rest of Jerusalem, following the Jewish revolt against Rome. In its place the victorious Romans raised the city of Aeolia Capitolana. 

We don’t know exactly when the Letter to the Hebrews was written, but probably Herod’s temple was still standing, since the author of Hebrews writes a lot about the rituals that took place there, rituals which had to be repeated day after day, unlike the one perfect and complete sacrifice made by Jesus.

He writes that God’s salvation can’t ever come from the empty rituals and repeated sacrifices done by the temple priests; our salvation is achieved, and God’s saving love made known, only by the blood of Jesus, only in the one true sacrifice he has made, the perfect victim offered by the perfect priest. it is this that has opened the curtain, once and for all. Those who first read Hebrews will have known what curtain he meant: the veil that closed off the Holy of Holies in the midst of the temple. Only those priests who had performed the required ritual cleansing were allowed to enter the veil. But when we read the Gospel stories of the events of the first Good Friday, we find that as Jesus dies on the cross of Calvary, the veil of the temple was torn in two. 

For at the moment of crucifixion all that separated God from his human creation was set aside, in a once and for all act of love. This is the very heart of our Christian faith - that we’re saved by God’s decisive action, and not through our own goodness or achievements, or by the keeping of any law. This is the unique insight of our faith.

“Tower and temple fall to dust” to quote from one of the hymns we sing. When the disciples saw those huge stones, the temple must have seemed the pinnacle of human art and achievement; how could something so immense not stand for ever? But of course it would fall. Nothing built by human hands can stand for ever; all we have and all we are will fall to the ravages of time.

What Jesus said was that not one stone of the temple would be left standing on another. The disciples were shocked and alarmed. When will all this happen, they asked. People are asking the same sort of thing just now, in the political turmoil in which our nation finds itself. What’s going to happen next? Where will it all lead? And those who try and read the signs and interpret the future are working flat out. When will it all happen? Well, Jesus never actually answered that question when his disciples asked it. What he did tell them was to take great care. "Don't be deceived”, he said. “Don't be deceived by those who come claiming my name and my authority, but who would lead you astray."

I think that Jesus is telling us not to fix our minds on what will happen or when it will take place. After all, he says that “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” It’s been rightly said that we can’t re-live yesterday and we can’t guarantee tomorrow. Now is all we have. Of course, not to think at all about the future, or care at all about the past would be foolish. But the essential time of decision is now; no-one should put off till tomorrow what can and should be done today.

Human history is littered with the remains of thrones and dominions, empires that would last for ever, thousand year reichs.  The Romans employed soothsayers to look into the future - their techniques included sifting through the entrails of chickens, which I suspect was hardly less accurate than our modern efforts using think tanks and focus groups and computer models.

How much time do we really have? A couple or three weeks ago, when we put our clocks back, I was once again reminded just how many clocks I own. Wristwatches, clocks on mobile phones and computers, on the cooker, in my car, and of course on shelves and window ledges and bedside tables. Or do they own me? I worry about being late, maybe missing my bus or train or plane. We are I think prisoners of time, only too aware of the clock ticking away. I may carefully measure out the time, the only bit of it I really have is this moment, now. And then this one. And then this.

An African priest once told me, “You Europeans have clocks, but we Africans have time.” But maybe this hour at God's table on a Sunday should be about time and not clocks. Here we replace the clocks that enslave us with the eternity of God. Christ promises to be with us when we break bread in his name; he invites us to meet with him creatively as the present moment connects with the timelessness of heaven. As we meet at his table we’re brought into the presence of his all-embracing and self-offering love. 

And when we respond, when we offer ourselves to him, and set aside our own ideas about how the future should or shouldn’t be, his grace begins a building process in us. Jesus calls us to build a living temple, not made from huge blocks of stone, but from what we are together in Christ. From mutual service, from our regular meeting with Jesus, from our openness to his love. Mere stones and mortar won’t form a temple worthy of his indwelling Spirit. But the plans for the temple he desires are here for us to read, and then to build; and on every page we find the imprint of the cross.