If you stand today at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, or the Western Wall as it should really be called, you still get a taste of the immensity of the great temple that once stood there, the temple built by King Herod the Great. What you see today is just part of the retaining wall of the platform on which the temple was built, beginning in about 20 BC. But the blocks of white stone you see there are genuinely immense; they are superbly cut, and precisely fitted together. Some of the stones of the temple itself were apparently more than sixty feet in length, and each of them would have stood higher than the tallest man. So this was an immense project, and the greatest of the buildings of Herod, whose undoubted megalomania was expressed in grandiose building, in Rome as well as in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Temple as a project outlasted Herod himself: it hadn’t yet been completely finished at the time Jesus and his disciples were there.
But in less than fifty years it was no more. All that superb masonry had been thrown down, and indeed Jerusalem itself had been destroyed. In place of the holy city the Romans raised a Roman city that they named Aelia Capitolina. And I can’t help but be reminded of the words of the hymn: "Pride of man and earthly glory / sword and crown betray his trust; / what with care and toil he buildeth, / tower and temple, fall to dust."
If you sing on a bit you get to the words: "But God's power, hour by hour, / is my temple and my tower." We have something much better, and much more secure, than the temple of Herod. The Letter to the Hebrews was probably written before the destruction of Jerusalem, so at that time the temple would still have been a place of ritual and worship. And the writer of that letter made great play of the emptiness of those rituals and the insufficiency of the worship offered and the sacrifices made; they had to be repeated day after day, and even so, could never be enough.
True salvation, he writes, can’t be found in the ceaseless round of temple sacrifices; instead, we place our faith and hope only in the blood of Jesus, only in his true and perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice; by this sacrifice he has opened once and for all the curtain that otherwise closes us off from God. Those who first read the letter to the Hebrews would have known that curtain well, as the veil that closed off the Holy of Holies in the midst of the temple, so that only the priests could enter, and only then after they’d been ritually cleansed. And they’d also have heard the crucifixion stories, where we find that at the moment Jesus breathed his last upon the cross the temple veil was torn in two.
In other words, at that moment the barrier between God and his human creation was set aside, torn away through God's own decisive action. And we are saved and given life not through any virtue or merit of our own, but by Christ's offering of himself, a once and for all act of love. This is what we as Christians believe, and its an understanding of God's nature and purpose that is I think unique to our faith.
Tower and temple fall to dust. To the disciples that day those huge stones, so large and regular and skilfully fashioned, must have seemed the pinnacle of human art and achievement - something that surely would stand for ever. But nothing built by human hands can stand for ever; all falls prey to the ravages of time. I remember a few years ago standing in another place of beautiful white stone, the city of Arequipa in Peru, marvelling at the cathedral and the other fine and ancient buildings in the city centre, all constructed from the lovely and pure white local stone. Behind the cathedral rose the bulk of El Misti, the local mountain that seemed almost like the city’s personal protector. But El Misti is an active volcano, and only a few years before much of the city had been destroyed in an earthquake.
Not one stone will be left standing on another. For the people of Arequipa, whose lovely city is a World Heritage Site, those words came devastatingly true, but they did rebuild, and the city is lovely again. But fragile; it could all happen again, and it will, one day. In Jerusalem the disciples were alarmed at the prediction Jesus made that not one of the great stones they were gazing at would be left standing on another. And they asked him when it would all happen. People continue to want to know that kind of thing, so all our popular papers and magazines carry horoscopes, and even among religious folk there are those who play with numbers and look for signs, and cults and sects that are prepared even to set a date for the end of the world. But what Jesus said in reply to his disciples was simply this: "Don't be deceived. Especially, don't be deceived by those who come claiming my name and my authority, but whose aim is to lead you astray."
For Jesus, the vital thing wasn’t what would happen or when it would take place, but that for his disciples, for those who will follow him, the only decisive time is now. Now is the time to say 'yes' to his call and follow. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has no guarantee; now is all we have. Our response to him here and now is all that matters. "Not one stone will be left standing on another." That will happen, whenever it does happen, so don’t leave things too late. Say yes, and come with me now. That is the Gospel challenge of our Lord.
World history is littered with the remains of thrones and dominions; with claims of eternal empires and thousand year reichs. At the time of Jesus, soothsayers were employed to look into the future with techniques that included sifting through the entrails of chickens. Today we chase the future with think tanks and focus groups, exit polls and computer models. But how much more do we really know?
To be human is to be a prisoner of time, and on my life's journey now is the only time I can be sure of; I can’t recapture yesterday and I can’t secure tomorrow. But for this hour at God's table on a Sunday we step out of the world of time and into God’s eternal presence. We step from chronos, the Greek word for the time measured on clocks, into kairos, which is time without clocks, God’s time, inbreathed with eternity. When we gather here Jesus invites us to meet with him creatively within the present moment as it connects into the timelessness of heaven. We share bread and wine at his table and he offers us the chance to be changed as we expose ourselves to his all-embracing and self-offering love.
When as his people we commit ourselves to his will, when we say and mean “thy kingdom come, thy will be done”, and when we dare to let go of our own ideas about what the future should or shouldn’t be, his grace begins a building process in us. His people are those who offer themselves to be built into a living temple - constructed from mutual service, from loyal and regular meeting with our Lord and from our openness to the transforming and renewing power of his love. No mere stones and mortar can provide a temple worthy of his indwelling Spirit. But the plans for the temple he desires have already been laid down, for us to be building, for us to be part of; and on them we shall find the imprint of his cross.
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