In the midst of the trial before the Sanhedrin, testimony is brought against Jesus, asserting that He declared, “I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man” (Mark 14.58, see also Matthew 27.40, Mark 15.29, and John 2.20) though Mark is sure to assert that the testimony of these witnesses did not agree. Despite conflicting testimony, of course, Jesus is crucified as a political dissident.

To understand just how radically political Jesus actually was, we only have to ask why he was crucified. Clearly he was seen as such a major threat to the political powers who governed his land (both the Romans and the ruling Jewish establishment) that they saw only one way to deal with the challenged he presented – to remove that challenge by removing him through political execution. (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 307)

In light of His crucifixion, of course, Jesus’ previously triumphant disciples quickly disperse. Commenting upon the section in the Apostle’s Creed which addresses this event, Karl Barth notes that at this point in the Credo, “the word of the believer completely coincides with the word of the unbeliever.” (Credo, 385) While it goes without saying that the three days in which Jesus remained in sheol were not experienced by His disciples as the high point of Christian community, His resurrection from the dead powerfully reinvigorates God’s initial purposes in Creation.

There is a great irony in John 20, where Mary’s assumes Jesus is the gardener, because in one sense, he is! (see Wright, The Challenge of Jesus) Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on the Temple system, the destruction of His bodily Temple and its resurrection from the dead renews the Creator’s original purpose. It is in this light that Kirk rightly notes

[t]he Church is a ‘fellowship of the resurrection’, an event of the past which anticipates the transformation of all decay and corruption into new life. The Church is like a pin attracted to the magnet of the coming restoration of God’s rule over the whole of life. (What is Mission?, 218)

Following Jesus’ resurrection, of course, Jesus renews the call to “go” and “bless” through The Great Commission. After his ascension, God sends the third person of the Trinity, His Spirit “upon the whole community and upon each one of the members of that community. The Spirit creates koinonia, community with a purpose, to call all things to conversion and reconciliation in Jesus Christ.” (The Good News of the Kingdom, 135) This Spirit of koinonia is evident especially throughout the book of Acts, where it empowers Jesus’ disciples to continue His healing ministry.

Most notably for our study, of course, are episodes that involve the Temple, like the one found in Acts 3, where Luke sets the stage thusly: “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon.” (Acts 3.1) We should note, therefore, that even in light of Jesus’ proclamation of the destruction of the Temple, His disciples were drawn to it centripetally to continue their religious activity. This activity, however, did not preclude them from both healing in the Temple and proclaiming the good news of Jesus, even when it resulted in their immediate arrest. Furthermore, Peter’s message interestingly connects their interaction as well as Jesus crucifixion and resurrection to the story of Abram.

In his message following this healing, Peter not only connects what the people have just witnessed to the story of Jesus but to Abraham. He does this at the beginning of his word (‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus’ [v.13]), and then again at the end (‘You are the heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’… [Acts 3.25]). (The Mission of God, 246)

In Acts 8, conversely, the Temple is presented as a precursor, when an Ethiopian eunuch fulfills Isaiah 56.7 being introduced to Jesus not in the holy place but on his journey home through an encounter with Philip. Another interesting text is found in Acts 15, where James brings together two seemingly opposing ideas, namely the eschatological restoration of God’s “fallen tent” alongside the inclusion of Gentile nations. It is due to the implications of passages like these that we begin to find fault with Karl Barth’s assertion that the ecclesia is both the people of God as well as “the place where an assembly has been held, and is to be held again and again.” (Credo, 137)

These texts from Acts reach their highpoint, however, in Paul’s speech at the Areopagus, found in chapter 17. He asserts, rather boldly,

[t]he God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. (Acts 17.24-25)

Harvie Conn helpfully explicates the implications of Paul’s statement when he notes

Jehovah was no local urban deity; his territorial claims were bounded not by one ethnic city but by “the heavens and the earth”. (sic) In the eschatological shadow of the urban heavens and earth soon to come, the church proclaimed itself as the true city and its “city-zenship” in Christ, the cosmic beneficient “tyrant”/kurios of the city. (The Good News of the Kingdom, 99)

This, of course, reminds us of Solomon’s assertion, that God could not be held captive even in the highest heavens. Furthermore, though speaking to a thoroughly “pagan” (though “quite religious”) audience Paul’s statement questions the role of the Temple itself, a question many are asking regarding church attendance still today. Before addressing this question – and its missiological implications for postmodern ministry – we must first briefly address two passages that powerfully reorient our understanding of the Temple.

We could cautiously assume that Paul’s further deliberation regarding the nature of the Temple revealed even deeper theological and missiological implications. Though the terminology dates back at least to Jesus – and possibly even to the Creation narratives – Paul’s letter to the Ephesians most powerfully states how we are now to understand the Temple. Indeed, in light of the revelation and indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit, Paul can powerfully assert

you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19-22)

Note also the implications of 1st Peter 2.4-10:

As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.
But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,” and,
“A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Even Gentiles have become

“nothing less than… part of the very temple of God. They may have been physically excluded from the inner parts of the temple in Jerusalem, as Gentiles, but spiritually they now constitute the dwelling place of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.” (The Mission of God, 340)

In postmodern engagement with Christian tradition, texts like these provide the foundation by which philosophers argue that the Judeo-Christian tradition is to be credited for the demise of the sacred into secular. (see, for instance, After the Death of God, After Christianity and Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism) This dangerous type of thinking, in turn, has encouraged contemporary culture to increasingly withdraw from church involvement. This need not be the case. Indeed, what we see in these texts is not so much the dissolution of sacred into secular as much as the sacred being known in and through the secular, or more specifically, through those who have been called according to the purposes of God.

In fact, such postmodern Christian thinkers are not radical enough, for in joining together the sacred and secular, they have distanced themselves from the revelation of God through His Living Word, Jesus Christ, and the Written Word, the Holy Scriptures. If we view these passages in light of God’s whole revelation then, the result is not a nihilistic estrangement, but rather a missiological calling.

So the centrifugal mission of the New Testament church had its centripetal theology also: the nations were indeed being gather in – not to Jerusalem or to the physical temple or to national Israel – but to Christ as the center and to the new temple of God that he was building through Christ as a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (The Mission of God, 524)

Or, put more clearly, “All of us have been drawn into the church catholic so that the church may become increasingly universal. Then we are sent out to make disciples of others.” (Mission on the Way, 113)

Tags: Alain Badiou, Apostle Paul, Charles Van Engen, Christopher J.H. Wright, Church, Gianni Vattimo, Jesus, John Caputo
Categories: Pages

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