Curtis A. Bronzan

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)

After the exile and destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 587 B.C., the Israelites returned to Jerusalem fifty years later and immediately began rebuilding the Temple. Written around the same time period, Isaiah 56.4-7 looks forward to the fulfillment of the LORD’s purposes for the Temple:

To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant –
to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.
And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to serve him,to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant –
these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

This prophecy anxiously awaits the eschatological age when none would be excluded from the gathering place. Christopher J.H. Wright imagines the shock of Israelites upon receipt of this message:

Foreigners will be brought to the holy mountain.
That’s close enough surely?
No, God will give them joy right in the temple.
But in its outer courts, perhaps?
No, they can bring their sacrifices right up to the altar.

He concludes,

[n]othing that was available to Israelite worshipers will be denied to foreigners willing to commit themselves to Israel’s God.” (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 494)

While our study has revealed that similar – if not identical – hopes were expressed at the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple, Israel’s election had, in some ways, precluded their understanding of “being a blessing” for other nations. This text points forward toward the fullness of the church catholic, which is “a completely open fellowship, with its doors always spread wide, with its members’ minds and hearts open to all. The church catholic is not to diminish its universality by exclusivism, be it social, economic, racial, gender, cultural, or national.” (Mission on the Way: Issues in Mission Theology, 113)

In spite of the shock Isaiah 56 must have caused for its initial hearers, it is by no means the most scandalous statement against the Temple. Indeed, nearly 500 years later, One who proclaimed to be greater than the Temple itself pronounced a judgment which would bring about His death. In fulfillment of Zechariah 9.9, Jesus of Nazareth purposefully entered Jerusalem on a donkey, received the praise of the crowds, and pronounced destruction upon the Temple system.

Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written:
‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’?
But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ (Matthew 21.12-13)

In quoting Isaiah 56 as well as Jeremiah 7.11, Jesus is placing Himself in a line of Hebrew prophets who questioned the role of the Temple in the true worship of God. While it has been asserted that Jesus was simply seeking to halt the exchange of goods in the Temple, this perspective is shallow, at best. Careful research will reveal that though there were certainly financial implications regarding Jesus Temple action (including a possible, but most likely rather minor, slow down in the buying and selling of over priced sacrificial animals), the true impact of Jesus’ action was meant for the entire Temple system, which helps explain why Mark presents Jesus cursing an out of season fig tree (turn to Mark 11 and cue up David Bazan’s record Curse Your Branches).

N.T. Wright argues that Jesus’

deepest belief regarding the Temple was eschatological: the time had come for God to judge the entire institution. It had come to symbolize the injustice that characterized the society on the inside and on the outside, the rejection of the vocation to be the light of the world, the city set on a hill that would draw unto itself all the peoples of the world. (The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, 54)

If this is the case, it carries vast implications for the Temple system itself, which had again become unjust, ignoring the plight of those who it was meant to serve. Matthew’s account even asserts that after His prophetic judgment, Jesus healed the blind and the lame in the Temple courts, purposefully subverting the present structures. (see Matthew 21.14-17 for further explication of the missiological elements of this behavior, see The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 310)

After the Israelites had been set free from Egypt by the hand of YHWH, they entered the wilderness wandering where the presence of their liberator God was experienced in the Tent of Meeting. Ultimately, however, the leaders of Israel sought a permanent place of worship, a goal realized during the reign of King Solomon.

Of particular interest for our study are the verses which imply a powerful missiological emphasis for the Temple. After questioning whether God would dwell on earth and later asserting that even the highest heavens cannot contain God, Solomon prays

[a]s for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name – for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm – when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name. (1st Kings 8.41-43)

Though this portion of Solomon’s prayer is both preceded and followed by requests for God’s special providence on behalf of His chosen people, we must also recognize the gravity of Solomon’s request. Solomon here offers a centripetal view of the Temple’s role in bringing other nations to the worship of YHWH. Wright notes further the significance of Solomon’s assumptions: “It is assumed that people will hear of the reputation of YHWH. It is assumed that people from afar will be attracted to come and worship Israel’s God for themselves. It is assumed that Israel’s God can and will hear the prayers of foreigners.” (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 229)

Isaiah’s vision in the temple records a number of interesting similarities with Solomon’s perspective. He asserts

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6.1-3)

In this now familiar text, Isaiah asserts that even in the midst of the temple, with the Lord “seated on a throne”, the seraphs were proclaiming one to another that the glory of YHWH is extended throughout the earth. A number of contemporary worship songs envisage this setting, encouraging worshippers to sing to God of His holiness, though this is quite different from what takes place in the text. In Isaiah’s account, it is the seraphs who are proclaiming God’s glory – and they are doing so one to another. Isaiah, conversely, responds in fear, until his sin is atoned for. This text is of even further missiological significance, however.

Isaiah recounts “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” Thus, Isaiah records an interaction with YHWH in the temple where he not only had a powerful “worship experience,” but was commissioned in faith to go out centrifugally to proclaim God’s message. Darrell Guder asserts “[t]hat Isaiah was unworthy was not an obstacle to the gracious self-disclosure of God, who called Isaiah into his service. In spite of his uncleanness, Isaiah could confess with that important ‘yet’ that he had seen God.” (The Continuing Conversion of the Church, 75) The content of Isaiah’s message, however, was not as hopeful as his call into service.

Isaiah’s proclamation, like many of the other Hebrew prophets, was a message of judgment. The Word of the LORD delivered by Jeremiah in front of the temple itself was quite similar:

Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. (Jeremiah 3.1-8)

Of particular interest here is Jeremiah’s assertion that God’s chosen people have begun to think of the temple as a fortress in which they can hide from the foreigner whom they have previously mistreated, an obvious divergence from Solomon’s prayer cited above. Furthermore, the Israelites are pictured as ignoring the needs of the fatherless and the widow, as well as treated one another unjustly. Still, forgiveness is available. J. Andrew Kirk insightfully notes

[s]ometimes the ‘prophetic voice’ is heard only as condemnation. But the announcement of judgement (sic) is also a word of graciousness, for the prophets always provide both a warning of the disaster that will happen if the people do not change and the opportunity to admit the fallacy of their policies, turn to God again and receive the blessing of doing his will. (What is Mission?: Theological Explorations, 113)

This dichotomy between social justice and the role of the Temple is not the only issue for the Hebrew prophets.The prophet Ezekiel asserts that the Israelites have trusted not only in deceptive words, but also detestable idols.

I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst fathers will eat their children, and children will eat their fathers. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds. Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will withdraw my favor; I will not look on you with pity or spare you. (Ezekiel 5.8-11)

Indeed, in this scathing passage, God’s wrath is poured out upon His own chosen people in sight of the nations they had been empowered through Abraham to bless as well as the those whom Solomon had prayed would come to know God through their place of worship! Ironically, YHWH is pictured as scattering His people from Jerusalem (i.e. the Temple) and into exile because of the detestable idols and practices that filled His holy place.

Wright notes paradoxically, “the victory of Nebuchadnezzar was not a victory over YHWH, but a victory of YHWH… With the Lord on their side, Jerusalem could not be destroyed. With the Lord against them, Jerusalem could not be defended.” (Wright, Christopher J.H. The Mission of God, 96) A similar passage from the prophet Micah envisions God judging the Israelites from within the Temple they had defiled. (see Micah 1.1-7)

As the church of Jesus Christ progresses further into the twenty-first century, it continues to address issues both new and old. While church membership is growing exponentially throughout many parts of the 3^rd world, it continues a rapid decline in the post-Christian West.

Charles Van Engen comments upon this reality when he notes

[w]e are all aware that the center of gravity of the Christian Church has shifted from North to South, from West to East. This shift does not only impact the numbers of Christians in the world, the languages they speak, and the location where they may be found. This shift also means that mission-sending is now polycentric: cross-cultural missions send their missionaries from everywhere to everywhere. (Missiological Constraints in Critical Contextual Theologizing, Van Engen)

Simply the names of a few recently published books reveal the impact of this seismic shift: They Like Jesus, but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations, Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It and unChristian: What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity. As such, we in the West must follow the guidance of Van Engen (see, for instance, Mission on the Way: Issues in Mission Theology, 207-229), Lesslie Newbigin and many others who call the Church in the West to re-evangelize its increasingly secularized culture.

An interesting element of this dilemma is that many who are leaving the church in the West do so not out of a loss of faith, but rather, they assert, in order to save it. This reality is explored in personal narratives, like Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, as well as practical guides seeking to reverse the trend, such as Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts. Though the perspectives these books offer are important for church ministry and missiological practice in the West, I seek to dig deeper, ultimately presenting a theological understanding regarding the role of gathering places in the life of a faith community.

In doing so in this and posts to follow, I will holistically engage the whole of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, seeking to explicate an eschatological, missional understanding of the role of the the Temple(s) and the Church(es) as a basis for church involvement in contemporary culture. In so doing, I will utilize the positive elements of an evangelical narrative theology, recognizing that the biblical narrative is “not merely the recital of events in historical sequence. Rather, [it] seeks to convey a deeper meaning, a deep-level revelation of the nature and purposes of God who breaks into human history.” (Mission on the Way: Issues in Mission Theology, 52)

Lesslie Newbigin puts it thusly:

The Christian church testifies that in the actual events of this finite, contingent, and yet rational world of warped space-time there are words and gestures through which the Creator and Sustainer of the world has spoken and acted. It is not that the events are anything other than part of the unbroken nexus of happenings within space-time that can be analyzed and classified along with all the rest. They are not ‘interventions’ by someone who is otherwise absent. (Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, 88)

We start, therefore, at the Beginning. At their outset, the Hebrew Scriptures assert the primacy of God, not as an “Unmoved Mover,” but quite the opposite, as Creator who exists in divine community. Indeed, Scripture boldly proclaims not simply the existence of God, but in addition His creative power: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”Noting that we ought speak not so much of the doctrine of Creation, but rather the Creator, Karl Barth rightly asserts a theme integral to our study, that humanity “was in a pre-eminent sense created for the service of God, created to be the ‘image of God,’ not only as theatre, but as active and passive bearer of that glory.” (Credo, 33)

Not long after this idyllic Creation in the Garden, however, Scripture records an escalating crescendo of sin that begins with the first couple and their children, and continues throughout the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In Genesis 12, then, God starts over, by instead – as Wright puts it – calling “an elderly, childless couple in the land of Babel… [making] them the fountainhead, the launch pad of his whole mission of cosmic redemption.” (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 199.)Indeed, Genesis 12.1-3 states

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

As has been noted by Wright, (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 199.)what we encounter in God’s calling of Abram can be categorized into two corresponding halves, each established by an imperative, “go” and “be a blessing.” These are each followed by three corresponding outcomes, which reveal the results of the commands, that is blessing for all peoples on earth. Thus, thiis new beginning should be understood not in terms of God completely starting over as much as God seeking to fulfill His original purposes inherent in the original Beginning. With the implications of the Beginning and new beginning at the forefront of our minds, then, we are now able to proceed onto our missiological investigation regarding gathering places throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.